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The official story told often at big companies is that the interview process should be tilted towards false negatives over false positives. The truth of the ma

The official story told often at big companies is that the interview process should be tilted towards false negatives over false positives. The truth of the matter is you could probably get statistically similar results from a voodoo witch doctor reading chicken entrails. Ok, maybe not, but I really get the feeling that most hiring systems are arbitrary and are less "tilted toward false negatives" and more just plain random. In the cases such as Google, they also tend to create a monoculture which probably feels right at the moment but I think really hurts the company in the long term.

CrankyFool 12y ago
As someone responsible for observability, I've got a real problem with biasing hiring decisions toward false negatives; what you're basically saying is that you're biasing the system toward the failure mode that you have the least ability to actually measure. It's a great way to feel good about yourself and your interview process; it's also a great way to not find fault in your interview process as it becomes arbitrarily ... arbitrary.
CoolGuySteve 12y ago
I think these processes are like that Price is Right game Plinko. You're the round little disk and the interviewers are the pegs. There are thousands of pegs on the board, and your resume predicts the starting position of your disk. But once you hit the pegs, it's essentially random. Some pegs bounce you towards the jackpot and other pegs bounce you towards 0. It all depends on if you have a similar background, if the person likes you, if you've heard of the question before or solved something similar, if your chosen language fits the problem domain, etc. At the end of the day, your ability to actually do things doesn't matter much in the interview process. I've worked at 2 huge well known companies and failed at several other interviews. Hundreds of millions of people use my code every day. After nearly a decade in tech, I've never gotten a bad performance review. But I still plinko'ed into the 0 spot many times. As I get older, I find it's easiest just to enter orgs from friend's recommendations, preferably at smaller companies. Playing the plinko game with your livelihood is an exhausting waste of time, and often represents the politicking that goes on at these huge companies when review time comes around.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  Thanks for posting this :)
aceperry 12y ago
"In the cases such as Google, they also tend to create a monoculture which probably feels right at the moment but I think really hurts the company in the long term" I would agree with you about the monoculture aspect where they tend to hire new college grads from mostly the top colleges. I thought it's a little bit too inbred, but they also buy a lot of companies and get a much broader set of employees that way. Although, they might dump a lot of the acquired employees instead of keeping them on permanently once the acquisition goes through.

CrankyFool 12y ago

As someone responsible for observability, I've got a real problem with biasing hiring decisions toward false negatives; what you're basically saying is that you're biasing the system toward the failure mode that you have the least ability to actually measure. It's a great way to feel good about yourself and your interview process; it's also a great way to not find fault in your interview process as it becomes arbitrarily ... arbitrary.

CoolGuySteve 12y ago

I think these processes are like that Price is Right game Plinko. You're the round little disk and the interviewers are the pegs. There are thousands of pegs on the board, and your resume predicts the starting position of your disk. But once you hit the pegs, it's essentially random. Some pegs bounce you towards the jackpot and other pegs bounce you towards 0. It all depends on if you have a similar background, if the person likes you, if you've heard of the question before or solved something similar, if your chosen language fits the problem domain, etc. At the end of the day, your ability to actually do things doesn't matter much in the interview process. I've worked at 2 huge well known companies and failed at several other interviews. Hundreds of millions of people use my code every day. After nearly a decade in tech, I've never gotten a bad performance review. But I still plinko'ed into the 0 spot many times. As I get older, I find it's easiest just to enter orgs from friend's recommendations, preferably at smaller companies. Playing the plinko game with your livelihood is an exhausting waste of time, and often represents the politicking that goes on at these huge companies when review time comes around.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago
Thanks for posting this :)

aceperry 12y ago

"In the cases such as Google, they also tend to create a monoculture which probably feels right at the moment but I think really hurts the company in the long term" I would agree with you about the monoculture aspect where they tend to hire new college grads from mostly the top colleges. I thought it's a little bit too inbred, but they also buy a lot of companies and get a much broader set of employees that way. Although, they might dump a lot of the acquired employees instead of keeping them on permanently once the acquisition goes through.