[HN Gopher] Why the Job Search Sucks (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
Why the Job Search Sucks (2018)
Author : NetOpWibby
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-11-05 08:10 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.webb.page)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.webb.page)
| erehweb wrote:
| The other fun development is take-home Data Science problems,
| where you have to spend a weekend, you're never quite sure if
| your results are good enough (you can always improve a model),
| and then they want the regular panel of interviews on top of that
| as well.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Employers can't give you feedback because the people before you
| have responded by crying, arguing, threatening discrimination,
| you name it. Most people don't seem able to take constructive
| feedback.
| [deleted]
| toolslive wrote:
| Anyone had a "bait & switch"? In essence: You applied for job X
| but "Yeah that job has been filled, but maybe you're interested
| in Y?" (X can be Haskell, CTO, .... and Y can be Php, architect,
| ....)
| Deestan wrote:
| Sure. On both sides. It's just a thing that happens?
|
| You've made a hiring decision, but you still have 2 strong
| candidates from the process that _you_ know are good hires for
| other positions so why not ask what they feel about it?
| toolslive wrote:
| Well, what happened was that they let me come over (I took
| the bait), and 15 minutes into the first interview, they
| performed the magic switch.
| mehphp wrote:
| I don't think that's a bait and switch. It's totally possible
| that the position got filled, and they are still interested in
| hiring you.
|
| I can see how that would be frustrating on your end, but I
| wouldn't immediately attribute it to malice.
| HanaShiratori wrote:
| This happens ever now and then in the company I work for.
| Sometimes we have a good candidate who doesn't make it for the
| position they initially apply for, so our hiring managers offer
| them a similar position that might be a good fit as well (after
| talking to the manager of the other team).
|
| But this is not intentional bait, rather offering more
| opportunities for both sides and totally legit in my eyes. And
| it worked out well - at least for the company I work at...
| forinti wrote:
| I once went to an interview and was told that the job had been
| taken but that they "still wanted to have a chat with me".
|
| You just can't steal people's time like that.
| kiwiboy101 wrote:
| Here in New zealand. The person who does the hiring is usually
| not the business owner... The money doesnt come out of his/her
| pocket... so they interview people when they need someone just to
| have fun honestly lol. I currently work in a factory because i
| couldnt find a job in IT and i got this job in 1 fucking
| interview lol..and i love it
| kiwiboy101 wrote:
| and i am going for further studies.. I think spending 5 years
| as a web developer is enough here in auckland .. I need to
| study more and specialize in a computer science area. Someone
| correct me if i am wrong .
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I highly recommend having small/side projects. They don't
| even need to be super complex but they'll better help you
| learn faster.
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| Had an experience like this recently with a certain media
| streaming hardware company that starts with an "R". Their process
| had six points of contact, starting with an initial technical
| phone screen (with a language feature quiz), an hour long
| algorithm session (actually surprisingly fair), and then four
| more 45 minute interviews after that. They'd made a point of
| saying how good they were at getting back to people in 24 hours,
| and then they ghosted me. As far as I could tell, it was going
| alright, too.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| > What's wrong with your process that you need _more_ than three
| steps?
|
| Thank you. This needs to be said louder, and repeated more.
|
| A phone screen, a tech screen, and a brief in-person interview is
| enough to hire someone.
|
| If your interview process requires someone already working to
| take a whole day off of work, then you aren't going to get the
| top-tier candidates you say you want.
|
| The sad truth is that lots of companies claiming on paper to be
| "hiring" aren't actually trying to hire anyone. The job opening
| either exists to satisfy some corporate compliance checklist, or
| to convince some executive-level person demanding higher
| productivity that they're "working on it".
| JohnBooty wrote:
| A phone screen, a tech screen, and a brief in-person
| interview is enough to hire someone.
|
| I'm torn on this. I just went through a long job search
| process. Multistep interview processes are grueling and they
| impose a particular burden on folks who already have jobs,
| folks with anxiety disorders or other factors that make
| interviews even more grueling, etc.
|
| HOWEVER.
|
| The most valuable interviews _of my career_ were those "extra"
| ones where I chatted with actual team members I'd be working
| alongside.
|
| I asked them about strengths and pain points of working at
| Company XYZ on a daily basis and got some great insights. Those
| kinds of interviews are the ones where you can find out if
| their build pipeline sucks, get a sense of the level of
| technical debt they're carrying, etc.
|
| Absolutely priceless in my decision process. I feel confident
| about the company I selected vs. feeling like I'm just rolling
| the dice.
| [deleted]
| xyzelement wrote:
| I hope the author found gainful employment, but this post seems
| self-unaware which may part of be why he gets rejected. He
| concludes the interviewers/process are bad, because he thinks he
| "aced it". There's no consideration that he may not have done as
| well as he thought.
|
| People like that are hard to work with, because they react this
| way to everything. Bad feedback on code review? "I thought my
| code was great, it's the reviewer that sucks." Nobody wants to
| work with people like this and they are almost never as good
| technically as they think. They work hard to not see their own
| shortcomings so they don't fix them.
|
| I don't know the poster, he may not be the type I describe, just
| how the post vibes with me.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Hi, poster here!
|
| I wrote this post when I was _super_ salty about the situation.
| Obviously I found gainful employment but that still is the
| worst interview experience I ever had.
|
| I'm forever nervous with coding challenges, I'm definitely not
| super confident with anything I write in less than 30 minutes
| to never see again.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| When your blog looks like this:
|
| My kid brought home a kitten [KITTEN.JPG]
|
| _entire blog post_
|
| [1] http://something.com/image/KITTEN.JPG
|
| [2] http://elsehwhere.net/another/image.jpg
|
| ...where none of that has an actual clickable link
|
| ...it is not even remotely obvious that you found gainful
| employment
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I meant to put "in the time since this post." I've never
| heard of three-year unemployment in the tech field but I
| suppose anything is possible.
|
| I converted my blog from HTML to just TXT. The references
| still work, even though no hyperlinking exists.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Most of my interviews are just very general tech questions, what
| is a class, what is an object, etc. I have had one where I had to
| implement a take home project once in react. I had never used
| react before so it was a challenge coming from vanilla JS but I
| did it in about 4 hours (it was a pretty easy project) and got
| the job. I have never had an interview of more than 3 steps. 1.
| Speak to the recruiter 2. Speak to the hiring manager. 3. speak
| to the team.
|
| I have never done one but I have to imagine a white board, FAANG
| style interview would be incredibly stressful and time consuming.
|
| I had a job I was interviewing for once where I went in for the
| interview, everything went well and they asked me to come in for
| a second round which would consist of a paid full day of work in
| their office. I declined. I appreciate that they would have paid
| me, but I just could not see investing an entire day into an
| awkward shadowing process. Company seemed good though, I wish
| them well.
|
| Current job was speaking with a recruiter (who was very hard to
| understand), speaking with the vp, and then speaking with the
| owner. Each step of the process I raised my asking rate. Got the
| offer for what I wanted the day after the interview with the
| owner.
| Twisol wrote:
| I recently had an interview where I had about 40 minutes to
| implement a particular data structure. This was after completing
| an intial take-home of significantly more complexity (think,
| reading and implementing published specifications), for which I
| waited a month before I followed up and found they simply hadn't
| reviewed my application yet.
|
| I thought I had a good rapport with the interviewer; I explained
| my thought processes in real-time, identified domain
| considerations I'd want to explore, and highlighted places where
| I was doing something less efficient for the sake of getting
| something working first. I left the interview feeling pretty good
| that I'd represented myself well.
|
| I followed up a week later and learned they had rejected me;
| apparently I wasn't focused on the problem (??), and I used the
| wrong data structures. Okay. 40 minutes is too short to expect a
| perfect solution -- unless you're hiring for memorization, in
| which case yeah, I'm not going to be a good fit, your pipeline
| did its job.
|
| (I went back, looked up what they were ostensibly looking for,
| and built it up from scratch. It took twice as long as I was
| given to implement to my satisfaction, and it was only a couple
| of transformations away from where I had originally left it to go
| from correct to correct-and-efficient.)
|
| I won't name the company (I still think they're pretty great
| overall), but this was a pretty sour and confusing experience.
| (If anyone there reads this: hi, no hard feelings, we've all got
| to rant sometimes.)
| zhdc1 wrote:
| When you have a large enough number of qualified candidates,
| you look for any reason you can to justify why you picked one
| person over everyone else.
|
| Assuming that the hire wasn't already pre-selected (which is
| very possible), you were likely given the quickest answer the
| interviewer could come up with that sounded reasonable.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| When you have a large enough number of qualified
| candidates, you look for any reason you can to
| justify why you picked one person over everyone else.
|
| Yes. Also, a lot of companies operate under the principle of,
| "It's better to turn away ten good engineers than hire one
| bad one."
| mcv wrote:
| That only makes sense if you have more than enough
| engineers already. If not, it would be better to hire 10
| good engineers and the 1 bad one, and fire the bad or or at
| least not extend their contract. Then you'll still have the
| 10 good ones.
|
| And doing actual work is a much better test of an
| engineer's abilities than any interview process is capable
| of.
| Twisol wrote:
| Friends have suggested much the same, yeah. It feels unlikely
| due to a few factors, but I'm very willing to chalk that up
| to naivete on my part.
|
| (If nothing else, it's a convenient fiction that allows one
| to move on.)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I followed up a week later and learned they had
| rejected me; apparently I wasn't focused on the
| problem (??), and I used the wrong data structures.
|
| Damn. I'm sorry. To me this represents a very poor interview
| process.
|
| I just received two senior engineer job offers from companies
| with whom I actually ran into some roadblocks during the
| whiteboard/CoderPad sessions.
|
| Before the sessions, both companies stressed that the exercises
| were about my thought/communication processes more than the
| code itself.
|
| During the coding exercises I aced some things, and when I had
| some roadblocks I explained my thought processes and they
| nudged me in the right directions -- in both cases they were
| actually pretty fun and collaborative processes. That's really
| what they were testing for.
|
| Sounds like your interview was more like, "complete this fairly
| challenging coding assignment in silence while somebody looks
| over your shoulder," which is just not good interviewing.
| That's not a good simulation of an actual work environment.
|
| I had some total BS interviews too, at other companies. Some
| people/companies just suck at it.
| dtoms wrote:
| it's broken.
|
| - FAANG makes you jump through hoops because they are screening
| people out.
|
| - 30 engineer companies adopt it. Then complain they can't hire,
| or can't hire Sr. Engineers. They should be screening in.
|
| - "bad hires cost too much". What does it cost to have 15 hours
| of interview time, multiple times a week, for your engineers
| doing the interviews? Learn to hire cheaper and fire faster.
|
| - All new grads post 2010(or whatever) spent the last 2 years of
| their degree doing the rote problem memorization and continue it
| throughout their career as they job hop every 1.5 years leaving a
| pile of tech debt behind them. its normalized. you see it in
| these comments here.
|
| - its just 2 leetcode medium questions. THERE ARE 2000+ LEET CODE
| MEDIUM QUESTIONS. What are you really trying to gauge here? You
| want me to recurse a tree? Tell me ahead of time? Oh, that would
| be memorizing? So the solution is...go memorize a lot more? What
| happens to anyone with anxiety or OCD when they run into that?
|
| - just a saw a job for a "CI/CD Engineer" first requirement? Full
| stack distributed systems engineer. Job? Write jenkins pipelines
|
| - just as a job for a "QE Automation Architect" first
| requirement? Debug distributed systems in production. Manage AWS.
| "What you'll do? Write test frameworks". Uh...right.
|
| - Why are we hiring house painters to do plumbing, and vice
| verse. Different jobs actually require different skills.
|
| it's broken and i'm salty
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think people need to be down with how to actually get a job. It
| varies across industries so I can't speak generally, but I can
| say how my view has changed over the years, from being naive and
| a bit bitter to being quite happy with my most recent search.
|
| When I was young there wasn't much choice. I had no network, I
| didn't know anything about my industry, and I didn't know
| anything about how hiring was done.
|
| First of all, network 1. A huge number of jobs are not actually
| open to anyone other than a specific person who is known to the
| hiring manager already. Someone they've worked with or a second
| level connection. I refer people all the time to jobs now, and
| the hit rate is way higher than the anon rate.
|
| Network 2. Recruiters. The good ones will meet up with you, ask
| you for advice, and generally tend to a huge number of
| connections. Your main thing to do here is to play the long game.
| Demonstrate that you're a person who is of interest, if you're
| lucky as both the product and the customer. Then keep in touch,
| ping them now and again on LinkedIn. You will get some calls and
| the hit rate is higher than anon, lower than network 1 but with
| way more volume.
|
| As for the interview process itself, it helps you a lot to have a
| lot of leads. You feel bad if you have one lead and you blow it.
| If you have two or three you'll be more relaxed, plus you can
| negotiate with ease. You can take a bigger view of processes that
| you don't like, eg whiteboarding is more of a lottery when you
| have a whole bunch to do, and you don't take it as personally.
| People who don't get back to you, oh well, would you want to work
| there?
|
| I guess a fair bit of it is psychological management, but that's
| important to make a good impression and to be able to judge the
| jobs better.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Agreed on the networking.
|
| In terms of recruiters, I've only ever met a single good one,
| and I'd say generally recruiters, especially the third-party
| kind, are pretty useless and should be avoided at all costs.
| The only exception may be if the recruiter owns their own
| recruiting business as this is a sign they may know what
| they're talking about.
|
| Recruiters can be pretty easily bypassed by either contacting
| the hiring manager directly or through networking. I don't plan
| on ever dealing with recruiters again.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This.
|
| Normal disclaimers apply as it is bound to vary between
| industries, but in my little corner ( banking ), people that
| can recommend you and recruiters will bring you in faster than
| just about any other way. Apart from everything else, hiring
| manager will already be aware of you. My last job I basically
| got based on interview with recruiter and three person
| interview with my soon to be boss and his bosses.
|
| The one before that I got based on interview with hiring
| manager after recommendation from mutual friend, which bypassed
| HR almost completely ( which is funny, because a year before, I
| applied there the regular way with zero feedback ).
|
| Point is.. as much as I dislike saying it, play the game; be
| nice and helpful; people will remember you.
| ixs wrote:
| I would generally agree with everything you said. These steps
| will get you job offers and employment.
|
| But based on personal experience in Europe I do find that
| networking with recruiters is a complete waste of time.
| Networking with past colleagues and popping into the local
| meetup scene plus targeted talks with recruiters at industry
| conferences such as oscon (rip!) are going to give you way
| better returns.
|
| I've got 20+ years experience in the industry, I've worked at
| some well-known shops and I have a decent looking CV with some
| financial sector experience. I do get the regular Google and
| Facebook recruiters on LinkedIn but would probably not pass
| their interview because I am already gainfully employed and do
| not have the time to cram computing trivia to pass their
| screen. Due to the financial sector experience I seem to get a
| ton of recruiters from the UK (and now NL), plus an incredible
| large number of invites to talk about a "devops engineer
| position" from German recruiters.
|
| Especially the German recruiters are a complete waste of time.
| They are so terrible, they keep offering junior to mid-level
| positions to someone with 20yoe and a tech-lead/staff title to
| match. Their base comp is usually below 50% of my current base,
| sometimes barely a third. The UK and NL offers are better
| financially but still not reaching current TC levels. At this
| point, it's not even worth replying to their LinkedIn or Xing
| messages.
|
| If you're at the bottom of the market or just starting out,
| recruiters or headhunters can be helpful to get an in at a
| company. But once you have a few years experience, their value
| rapidly declines, especially if you're aiming at the top of the
| market comp wise. With experience and a network, you know where
| your friends are working, if they like the places and you have
| an easy way to get referrals.
| mcv wrote:
| My experience is somewhat the opposite. I work as a
| freelancer, and I've gotten practically all my projects
| through recruiters. I've heard of a few other freelancers
| doing their own networking directly with hiring managers, and
| if that works, that's absolutely great, because you cut out
| the middleman who takes a piece out of your rate.
|
| Maybe I'm really bad at networking. I've spoken to plenty of
| colleagues, go to conferences and meetups, etc, but none of
| that has ever resulted in an interesting position for me.
|
| Even so, I'm not unhappy with my compensation at all. As a
| freelancer, at least. Employed programmers seem to be
| severely underpaid. A year ago, during Covid, a freelance
| contract ended, and couldn't be extended because of rules,
| but I didn't want to leave that project yet, so I joined the
| client as an employee. I had to accept a serious pay cut for
| that, though, and no matter how much I argued that I had
| proven I was worth a lot more than that, I couldn't get them
| to budge at all. I'm currently back to freelancing again. At
| a very interesting project, at a higher rate than before,
| again through an intermediary recruiter. I can't seem to get
| rid of them.
| Twisol wrote:
| > You feel bad if you have one lead and you blow it.
|
| This one hits pretty hard for me; I have a hard time
| maintaining multiple leads at once. I think it's more
| psychological than actual, but it feels a bit unnatural to put
| myself out there, as such -- I feel better (on the one hand at
| least) when I only have to worry about one interaction at a
| time.
|
| I think it's still something I'll have to learn how to do,
| unfortunately. Thanks for outlining it so clearly.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I felt the same way as you. I like to focus on one thing.
| I think it's more psychological than actual
|
| Amen. Absolutely 100% this for me. I just completed an
| engineering job search that took about four weeks.
|
| I did ~40 phone/video calls for ~10 companies. Admittedly ~10
| of those calls were simple screener calls which basically
| just check to see if you have a pulse and can speak in
| complete sentences. If those two things are true the
| recruiter shifts into "salesperson mode" and tells you how
| great the company is and gets you scheduled for the "real"
| interview(s). So let's call it ~30 "real" calls.
|
| Emotionally this was extremely exhausting for me. I'm the
| type of person that is very sociable but needs time to
| recharge afterward because I put a lot of energy into each
| interaction.
|
| But, I'm typing this to perhaps give you some hope!
|
| The process was very difficult for me in the beginning but it
| did get easier in the end. With each call I could feel myself
| getting a little better at it and I felt a little more
| relaxed.
|
| I think these sorts of numbers are just the reality now. Even
| though the current market is GREAT for software engineers,
| the remote-only shift means that there are a LOT of
| candidates for every job.
|
| It feels like there are 1,000,000 jobs and 500,000 candidates
| which is theoretically good for us except that we're
| competing against all 499,999 of the other candidates for
| every single job hahaha
| ResearchCode wrote:
| That's viable advice for navigating a system built on nepotism
| and over-supply of STEM workers. Just saying. Doctors don't
| struggle finding a qualified job.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| The number of residencies was capped in the 1980s, so of
| course doctors don't struggle to find a job. Residents do
| that.
| draw_down wrote:
| Nobody is talking about doctors, come on
| michaelt wrote:
| Doctors don't change their ideas about what competent
| doctoring is every five years - and medical schools know
| better than to hand out degrees to people who lack basic
| skills.
| Rygu wrote:
| I like zero-bullshit, engineer-targeting We're hiring pages like
| this one: https://texts.com/jobs
| tpxl wrote:
| > We don't do whiteboard/algorithm interviews. We'll talk about
| things you've previously worked on and then do a work trial for
| a week - you'll be paid as a contractor for this.
|
| This is nice.
| draw_down wrote:
| Look, if you prefer this because it saves you going through a
| battery of interviews, that's your prerogative. But there's
| no way this scheme benefits the candidate overall.
|
| In what context is that trial week happening? You've already
| quit your previous job for _a chance_ at this one? If at the
| end of the week they decide to pass... then what? You 're
| just unemployed?
|
| There are no silver bullets here. Personally I'd rather go
| through a series of interviews while keeping my job, than end
| up on the wrong side of a "trial period".
| mehphp wrote:
| Yes but a little risky for the engineer if they are currently
| gainfully employed.
| tpxl wrote:
| You don't have to divulge company secrets, talk about
| public knowledge from the company, ie frontend design
| (React, Angular, whatever), any outer facing APIs (REST,
| SOAP, RabbitMQ, whatever) and stuff that is public
| knowledge, ie. stuff from blog posts or general knowledge
| (like GCP/AWS/...).
|
| Besides that, you can always just not say what company
| something occurred at or be vague enough.
| stnmtn wrote:
| More the part where you're contracted on trial for a
| week. How do you do that will a fulltime job?
| version_five wrote:
| You have to quit and start the job at some point. You
| might also hate it after a week. The trial at least gives
| both sides a lower risk way to test each other out. You
| could take a weeks vacation, or surely would be able to
| negotiate a week to do real trial work before you are
| forced to quit your job.
|
| This is actually common in some trades, for example
| cooking / baking, and makes way more sense than
| interviews for both sides to decide if they want to
| continue working together.
| lonelycompiler wrote:
| Are you hiring interns?
| gunnr15 wrote:
| Technical interviews are only good at indicating whether or not
| someone is good at Technical interviews.
|
| The best way to figure out if someone is a culture fit? Ship code
| with them.
|
| If you can start off on a contract, do that. It is the best way
| to even out the power dynamic of the interview process.
|
| If you are not in a place where you can do that, check out what
| we are building at www.commit.dev to Re-build career transitions
| around the engineer.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| When I'm the interviewer, I don't do whiteboard/CoderPad
| exercises. As a candidate, they make me nervous.
|
| But, I do think they can be a decent part of a larger interview
| process.
|
| I've had some very reasonable whiteboard exercises where the
| interviewers were very clear that the problem was tricky and I
| wasn't necessarily expected to solve it - the emphasis was on
| conversation and hearing my thought process. I actually enjoyed
| some of them. If you can start off on a
| contract, do that. It is the best way to even out the
| power dynamic of the interview process.
|
| I agree in principle but in practicality, there are some
| difficulties such as needing healthcare coverage for my family.
| (Yes, the US system of employer-subsidized healthcare is
| utterly broken, but that's what I'm dealing with)
|
| Counterpoint: why not just just take a fulltime job and quit /
| move on if it's not a good fit?
| pm_me_your_quan wrote:
| >Counterpoint: why not just just take a fulltime job and quit
| / move on if it's not a good fit?
|
| The company doesn't want to be on the hook for unemployment
| or wrongful termination I think.
|
| > I agree in principle but in practicality, there are some
| difficulties such as needing healthcare coverage for my
| family. (Yes, the US system of employer-subsidized healthcare
| is utterly broken, but that's what I'm dealing with)
|
| I actually did this for my last job, because I'm terrible at
| interviewing (I both hate practicing leetcode, and have
| fairly bad anxiety). I had the same concern as you, and the
| way I got around it was to ask for them to pay me on contract
| an amount equivalent to what my salary would be AND benefits.
| I guess if you're employed then that doesn't work so well,
| but as an unemployed (at the time) person it worked out
| great.
| [deleted]
| pelasaco wrote:
| I went to a similar process to work in the company that I always
| dreamed to work on:
|
| - First interview, HR: 30 minutes
|
| - Second round, Code test: 3 hours, I passed
|
| - Third round: Interview with my possible manager (30 minutes), I
| passed. Then I was informed there were 2 more rounds (a system
| engineer interview, and a diversity manager). 1 hour each, fine.
| We can do it.
|
| Then out of the blue, I get an email from another HR employee
| saying that they are testing a new hiring process and now I would
| have to go through a 2 x 90 minutes pair programming session,
| with two different engineers, then talk with one engineering
| manager, then the diversity one, then if everything went well, I
| would get a job offer (until this point, we didn't even talk
| about money).. So, basically I'm just giving up on that. It makes
| me actually sad, because I invested so much energy in the code
| test, understanding the product, reading actually part of the
| source code of the product, to come to the meeting with my
| possible manager as well prepared as possible.. In the end I had
| the impression that the hiring manager wanted me in the team, but
| the second HR person didn't really care about it. I was just one
| more task in his TODO list.
|
| EDIT:
|
| And actually my question to HN would be: Should I inform the
| hiring manager why I'm giving up on that?
| Nursie wrote:
| Depends how generous you're feeling, but it might give the
| hiring manager ammunition to try to get the process changed.
|
| IMHO That third round should have been rolled into one longer
| session (no more than 2 hours). Anything any more convoluted
| than that is just eating the candidate's time because your
| processes are bad. Then adding more hurdles... nah.
|
| Companies so often miss that you can have a probation period,
| try someone out in the role, which will give you a much better
| idea of how it's going to work than selecting for people who
| will tolerate your byzantine hiring oddyssey
| soco wrote:
| Very much inform him, because probably he's the one receiving
| the drawbacks of an arcane hiring system out of HR's dream...
| even 5 interviews sounded a lot to me but maybe that's just my
| experience.
|
| On a different topic: what's the diversity manager interview
| for? And what's the point of a diversity manager?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Our company just got one and I am honestly unsure what is its
| purpose beyond being able to say 'see, we are doing stuff'. I
| am not sure I am even being cynical here. I am relatively
| certain it is basically a business need now to appear like
| you are doing something.
|
| That said, I have zero idea why diversity manager would
| interview anyone.. it is not like I am going to change my
| demographic based on it..
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| Promoting diversity is more than just counting the blue
| people and then the orange people and making sure the
| numbers are the same. It also involves making an
| environment that's inviting to different groups of people.
| They want you play a role in that even - and perhaps
| especially - if you're part of the majority group.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I suppose you could reasonably argue that there is value
| to that approach, if you are optimizing for it. That
| said, anecdote incoming, I have this one buddy, who is
| not very welcoming, but is very good at what he does.
| Frankly, I think the company would be in a much worse
| position were it not for him. As a manager.. what do I
| want more of?
| soco wrote:
| I guess they would look whether he's a jerk to everyone
| equally hehe. Of course there are limits of this, and at
| some point no amount of genius can compensate lack of
| teamwork.
| version_five wrote:
| And what if people want to work at a job focused on their
| technical field, and not on diversity? If the mission of
| the company is some diversity thing than it's their
| prerogative to test whatever views they want to test
| about it. But for anyone who actually wants to spend
| their time doing developer work, it's a big red flag that
| you might not want to work there.
| mcv wrote:
| All companies do more than just a single thing. People
| work there, which makes a healthy work environment
| automatically important to any non-psychopathic company.
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| > And what if people want to work at a job focused on
| their technical field, and not on diversity?
|
| Then companies that care about diversity would be right
| not to hire them.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I went through a process in my actual job and it was
| similar. 30 minutes video, some questions and you get a
| certificate to hang on your wall, if you do well. If you
| are emphatic and know what is wrong and right, you will
| pass. The certificate ironically didn't handle UTF-8 well
| and names other than Bob, James, Suzy were displayed
| wrongly , which isn't that great for belonging, diversity
| and etc.. I think we are all constant learning on that
| areas.. even the experts.
| baremetal wrote:
| thats a rather large oversight. makes me doubt their
| expertise.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I looked again in their initial email. I was expecting more a
| presentation about their view on that, but reading again,
| it's written something like: "in that part, there is no right
| answer, we are going to talk about what diversity, inclusion,
| and belonging mean to you.".. so sounds like people are
| evaluated on that. Probably there is no right answer, but
| there are definitely wrong answer. Now I'm curious myself.
| seneca wrote:
| > we are going to talk about what diversity, inclusion, and
| belonging mean to you.
|
| Genuinely curious. Do others see this as a red flag? That
| would be an immediate deal breaker to me, as it suggests
| the company is dominated by political obsessions. I know
| this sort of this has become more common, but having it in
| the hiring pipeline seems quite extreme.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Ya this is a huge red flag. And concerning if this
| becomes a norm. Interviewees and employees need to push
| back on this nonsense
| pelasaco wrote:
| but I imagine that it is standard in any FAANG? The
| company that I work now, got the IPO and a diversity
| department, with mandatory course with test, at the same
| time.
| version_five wrote:
| Yes, I would never consider a place that had this.
| Assessing the overall level of politics vs work in a
| company is important to me (am I going to have to
| introduce my "pronouns", nod and agree to all the right
| kind of slacktivist stuff the company posts on social
| media, participate in ongoing political activities as
| part of work, while being unable to have any unorthodox
| opinions of my own). There are a lot more subtle signs to
| look out for, but the presence of an actual diversity
| officer that tests your orthodoxy is about the same in my
| mind as the USSR having political officers present in the
| workplace to make sure people were good Soviets.
| mcv wrote:
| Maybe they just don't want to hire overtly racist or
| sexist people who might threaten their diversity? It
| doesn't have to be political obsessions. How many stories
| have we had here about companies that had a toxic culture
| with overt sexism? If you want to prevent that sort of
| thing, having someone who's job it is to prevent that
| sort of thing might help.
|
| I honestly don't know what the reason for it is, but I do
| tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I suppose
| it could also just be meaningless theatre. If people have
| real-life experience with diversity managers, I'd love to
| hear them.
| version_five wrote:
| > Maybe they just don't want to hire overtly racist or
| sexist people who might threaten their diversity?
|
| No. And even if this were true, having some kind of
| diversity specialist quiz people to see if they are
| racist (for what definition?) would still be ridiculous.
|
| Companies have policies for employees about workplace
| behavior like racism, harassment, safety, whatever. If
| they are concerned about workplace discrimination, there
| are normal corporate ways of dealing with this. Having a
| diversity interview is something entirely different, and
| seems much closer to being asked if you're a communist or
| a christian. It's patently absurd, and a sign of a
| company that has lost all focus on actually building
| something.
| ngc248 wrote:
| Dang, this has some "Political Officer" vibes from Soviet
| times. So they are gonna do thought filtering too now
| version_five wrote:
| Haha, yes I commented exactly the same thing above before
| reading your comment. This is screwed up, and I hope it's
| an isolated thing that causes them to lose good people.
| RNCTX wrote:
| > And actually my question to HN would be: Should I inform the
| hiring manager why I'm giving up on that?
|
| Ignore their calls and emails for 90 days, then after 6 months
| email them and CC everyone you got an email from during the
| first three rounds telling them that you have decided solely
| based on their hiring process that tech corporations are bad
| and you are starting a wood chipping business instead.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That would be funny, and it would certainly feel good, but if
| you want to actually convey feedbback it's counterproductive
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> Then out of the blue, I get an email from another HR
| employee saying that they are testing a new hiring process and
| now I would have to go through a 2 x 90 minutes pair
| programming session, with two different engineers, then talk
| with one engineering manager, then the diversity one, then if
| everything went well, I would get a job offer ..._
|
| Wouldn't it make sense to talk with the diversity officer at
| the very first? I am assuming if you don't tick some diversity
| checkbox, you'll have much lower change to get hired
| regardless.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Correct if I'm wrong, but I think it's really hard to
| evaluate it through a zoom talk, unless a candidate comes to
| a job interview wanting to make a clear point about his/her
| views. I was expecting more of a presentation about the
| company's views in that matter.
|
| Thinking on the hiring process as a CI pipeline, I think
| filtering out people that cannot code is easier and less time
| consuming, than going through some 1:1 call with their
| diversity manager.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Then I was informed there were 2 more rounds (a system
| engineer interview, and a diversity manager)
|
| A Diversity Manager? Is that a joke?
|
| What would that interview even look like?
|
| To me, the fact that this company is paying staff to conduct
| these non-technical interviews for technical staff would be a
| red flag that they clearly can't allocate resources adequately.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Tell them you were tested once and don't care to be tested
| again. They can make a decision based on the information they
| already have.
| saint_angels wrote:
| please inform the hiring manager, for the sake of others
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yes, you should inform them.
| caturopath wrote:
| One big company I interviewed with really annoyed me in the
| interview process, despite not being quite as many stages as
| this, and I told them I was done when they asked for me to do
| the next stage.
|
| Years later, some recruiter I talked to said, "I know we passed
| on you a few years ago". I guess it's good that they were
| taking responsibility?
| pelasaco wrote:
| Sometimes I have the impression that even if the job position
| is already closed, they keep doing the hiring process,
| because the HR team is there, being paid, so why not just
| keep people busy, right? What do you think?
| caturopath wrote:
| I would have a much more charitable interpretation. At its
| heart, most organizations are always on the lookout for
| great people. It's a really bad sign if you don't have room
| to hire someone great if you find them.
| 101keyboard wrote:
| Well, they assume you are a lemon. This is why the job market
| has basically collapsed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
|
| "until this point, we didn't even talk about money"
|
| Big mistake. For years I was desperate for a job (STEM PhD).
| Now it would be my first question to ask. And I ask this on the
| phone before I would even bother to go for an interview. But
| again, now I don't need your shitty job. Chances are, you need
| me more than I need you.
|
| I remember when I talk to a company once on the phone. Besides
| that I did not really like the salary, I realized I would not
| be able to do the job since it was basically two jobs and their
| chances of success were much slimmer then they were assuming.
| Didn't bother to go on. But the HR guy said, please apply,
| worst thing that can happen is that we don't hire you. WRONG.
| Worst thing that can happen is that I get treated disrespectful
| in an interview and that I waste time. Most companies value
| your time with zero.
|
| And if you applied already you ask in the first phone interview
| why they think you are suited for the job. You would be
| surprised how many people have you come in without ever having
| looked at your resume and then tell you that you are not a good
| fit based on your resume in the interview. It is basically the
| first time they look at it.
| adam12 wrote:
| > WRONG. Worst thing that can happen is that I get treated
| disrespectful in an interview and that I waste time. Most
| companies value your time with zero.
|
| which can hurt your self-esteem / motivation for the next
| interview.
| mcv wrote:
| Worst thing that can happen is that you get hired by a
| terrible company with a toxic work environment that doesn't
| respect its employees. That's wasting way more time and
| energy than any wasted interview.
|
| So if you see red flags and have other options that look
| more promising, walk away.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| I find the market for lemons analogy to be unconvincing.
|
| It makes sense if employers sold employees to other
| employers, but it falls apart in the standard labor market.
|
| If I am currently employed and job searching, it is because
| my current employer is a lemon, _not me_. The prospective
| employer should be focused on determining my value to them.
| Everyone has some value (possibly negative, in extreme cases)
| and if we both agree then we should both be happy.
|
| In this context, an employer could be a lemon for a million
| different reasons.
| 101keyboard wrote:
| No, it does not. It is information asymmetry.
|
| A good employer assumes that only bad employees are left in
| the market. As do good employees think that only bad
| employers are looking via job ads.
|
| Hence more and more god jobs are filled via referrals from
| fiends etc. I basically think the same about job ads. Why
| bother applying?
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Yes, there is information asymmetry. For sure.
|
| But the market for lemons does not describe the labor
| market. Good companies grow and need more employees. Good
| employees do not get market-competitive salary
| adjustments and thus look for different jobs. It's the
| complete opposite!
|
| There are exceptions, without a doubt.
|
| EDIT - and let me also say that if the market for lemons
| accurately describes the labor market, why is it that
| tech is the only industry with such broken hiring
| practices?
| 101keyboard wrote:
| " Good companies grow and need more employees."
|
| Yes. But it is incredibly hard to get into a good
| company.
|
| "and let me also say that if the market for lemons
| accurately describes the labor market, why is it that
| tech is the only industry with such broken hiring
| practices? "
|
| In other "tech" industries it is the same. How do you get
| into a blue chip company?
|
| 1. contacts of your parents
|
| 2. contacts of your professor at University
|
| 3. you work for a start-up that they buy
|
| In my experience this is true for 9/10 people I know.
|
| I did my PhD in NYC and I once was asked in an interview
| for a med-sized medical company what the street name in
| Brooklyn is with all the hipsters. Think deeply what
| could be the reason for such a question.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| I get what you're saying, I just don't agree. Fair
| enough.
|
| Did you answer "all of them"?
| 101keyboard wrote:
| I don't understand the question. But regarding the street
| in Brooklyn (this interview as in Europe), obviously they
| did not believe I really got a PhD there and lived there.
| Totally insane. Today I would walk out in such a
| situation. At that time I answered like a diligent
| student.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "until this point, we didn't even talk about money" I wont even
| go in for an interview unless I know the salary. It's a waste
| of time otherwise as you and the business may be miles apart.
| Almost all my jobs are through recruiters. My process is
| recruiter sends me an email (I get ~15 a week currently) and if
| the job looks interesting, I respond, say it looks interesting
| and ask the salary. If they don't give it on the reply I am
| done. If the salary is too low, I thank them and wish them
| well. I work for money and nothing else and don't want to waste
| anyone's time including my own. If this is your first job,
| still entry level or out of work, I completely understand not
| asking as you are just looking for a gig.
| 3maj wrote:
| 100% Agree. I'll take the initial phone screening, learn more
| about the role and the team, but the last question I always
| have is something along the lines of: _" I know you're
| extremely so in an attempt to not waste anyones time whats
| the salary range? This way we're all on the same page before
| moving forwards"_
|
| I have never gotten a recruiter that doesn't tell me the
| salary when I do this.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| TBH, "diversity manager" was already a red flag, confirmed
| later on. IMHO it tells me that HR, with the backing of senior
| management has gone off track.
| alex-ant wrote:
| I see it as "we'll be judging you basing on your skin color
| rather than your knowledge and skills".
| ectopod wrote:
| Maybe. Or maybe the interview is to weed out candidates who
| exhibit wrongthink. Neither option is appealing.
| alex-ant wrote:
| diversity manager - wtf??
| myth_drannon wrote:
| That's actually very typical on site interview for a non-faang
| North American company right now. You spend a whole day with
| them and then get a no... And actually they didnt hire anyone
| for months (based on linkedin insights)
| Aperocky wrote:
| "Pay is bad but we'll make you jump extra hoops to get it"
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I've seen this several times now: "everyone loved you and we
| just decided that now is not the right time to hire for this
| role" then for the next three months the same exact job is a
| promoted listing floating on my LinkedIn home page right
| margin.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Yeah and also a couple of startups continue posting for
| months in the Who Hiring thread but checking their profile
| on LinkedIn they are not growing. I understand that there
| is a need to show outward success but just post the
| positions on your careers page and simply don't interview
| people. Or they simply looking for core Rails contributor
| who is ok with 50,000USD/year
| Clubber wrote:
| I wonder if this isn't to document the requirement for H-1B
| visas that they tried to find a local candidate but were
| unable.
|
| https://nearshoreamericas.com/us-makes-h1b-visa-harder-
| obtai...
|
| Wouldn't it be hysterical if the hiring process all these
| companies are cargo-culting was actually designed to not hire
| people so H-1Bs could be used.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Should I inform the hiring manager why I'm giving up on that?
|
| I would. I've gone to battle with HR over candidates that I've
| felt strongly about, and I've always won. In my experience,
| you're dead-on about the TODO list.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| ...and then they are surprised with "The Great Resignation" and
| that people don't want to get hired anymore and that they gave
| up.
|
| I remember a time when I would go to an interview and be asked
| the following questions: Interviewer: Do you
| want to work? Me: Yes, of course! Interviewer:
| You like learning new things? Me: Always.
| Interviewer: Is it OK to start on Monday? Me: Sure thing
| (!), why not? Interviewer: Welcome to FooExample.
| Me: Thank you very much; see you on Monday.
|
| Honestly that was it, nothing complicated, nothing fancy.
|
| If a candidate didn't seem competent or effective for a
| position, by the end of the week warning signs were given to
| them and if they weren't honest with their management, by the
| end of the month they were let go; as simple as that.
|
| The total number of employees used for the interview cost more
| than hiring one candidate for one month, don't they understand
| nor see that?
| randomdata wrote:
| I think the shortest interview I ever had was:
| Interviewer: Hi there. Wait. I was just called for an
| emergency. I am really sorry, but I have to go. Me:
| Oh dear. I hope everything is okay. Interviewer:
| Thanks. Again, sorry. Talk soon. Bye.
|
| The next day by e-mail: Interviewer: When
| can you start?
|
| That lead to a great working relationship. The current age is
| indeed ridiculous.
| mcv wrote:
| Is this only the case in the US, or also in other
| countries? I live in Netherland, and haven't seen anything
| like those neverending interviews. Then again, I work as
| freelancer[0], and most projects just take one or two
| interviews, and they're mostly about what the project is
| about and what kind of developer I am.
|
| [0] Except for the past year, when I took a pay cut to
| continue working on a project I loved as an employee after
| starting that project as freelancer. That didn't really
| require an interview, just stiff negotiations (which got me
| nowhere, hence the pay cut).
| pelasaco wrote:
| Now that you said it, I remember my first job interview as
| well. 1999, Linux administrator in an ISP.
|
| - Can you setup a ppp connection on Linux via terminal (I did
| it, using minicom)
|
| - My future manager and partner (I ended up becoming a
| partner in the ISP, and technical director, some years
| later), gave me a sendmail book, and asked me to restrict the
| relay on sendmail using the book. I did it.
|
| I was hired, and spent the next years of my life, setting
| routes on cisco routers and managing some linux and freebsds
| in a small ISP. It was a great school.
| bbarnett wrote:
| So here's the difference now. Back in the 90s, absolutely
| no one went into computing for the money, or the job
| prospects.
|
| Only people deeply interested in computing did. They
| gravitated toward it, it was fun, they had an aptitude for
| it.
|
| These days, people enter the field for cash, or because
| they are mildly interested and it is the best option, out
| of other mildly interesting things.
|
| There is a vast difference between these two classes of
| candidates. Note, I am not saying that there are no younger
| employees that fit #1, but merely that they are far
| outnumbered by those barely able to perform the job.
|
| Everyone was self taught in the day, when I started there
| was no internet to help me, and places like stack overflow
| came much, much later.
|
| If something didn't work, I had to figure it out, no one
| could help. I had to look at sources, read entire books,
| learn how to debug, learn debugging tools, etc, etc.
|
| Meanwhile, most modern candidates want cash cash cash, and
| if you ask them use your tool chain, they're pissed.
|
| On top of that, I have seen endless candidates come out of
| College with zero ability for analytical thinking. It's
| only rote work for them.
|
| Without frameworks, sql abstraction, and 100 other
| crutches, a rote worker cannot do this work.
|
| This, I think, is why modern interview processes are so
| absurd. There's good money now, so naturally everyone wants
| the job.
|
| This leads to the follow up, which is that rote workers are
| now looking to hire other rote workers. And thus, a rote
| workers do, they ape other company's processes.
|
| They try to hire like google, even thought they are tiny in
| size, or, even though the type of work is different.
| Clubber wrote:
| The irony to me is it seems the current interview process
| stands to filter out the people who are genuinely
| interested in tech and learning and caters to people who
| google "tech interview questions for X."
|
| FWIW I would never sit for any interview that was multi-
| tier over several hours. I'm fortunate in that I have a
| pretty good network and everyone in my network would hire
| me if they had a spot open. I haven't cold-interviewed
| since probably 2012 and that was on a whim for iPhone dev
| work (I had released 3 fairly successful but not life
| changing apps already). I ended the process when they
| wanted me to write code over Thanksgiving because I
| hadn't already written enough code to their satisfaction.
| That company is now out of business.
| crate_barre wrote:
| I do remember a take home project given to me over
| Christmas, with a serious expectation that I not take
| more than 48 hours.
|
| Oh, and my favorite one, a 'pop-quiz' take home test.
| They wouldn't tell me what time they were sending it, and
| just suddenly sent it. I mean they told me what day, but
| they wouldn't say what time. So I had to sit around and
| just wait for hours and 'bam' there was the email with a
| time limit given.
|
| Can't make this shit up. There's truly something uniquely
| douchey about tech hiring that I can't exactly put my
| finger on. It's either some tacky attempt by startups, or
| in a similar vein, a tacky attempt by larger orgs.
| Douchey is the only word that comes to mind.
| dtoms wrote:
| i have a good network too and they all now work at FAANG
| like companies, and want to hire me, to do domain
| specific work. But have no power to do direct hiring. So
| it varies really.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Exactly. In 1999, I just wanted to experiment. My first
| salary was like 500 bucks. The IT/software development
| world was boring. I remember telling my father, territory
| manager at IBM, that I would never be like him and he
| telling me that I should invest my time on Windows NT and
| Visual Basic because Linux would never get anywhere.. we
| were both totally wrong.
| cbsks wrote:
| Interestingly, in 1999 my father worked at Microsoft on
| the Windows NT kernel but at home he had a Linux server
| and taught me to install Debian from floppy disks.
| danjac wrote:
| A lot of companies lack confidence and experience, so they
| cargo-cult processes from companies they view as
| big+successful. In the tech world, it's FAANG or MAANG or
| whatever the acronym is these days.
|
| It's a bit like shops adopting Kubernetes for their tiny
| startup with 100 max concurrent users when Heroku would do
| the job just fine.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Companies are being picky that shouldn't be picky.
| pelasaco wrote:
| or some years ago, when people were forcing hadoop to biggy
| data easily queryable with traditional SQL.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Or people forcing SQL when CGI endpoints executing bat
| files querying Excel documents on a network drive is
| fine.
|
| Somehow cheap hacks is frowned apon but if you use
| stupidly complex systems then, ye, you have to be
| competent and doing best practice or something. Just
| spread the mess out over multiple layers of abstraction
| and no-one will realize it is bad ...
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Or people forcing SQL when CGI endpoints executing bat
| files querying Excel documents on a network drive is
| fine.
|
| I'm not sure if you are trolling or not, but I can
| imagine that some power plants around the world do it :)
| rightbyte wrote:
| Heh ye well I am exaggerating alot.
|
| My point is KISS in the amount of knowledge required to
| do something, not just the implementation complexity.
|
| E.g. on my last job we were really machine engineers
| doing some c programming. Good luck establishing fancy
| pancy workflows. Instead of trying to use relative paths
| and setup env variables for dependencies we just all had
| the same version controlled folder on c:\ with everything
| in it. And it is fine.
| mcv wrote:
| Querying Excel files doesn't sound easy, though. SQL is
| not that hard. Though easiest would probably be a Ruby-
| on-Rails-like framework that just sets up your basic
| CRUD-stuff for you.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure. It was meant as an exaggerated joke, but I mean the
| point (with a bad example). You would probably need to
| write some VBA to query the excel doc, which is not
| easier then using SQL.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I think this is kind of related to that
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28031782
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Do you mind if I ask so that I understand - would the total
| number of rounds have added up to seven or nine (i.e. had you
| finished round four and five before you heard from the second
| HR person, or only the third)?
|
| Is it your understanding that the new hiring process includes
| all of these steps, or that you ended up in the middle of both
| the old and the new one and that there was some overlap?
|
| Anyway, judging from your story it seems to me like they've
| been very disrespectful of your time. I always ask up front
| what exactly the process will be, and I would've taken it as a
| bad sign if in the middle of it they had come and told me "oh
| by the way we're experimenting with how we're doing this, we'll
| need you to do a few more interviews than we told you earlier".
| I don't have unlimited time on my hands.
| pelasaco wrote:
| So, without disclosing which FAANG company was, that is an
| extract from the e-mail that I received, after I've got a
| green from the hiring manager and after code review:
|
| "Hi $MYNAME,
|
| I know that you have already sent over your interview
| availability but we are in the process of moving to a new
| interview process so wondered whether you..."
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Thanks, I think I understand. You had completed three
| steps, thought there were two left, but out of the blue you
| were told that there were actually four more, because
| that's the new process they're moving to.
|
| I've never interviewed for a FAANG, but I understand that
| they can and need to be very picky, and can typically get
| away with things like seven round hiring processes. I still
| think it's disrespectful of your time not to let you know
| the whole process up front, and then sticking to it.
|
| Best of luck to you!
| lordnacho wrote:
| Email the hiring manager, tell him you have a number of other
| firms who are ready to go, but you thought there was some good
| chemistry between you, and that he needs to act immediately if
| he wants you. When he throws an offer at you ask for 20% extra
| and see if you meet him at 10%.
|
| If he can't swing HR or the salary, you don't want to work for
| a wet noodle and you've now dodged a bullet.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > you've now dodged a bullet.
|
| This is a key point that too many of us lose sight of.
| Getting into a bad relationship is never a positive. When
| you're (semi) stuck in a bad relationship you'll struggle to
| find the time and energy to pursue a better relationship.
| pelasaco wrote:
| great answer! I had to check your profile to be sure that you
| weren't my dad (that's the kind of answer he would give me)
| :)
| lordnacho wrote:
| Haha thanks.
|
| But seriously, when you get an offer, test it. If it falls
| apart as soon as you try to negotiate anything, run away.
| This is even if it's your dream job that you think you'll
| never need to change and pays you way more than you wanted,
| because if you do like I say and you lose it, you don't
| lose anything.
|
| Porcelain jobs are the worst.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I'd have pulled out as soon as I understood they had a
| diversity manager
| codyb wrote:
| That's absolutely ridiculous. I would absolutely inform the
| hiring manager. It's important to be polite/sympathetic since
| it's probable the folk on the other hand don't know exactly
| what happened and how you got ground between the process
| transition gears by being there at exactly the wrong time.
|
| It's also a good sign the company might be in disarray and
| every day might feel like that there.
|
| Anyways, sorry, from the profession as a whole. A lot of us are
| doing the best we can (even these individuals might be), but
| hiring generally sucks at the lower levels and gets easier as
| you become more senior (that's been my experience).
|
| Good luck!
| ptr wrote:
| Yes please inform the hiring manager.
| leet_thow wrote:
| A lot of companies are dysfunctional and their hiring managers
| are incompetent. Never take it personally or let it affect your
| self esteem. I witnessed this first hand in 2018 when doing
| rounds via Triplebyte. A good proportion of those companies who
| rejected me either went under or are about to go under. Luckily
| for me I landed at a publicly traded employer and my former
| employer had their liquidity event. I don't plan to interview
| ever again if not absolutely necessary.
| roland35 wrote:
| I have worked on a team trying to improve our hiring process
| before and there are lots of things we tried to balance such as
| the candidate's time, our interviewing engineers time, and trying
| to be thorough and fair. We obviously want to hire capable
| engineers but need to be mindful that senior engineers
| understandably don't want to have to jump through lots of hoops!
|
| We found that doing a simple coding exercise (not leetcode)
| together is one of the best stages we have. It gives us a great
| insight into how they approach a problem, if they think about
| things before jumping in, and how they communicate. All those
| things are missed for a take home assignment.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16127697
|
| Decided to repost this since the URL changed and we cannot edit
| old submissions.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I have a saying:
|
| "How you hire, is who you hire."
|
| It starts with the opportunity's description and it goes forward
| from there. The emails, the calls, etc. If you pick up a "smell",
| keep it in mind.
|
| What annoys me most is the presumption most outfits seems to have
| that they hold _all_ the cards. That they are The Only option. If
| they don 't yet understand - i.e., it's 2022 - it's a
| relationship that a red flag. Those are difficult to ignore.
|
| In a proper adult relationship the karma, the comms, the love,
| etc. must flow both ways. Or else, sooner rather than later, one
| side will be looking for a break up / divorce.
|
| Other than that, be mindful of your CV. If your "profile" has a
| look & feel like most others then you will naturally struggle to
| stand out (read: get interviews). It takes effort, but the wisest
| thing you can do is try to nudge the balance of power back in
| your favor.
| nbzso wrote:
| To stay sane in the interview process you must apply "mental"
| automation.
|
| The goal is to reduce emotional pressure. Treat interview process
| with balanced emotion. Write down responses that you will repeat.
| Make a bullet list.
|
| Don't expect response or some communication etiquette. Make your
| rules and stick with them.
|
| If you have a company in mind, and HR process is not adequate,
| don't work with this company. Companies who are treating the
| interview process with HR hostility are not ones that you want to
| work for.
|
| If you don't have network in place and your work is under NDA,
| create a project which will represent your skillset.
|
| Put your current skils infront, your experience and
| accomplishments behind.
|
| Companies search for the best "deal", not the best possible
| candidate.
|
| HR is broken by design. It will not be in your interest. It
| always will be driven by employer requirements and HR mallice.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| "mental" automation [...] Write down
| responses that you will repeat.
|
| Just completed a long job search and this is spot-on. I wish I
| could go back in time and show this to myself.
|
| I interviewed with quite a few companies. There is a pool of
| about 20 stock questions that interviewers ask. Each
| interviewer will ask maybe 5-10 stock questions and a few you
| haven't heard before, whose responses typically be cobbled
| together from other things you've mentally rehearsed.
|
| Give yourself some sample interviews. Write down your responses
| or rehearse them verbally, whatever works for you.
|
| By the end of my job search, one of my challenges was actually
| _forcing_ myself to take a pause for "thought" before
| answering one of these stock questions. So that the interviewer
| hopefully wouldn't know I was repeating something I'd
| "rehearsed."
|
| It's important to note that while I was "rehearsing" things, my
| answers were always 100% genuine. They were my feelings and
| experiences.
|
| In other words, I wasn't rehearsing the act of simply telling
| the interviewers what they wanted to hear. I was rehearsing the
| act of digging through 20+ years of engineering experience to
| think of good examples and stories with which to answer common
| questions like "tell me about a project where you overcame
| adversity."
| tsywke44 wrote:
| Because the only real way you can say if someone is fit for a
| job, is to work alongside them for about 1-6 months.
|
| The interview system is just there to avoid as many mishires and
| time wasting as possible
| lbriner wrote:
| Exactly. So many people complain about how bad interviews are
| but if you have ever had to risk $10Ks of money on a hire,
| especially since you might stop looking after employing
| someone, you employ the best things you can like whiteboard
| interviews and tech tests.
|
| Like most people, I am not looking for perfection, I am looking
| for a basic level of competence (I've had people who took 10
| minutes to split a string in C# by a delimiter) and also to see
| how they think, how they work under pressure, whether they ask
| good questions instead of assuming things.
|
| At the moment, these are mostly the best ways to tell if
| someone is a good fit.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, asking simple questions like this takes about 15 minutes
| and will weed out 98% of bad hires. I wish more companies
| would do this. Years ago when I would interview people for
| Delphi positions, the first question would be:
|
| "What's the difference between a procedure and a function?"
|
| Instantly weeded out 98%. Really what you are looking for is
| work ethic. If I pay you will you work hard. That can't
| really be determined in an interview.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > I've had people who took 10 minutes to split a string in C#
| by a delimiter
|
| Is that bad?
| francisofascii wrote:
| A good question would be, "Can I use the Split method or do
| you mean, implement the Split method?"
| tester34 wrote:
| well, it's pretty common operation, so kinda weird.
| foxfluff wrote:
| It might just tell you that the person being tested
| hasn't spent a lot of time with C# recently. Which says
| little about their competency in general.
| tpxl wrote:
| Looking at String documentation takes a few seconds. If
| the developer can't look at the documentation in the
| interview, the developer is not the problem.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| This comment applies to more of my real-life interviews
| than any other.
|
| So many ask, "How do you do X?" and the correct answer in
| a real job situation is always either "Look up the
| documentation for X, and do it that way.", or "There is a
| 20-year-old open-source library for doing X, so I'd use
| that."
|
| I am not a walking catalog of esoteric programming
| knowledge. When working, I have 24-hour access to all
| official documentation, as well as all blogs, projects,
| and message boards on the Internet. The first step in
| solving any problem is checking to see if someone else
| already solved it.
|
| The same goes for the brain teasers. If you can look up
| the problem on the Internet, I probably saw it first.
| Your original, non-plagiarized riddles, please, or don't
| bring it in to the interview.
| tester34 wrote:
| I agree, but where's boundary?
| michaelt wrote:
| Are there any languages other than C and assembler that
| don't have a function to split a string on delimiters as
| part of their standard library?
| jpindar wrote:
| I don't know c# at all, but it just took me 47 seconds.
|
| I did know that a language like that must have a string
| function for it, the first result of my search was a
| docs.microsoft.com page with the syntax and examples.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yea, we don't know the circumstances of the question.
| Were they asked to implement string splitting from
| scratch to demonstrate their ability to do so, or was it
| just something they needed to use as a part of something
| else? Did they have access to docs or were they supposed
| to do it without any help? Something tells me the problem
| wasn't phrased as "google how to split a string in c#" so
| I assume there must've been more to it.
|
| I don't know C# very well either. Taking 10 minutes to
| research the possible solutions and their pitfalls
| doesn't sound like a bad thing. What's the idiomatic way,
| and is there more than one commonly used way? What are
| the performance characteristics of each way? Are there
| any pitfalls and caveats (as e.g. strtok in C has when it
| comes threads or to strings that may have empty fields)?
| Do these ways modify the original string or do they
| produce copies? Is the delimiter a single character, a
| string, a regex?
|
| This should indeed be simple and quick if all you need is
| to speedrun to _an_ answer through Google. If you need to
| be thorough and understand the ins and outs of what you
| 're doing, 10 minutes doesn't look like much at all for
| someone who doesn't have extensive & recent experience
| with the given language.
| ingvul wrote:
| Everybody knows that the amount of time one should spend
| "splitting a string in C# by a delimiter" is 2 minutes 16
| seconds. More than that and it's a "red flag".
|
| I'm tired of all this BS really.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I think most people are well aware the risk a company take for
| a hire, and therefore is a weird min-max process of increasing
| the minimum qualification of the applicant and then select on
| maximum.
|
| People are just frustrated _how_ that is implemented, how
| asymmetric the time-effort is, and how some of these practices
| are unjustified(incompetent). And because it 's futile to
| actually complain about this to the company (or often, even
| while in the company) most people can only vent about it.
|
| Sure, if a FAANG level company start the process by asking
| applicant to do a >hour test I think people would understand.
| But a Startup, mid-sized company who offer below-medium
| compensation ask you to solve a business/toy problem that takes
| more than a half-day in the first/early stage of hiring process
| there's actually some self-reflection to be done by the company
| too.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I think most people are well aware the risk a company take
| for a hire
|
| There is no way the risk is as high as hiring managers
| estimates, so no, I don't think people are aware of them.
| They seem aware of some phantom risks communicated by the
| people hired to reduce them.
| Jensson wrote:
| How much time and effort do you put in before you buy a new
| home? Similar amounts of money involved, so similar amounts
| of considerations before choosing. Doesn't matter that it
| is a company spending the money, if the company spends a
| lot of money on the new hire then it is reasonable to spend
| a lot of money vetting the hire.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's either a very cheap home or a very expensive hire.
|
| Yes, they _can_ reach similar levels. Large companies are
| a bit more relaxed about spending that amount of money
| than individuals, but yeah, on those cases where there is
| a large hiring bonus (or rather don 't, increase the
| salary instead) or the person can make an exorbitant
| amount of damage on the first month, it's worth investing
| a lot more on the hiring process.
| Clubber wrote:
| That analogy would be apt if there was some sort of "at-
| will" home return law. You can fire people who don't work
| out with very little friction up to 90 days I believe.
| You can contract them first for years really. I think
| companies spend way to much money on the interview
| process to not spend money on a bad hire. Take the
| example above, hours and hours of dev time over countless
| candidates. That's just asinine.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >There is no way the risk is as high as hiring managers
| estimates
|
| For _programmers_? A programmer who is irresponsible and
| isn 't tightly bound by process or peer review can
| absolutely wreck your small/medium sized business.
|
| Have you seen the sheer amount of companies that don't have
| backups or aren't sure if their backups work? Additionally,
| consider how the community considers killing production a
| "tee hee we all make mistakes" thing
| DeathArrow wrote:
| In my country we have a website where many employers are
| anonymously rated by employees. There are also details about
| salary by position, how interviews are done and a forum for
| questions.
|
| It is a life saver since seeing company X has poor ratings and
| reading trough reviews and seeing why employees dislike working
| for it will allow you to not wasted time.
|
| Also, you can see what are top rated companies and why people
| like to work for them so you can try to find open positions at
| those companies.
|
| This might also have the effect that "bad" companies will find
| new employees harder, so they might have an incentive to improve
| their situation.
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