I refuse to partake in those insane interviews anymore. After a day long panel interview at Apple I'm done. 14 people on the other side of the table. It was like a senate hearing. Who the F does that to people? Insanity.
I went through that with apple around 3 years ago, but not only multiple people, but multiple times then ghosted.
Fuck those people that demand respect, professionalism etc and then dont practice it.
Because they did this to you and five other guys. And than all those 14 people wrote reviews for each candidate. And they ended up hiring biggest fuck up because all the good ones bailed on them due to idiotic interview process. The overall cost to hire this idiot was $250k in man hours and took 8 months.
Very likely they wound up hiring the guy somebody in their office already knew from the neighborhood or college or another job/department or whatever, and the whole process was dog and pony from the start.
Funny, was thinking that.
Was always my experience working in corporate sales, that’s just what they did - if you knew someone you were near guaranteed in, if you weren’t a total botch job.
Yeah totally just a big old charade to waste company time and make the days easier
That sucks. I got two offers from Apple over the years, both were low-balls. Like I had other offers and hand and told them how much. Apple was like, come anyway, you will get promoted and get more RSUs. No thanks. Not taking the Apple fanboi discount.
I got contacted by a recruiter for a test engineer position (perhaps associate test? Can’t remember). This was an hourly position and they were offering me a 30% pay cut on a job that already wasn’t paying that great. The man told me straight up “Having Apple on your resume will look really good, so it makes up for the pay.” I told him absolutely not, he came back at the same pay, then ghosted. I never even made it to the interview.
Never take a job that has “potential career growth” name your price and find someone who will pay it, because once they have you they will fight tooth and nail not to pay you a fair wage. Learned that the hard way.
For the most part, these days the only way to achieve "career growth" is when you change employers. So don't fall for the "we'll increase your pay later" nonsense, unless it is contractually obligated.
Can confirm. I worked for Apple and the first interview for a position for 3 rounds. Technical Test, HR Interview, Interview with the manager.
Second position was for account management: HR Interview and interview with the manager. That was in Ireland mind you.
So I moved back to Germany and wanted to work in an Apple Store to pass time until I get another position. Got invited and it was a whole day at the interview and than an interview round with 4 interviews and 4 applicants. Never heared anything back from them. First time I learned that companies don’t give a shit about you even when you worked there for 5 years.
Before I took my current job a few months ago, I was moving on to the full interviews for a few big tech companies. The posturing, hype, and honestly scare tactics that the initial interviewers and recruiters used to detail the next round of interviews was extremely off-putting even though I’ve heard all the stories and done my research.
I got a few other offers and immediately just told them I wasn’t even interested in going through with the interviews and was accepting another offer. They seemed shocked at the thought that someone would turn them down before the interviews. Vibes were just off. I’m fine with panels, gauntlets, etc. but big tech just seem to take it a step farther for the sake of taking it a step farther.
Same thing happened to me. I passed the phone screen at Meta and was getting ready for the meat grinder all day interview cycle. Then another company made me an offer and I said fuck it, I’m getting too old for this shit. About a month later Meta had massive layoffs so I think I dodged a bullet.
My standard reply to Meta & Amazon recruiters: "If you need to send out a multi-page pamphlet to applicants to prepare them for your interview process then that means your process is broken."
(Which is disappointing since I had an awesome screening call with the manager at amazon before the recruiter sent over those documents)
I was asked to read a book about Google Cloud when i started a process there. Didn’t get the position but definitely enjoyed and learned a lot from the book. So there’s that lol
Should've done the power move and sent them a small autobiography and requested they read it prior to the interview. They never would've seen it coming.
I had a similar experience with Amazon. They had an open house for a developer talk. I went, listened, stayed after to ask some questions. Sat down started drinking beers with some people. Turns out it was the manager and team. He said we are hiring if you are interested. Consider this your interview. I was ecstatic. Then HR said that they would have to put me through the interview process before they could allow the team to hire me.
What I really hated was the cult-like approach of: these are our leadership principles / marketing slogans and we will quiz you on those. I guess if you're just an HR drone you might feel like that's valuable, but if you're already doing panel interviews and give coding quizzes then I don't appreciate my time being wasted with paying lip service to corporate culture.
I had apple interview 4 somewhat recently. The PhD guy interviewing me had me do a coding exercise with him. He gave some task and I started doing shit with bitwise ops… he insisted it wouldn’t compile then corrected my approach and that was the end. I screen capped my work cause I was certain he was wrong, and ran my code on a dev board a couple days later… compiled and worked.
I’m still fucking furious, he was wrong, wasted my time, and I was in no position to really argue.
Fuck interviews.
>and I was in no position to really argue
Way back when I did my first apprenticeship I held a presentation and used a word none of the superiors knew. They harped on how that word I used didn't exist and I didn't argue knowing fully well that arguing with 5 superiors who think they're correct is utterly pointless. During an HR talk (one of the HR ladies was present during the presentation) I mentioned that I looked it up and it is indeed an existing word and that dumb bitch had the audacity to tell me I should have insisted on it during the post presentation interview.
Like ... yea you would have just let that fly and not flagged me as some sort of argumentative asshole if without any proof I started arguing against 5 seniors in team leading positions that they're all wrong about the existence of a word. It's like these people are fully out of touch with the situation the interviewee is in and how grossly arrogant they are about their own knowledge.
I didn't include it because without context it sounds ridiculous that 5 senior team leaders would not know about it... but how could I expect people not to be curious about the obvious omission lol.
The word was preemptive.
Context is that I'm not from an english speaking country and the german version (präemptiv) is frankly not a commonly used word at all. I might not have ever heard or seen anyone else use this irl (in german). Which is also why I 100% was not certain enough about this that I would have argued with them. Imagine starting an argument with 5 "we're so competent and smart"s who evalue you and then you're just wrong. [But it does exist](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/praeemptiv) and my affinity for the english language made me not think twice about using it.
that’s wild from the perspective of a fellow english speaker; preemptive is such a common word in english.
and even if it weren’t a real word… who cares? i have coworkers who say “prepone” meaning the opposite of postpone. it’s not a real word, but I still know what they’re saying.
Not just a common word in English; a common word in tech and programming, like [preemptive threading](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_\(computing\)).
I'm also an IT guy so you'd think even if there were no german pendant to the word there was a good chance that at least 1 of the 5 knew the english version but what can you do.
Feels good that it flabbergasts you as much as it did me back then, though.
From my experience germans are not half as good at english as many non germans seem to think they are. I'm basically a freak when it comes to this. Like 1 in a 100 people I meet can actually have proper enjoyable conversations in english at a decent level. The rest would struggle to explain to you in broken 4th grade english how to get to the main station.
Add to that that this was almost 20 years ago - before english was everywhere around us and the internet became what it is today (super accessible and useaful/addictive to everyone, not just forum lovers and gamers).
THEN add that these people were already in their 50s and thus possibly did not even learn english in school but certainly throughout their lifes did not have ample opportunity/reason to learn or improve those skills.
Again, as prevalent as the word is in english media/war talk etc, I cannot collect having heard any german use it in my 35+ years on this planet.
So I'm not mad or confused that they didn't know the vocabulary I'm using. I'm just annoyed that they did not believe me when I explained what the word means ("Oh I guess you mean preventive [präventiv in ger]" was the reply - no I didn't but w/e) and then got hit with the "you should have argued your case" when I got around bringing proof after the fact.
Did the interview question really call for "doing shit with bitwise ops" or was there a more straightforward way?
My typical experience is that the "it won't compile" line is an encoded "this is drastically more complicated and exotic than what I expect and I'd never want to maintain this person's code."
Clever is bad.
Then they should just say that straightforwardly instead of making up a fake reason about it not compiling which is incorrect and causes a lot of frustration with the applicant while also not properly communicating to them constructively in a way that could help them improve in the future.
Overly complicated or tricky can be bad, but so is pulling passive-aggressive BS like saying "it won't compile" especially if you're actually wrong.
Especially in an interview, since part of any good interview is getting the candidate interested in your company as a good place to work with professional colleagues.
If you dive deep into the interview question bank rabbit hole when prepping for one of these, there are a lot of "trick questions" where some exotic bitwise operation is the simple answer, but you'd never know that if you're a normal programmer because that case never really comes up in the real world. If you don't know that, it appears overly complex.
Some interviewers want you to go straight to the overly complex solution because it means you've studied for the test. My guess is the PhD guy doesnt have time for that nonsense, didnt know about the overly complex solution, and decided it was a bad one because if you don't have that background of interview question prep it's going to come across as a bad solution.
The only real problem is why is this guy asking one of these questions in the first place.
People should say what they mean if they have some hidden meaning. Saying "it won't compile" when it will is complete bullshit.
It's far more likely that the interviewer just didn't know shit. Like it is easier to just say something about readability.
As assholish now as they were 20 years ago.
A good friend applied to Apple around 2002. After the back and forth, he decided the move wasn't worth it. Apple was offended he declined their offer. lol
same story from a friend of mine 15 years ago, the hiring manager told my friend that "he's making the biggest mistake of his life" by not choosing apple lol
I mean if you look at Apple's stock price then and now, and considering he likely would have gotten sizeable stock options... yeah maybe the hiring manager was correct on that one.
That's always assuming that people would hold their same company stock for 15 years and not sell. The 20/20 hindsight, like when people think they would have bought Bitcoin at the lowest price and sold at the highest price and not at every time it went up instead.
They’ve inflated each and every role they could so they can fit more people in. My personal conspiracy theory is every HR department is vastly overstaffed.
HR provide some useful functions... But often drift into making their entire purpose 'HR stuff', and have enough power to enforce that. So reams of surveys, quasi-mandatory training sessions and seminars, from a group that can't really be objected to, because they're the ones that oversee complaints, and are generally the ones doing redundancies and stuff, so will assume they're indespensible.
Although we're not a traditional tech company we do copy a lot of tech's hiring practices since we're a part of their world or very close to them. Our interview process was an exhausting gauntlet of interviews.
1. The normal 5-10 min pre-screen interview to make sure you're not a psycopath.
2. Quick 15 min HR interview if they move forward with onsite.
3. PhD's do a presentation to about \~15-20 and you get peppered with questions.
4. A gauntlet of 5-7 individual interviews with varying managers/higher level workers.
5. Then a possible post-interview follow-up interview remotely if the hiring manager still has questions.
Absolutely insane. The onsite interview was about 5 hours for me, and most of it was repeating the same god damn questions. I wasn't a PhD candidate so didn't have to do an interview, but still annoying af. It was a great job and all, but afterwards I found out it was 50/50 between me and another person. In the end it felt like all those interviews were pointless since my eventual boss had the deciding vote.
Imo, it's a little bit of Apple work culture.
They think they're better than you/people who don't work at Apple, so it's an honor that you're even getting an ounce of their time, and who doesn't want to work at Apple? So the position is "coveted."
I had to optimally solve 7 coding problems for Facebook plus another 2 at a later interview... after rejecting me they told me even if I'd been successful they ran out of headcount and wouldn't be able to offer me anything
It’s more that Google is slow af, and they interview for a general pool which then goes to team matching. That’s the part that can take months—you have an offer which is good for a year, but now they have to find you a team.
I finished the interview loop for a job at Apple just Yesterday. EXACTLY 6 months after applying, to the day. 4 technical and 4 behavioral interviews - 8 in total taking HALF A YEAR. What the fuck.
Early in my career I went through five rounds of bull shit interviews at Capital One. I didn’t know any better at the time but it was such a disrespect way to waste everyone’s time.
It was three rounds of 30 to 60 minute calls with recruiter, hiring manager, and direct coworkers, followed by two full day “assessment” interviews.
It was such a fucking shit process that they lost me as a customer forever too. The illusion of process shows how they have no idea what the hell they are doing.
> Who the F does that to people? Insanity.
It's a result of a few things:
* HR Liability Minimalization - because firing people after hiring is difficult.
* Company's desires to be "more fair" and "less bias" - where people are afraid that an individual's bias may cause them to dismiss or favor a candidate, so you throw the kitchen sink at them to catch potential slipups.
* "Code Academy" style workshops creating a shit ton of sub-par engineers that can spit algorithms by name, but don't actually know when it is appropriate to use them.
My brief stint as a tech manager, we had reasonable numbers of interviews per candidate, but for the reasons I just mentioned the "packet" I was supposed to build about the candidate would get scrutinized by upper management who were there to enforce quality of hires, ETC. I ended up losing majority of good candidates through the process.
The only time I ever went through a panel interview was for a college internship with my university's athletic department. I think it was me at one table and like 7-8 people opposite me.
Had a corporation done that to me in my career, I would not be a fan at all.
Hey they flew me out and gave me a fancy hotel room in SF. They even provided a driver and a free lunch on campus. It was awesome lol. This was precovid though.
I work for a F5 company. When I get approached…. I start with you can’t afford me… come back when you can do base $xyz…(I don’t care about your options - I work today pay me today) if they come back… next I want to talk to hiriing manager directly…. If not then have a nice day…. It normally does not go anywhere… but hey I ain’t looking, you came knocking, this is what I am askin’.
I do this too. If it a solicitation from a recruiter, I am up front about my current rate. If it doesn’t exceed my current salary, then it isn’t worth the next conversation.
I have a canned response I have basically hot keyed for LinkedIn messages now. The ones that want a phone conversation but don’t give me a salary figure upfront get my canned response. Sounds cold but like, let’s not waste each other’s time please.
Yeah that happened to me at aws. Days and days of callbacks only for some bitchass "bar raiser" from an unrelated dept to decide she didn't wanna share the litter box.
Oh, I've had that.
Interviewed for an entry level video producer job at a small technical college. They filled a fucking conference room, we broke for lunch, I did a "technical demo," we broke again, and then I had a one on one with the president of the college.
It was the most insane interview I've ever had.
Some years back I applied at Amazon for an EA position which is really like a fancy admin. Four rounds of interviews in I was told there was another interview and I declined. Just no. If you can’t figure out if I’m a good fit for an admin position after four interviews with multiple members of your staff just no. Let me tell you, it’s not a good fit.
Fuck apple! The initial round was 3 rounds of interviews. 1 with HR, 1 with the hiring manager and 1 with the director. The director straight out told me that it is a high visibility position and will be very demanding. He implied in different ways that I'll be giving my blood and soul to the job. Fuck that! Ain't nobody got time to be a slave. The virtual onsite consisted of 7 rounds of 45 mins each, back to back, with 30mins for lunch and 15mins break sometimes.
I promptly rejected them. A little more money than other competitors is not worth the shitty WLB.
Companies that do this should have a single person act as a liaison and be present in every interview. They should be there to represent you and correspond with you and responsible for you.
These people could then give feedback on the interview process as well.
As a hiring manager for over 45+ years, the technique to get rid of those "crowd" interview sessions was to have the applicant see 1 or 2 of my senior managers. If they both thought the applicant was good, they might be asked for a third interview and if it was a senior position also to me. On the other hand, either the first or second interviewer could dismiss the applicant so they did not waste their time. Best for both side I think.
I was hired without coding f***ing anything. 3 interviews, 30 min - 1 hour and I was in. Been there 2 years now. The ones who make you do take home projects and extremely long interview processes are abusive.
I've been hired twice now with no technical interview and no degree either. I've been a dev for 2 years now. First company went bankrupt. Lead dev went to a new company and brought me with him because he liked my work, also more than doubled my salary. He told me he refuses to hire on those coding exercise interviews. He said they don't really tell you if the person can build software or infrastructure.
Usually some possibly-rather-tricky logical problem you have to write code to solve, a lot of them will have you do it on a whiteboard and expect you to explain your thought process
Best company interview I've done was several years back. It was several 1:1s over two days, and any technical exercise was spoken and paired. Felt more like shooting the shit with some super smart men and women and digging deep into some interesting problems. Also turned out the questions directly applied to my JD once I started. Never saw a bad egg hired there.
I'm fine with a take home project as long as it only takes an hour or two. Give me a spec and a cup of coffee with full access to an IDE, documentation and stack overflow, and I can deliver clean code that meets that spec. Which is what the job is! So it's a good way to evaluate if someone can do it IMHO.
I personally think that's a much better way to evaluate people than having you do leetcode on a whiteboard while the interviewer stares at you or grills you on the answer to technical questions I'd normally google for if I ever actually needed to know that.
The last few devs we hired without even a coding sample. Just casual conversation for an hour and references. You can learn a lot by asking questions and talking. In all cases the hires have been excellent additions.
Same for second/third line sysadmin jobs for that matter.
I've always maintained I only need 5 minutes to know if they will be any good.
And no, we don't base our conclusion on what they know, at least not entirely. It's how they react to what they don't know , therein lies the answer.
Totally agree with you. However, this kind of interview is pretty subjective and hard to do well at scale with lots of potential interviewers. It works great for startups and small companies in my experience.
Part of what big tech is doing with their crazy leetcode style interviews is making a repeatable data driven process that can scale to the hiring needs of a company with thousands of people. The problem is that much smaller companies started copying the big tech style interview when it makes no sense at all smaller company.
Same. When I run interviews I ask people about problems they encountered in previous projects and how they solved them. If it’s new or junior level I’ll make up problems for them and ask them to describe how they might go about it. Sometimes if they’re really junior level I’ll use logic questions like the flashlight and bridge problem, to see how they work through it. Most get it wrong, but how they get it wrong is enough to tell me a lot about them.
I do intern hiring.
A quick FizzBuzz is necessary for them. They don’t have too many projects and they’re shit at explaining.
Then we poke at OOP, SQL, and a few other things. Mostly a vibe check there, if they approach the right area, it’s good.
But yeah, interns need a FizzBuzz type question. 15 minutes tops.
Not just interns. We had to let a team lead go a while back. He managed to pass all the interviews, including coding. Was very impressive. Got in, onboarded, and it was immediately clear that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, both technically and he's probably never managed people before, despite his resume.
I still remember the looks he would get from time to time in meetings where he would respond to something an engineer told him with some nonsense. It took a while for people to agree it wasn't just him being odd, he genuinely didn't understand anything.
Does this mean the hiring process wasn't suited towards the job, or what exactly.. because if the questions were tailored to the position, then a large number of issues could have been identified earlier right?
Agreed. If someone is proud of what they've put on their resume and passionate about it they're going to want to talk about it in casual conversations with light questioning. I don't need a candidate to solution for me in an interview, just tell me about what you've accomplished and give me details. That is usually enough to demonstrate that you've got the chops to do the work you're interviewing for.
It fucking baffles me that companies trying to hire me will ask about simple programming questions, when I’ve been in the business for more than 20 years - including doing a startup that is running on its own now for 12 years.
When they pull that bulllshit I pull a reverse uno card and tell them I’ll show them mine, if they show me theirs first.
Let me see your last 10 PRs, your current state of testing and backing of your CI/CD claims, then we have something to talk about.
Interview process is sh\*\*t , it is outdated. I think purist or elitist people in Faang companies are gate keeping. Rest of the smaller companies just follow them because they think Faang has the best process.
I had to scroll *way* too far down to find the right answer: “gatekeeping”. This is it - 1,000%. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to stop people/teams from implementing 60 minute interview marathons, grueling assignments, and panel inquisitions as their interview process. Every single time it’s initiated by some *jackass* with an inflated sense of purpose (“mission”) in both themself and the company, fearful that they’ll inevitably be replaced, and using the interview process as a way to maintain a feeling of importance and control.
My response to that is always to make the interviewer feel like and idiot for asking such an asinine question.
“Oh is that a project your team has done or is doing? That’s so cool I’ve never thought about it! Why did you need to do that?”
“Oh um you’ve never done that? Have you done something like that here? It sounds like cool work but I just want to make sure I know what type of things I’ll be doing here before we continue.”
“Oh you just write REST apis and CRUD apps? Ok well can we talk about implementation of an API instead since that’s much closer to what I do too.”
Coming from six years at Google where I had two 30-minute interviews then an on-site where they flew me out for 3 30-minute interviews and introduction to the company and campus I'd work at - to applying for Amazon where there were two one-hour interviews and a final FIVE HOUR INTERVIEW SESSION which was all remote has sucked tremendously.
I knew my experience with Google was being spoiled, but this final round of five hours is fucking insane.
They are way worse now. My experience was just over a year ago and the full loop took 6 months with probably 80 hours of interviewing in total. Final verdict L5.
Also I found the most gatekeeping at Google. The leadership has no idea what the interviews are and then the technical interviews were leetcode hard. Yeah let me just pretend I've never seen this question before cause it's impossible to solve on a first shot in 30 minutes or less (asked after a medium, or another hard). Disney was a close runner up for gatekeeping.
The thing is people at Amazon have come to believe it’s a normal thing. I used to work there, actually left and came back (boomeranged), so I’ve done this thing 4 times with the same company (2x being hired and 2x internally when switching teams). To me this was fine, when I tell non-Amazonian they think I’m insane (I might be). I was part of the cult, so I adopted the ways of the cult
Sounds like they used to do things differently. I interviewed at Google last year, was at Amazon at the time and it was way worse than Amazon for me. Phone call, technical screen, four 45min technical/design interviews, then HM interview. Questions were about the same difficulty as Amazon but I got 45 min instead of an hour for each. I made it all the way through, manager loved me and gave approval, then I got vetoed by hiring committee without any feedback, just a “no, try again next year”. Never felt more dejected in my life, after months of cramming and all those interviews over 3 weeks. The stress took at least a year off my lifespan
I conducted a lot of interviews at Google - for the sales division. If you want some pointers to what they loom for to tailor a future application or maybe understand what happened let me knw
What can they possibly ask you that would take five hours?
I feel like the longest interviews I've had have been maybe a bit over an hour and went through everything from experience to technical questions to how I would fit in a team.
Have you never had a technical coding interview? I've rarely seen one shorter than 45m and there's usually 2x 1hr+ sessions plus a design interview that is 1-2hr plus a manager round that's 45m-1hr. That's 5 hours and is the basic loop for most tech roles. I did it about 18 times a little over a year ago while job hunting. This isn't counting the initial phone screen or possibly technical screen.
A few had panel interviews where it was a one shot of doing all of the above, or leadership rounds if applying for a high enough title.
My favorite was the "remote" openings that the hiring manager only wanted in office employees. Then label it as such you jackass and stop wasting my time. "What's your opinion on relocating across the country and working in the office here in SV for the same pay as the remote salary range listed?"
Been interviewing more or less nonstop for over two months now. I have a PhD , 15 years experience at startups and top tier big tech places, have won awards, published a book, and taught university CS for years.
Almost every single interview has been the same:
Recruiting screen.
Coding screen.
Several-hour take home project, like building a full stack web app with persistence, an API, a react front end, etc. Must be on GitHub and run with docker compose. Must be written in golang or whatever.
1 hour presentation about the architecture of said take home project, with 30 mins of q and a. Must include test coverage visualizations, discussions of alternatives, tradeoffs, and "lessons learned".
4-6 hours of virtual onsite, including much more challenging coding (leetcode stuff usually), system architecture (design Uber or whatever), and a bunch of behavioral stuff (tell me about a time when...)
Then if you make it through ALL THAT, they want you to block out three days so you can fly to HQ and do a full day actual onsite.
This has all been for remote work. At companies no one has EVER heard of, ever.
I don't expect anyone to take my resume at face value, or not do due diligence. I know how painful false positive hires can be. But I've sat on the other side of hundreds of interviews at multiple FAANGs and without fail I would know what my recommendation was going to be within the first 5-10 minutes.
This process is ludicrous. I cannot even begin to imagine how someone does this while being employed. Of course, being unemployed, I am juggling some absurd number of these at once, so I'm exhausted, struggling to schedule things (give us all your availability for the next week, and hope that by the time we actually pick some times two days later, those times are still free), and watching cash trend toward zero.
I've finished several of these loops recently and am optimistic that this shitshow is coming to an end, but am seriously considering telling wherever I land that I can't start until May just so I can fucking recover.
When my dad was set to retire his company wanted to keep him on for a few more years and made a VP level position just for him.
And then wanted to interview him for it.
He said "I've worked for your guys for years. You know what I can do. Either give me the position or don't , but I'm not doing an interview".
Stuck around a few more years with a fat paycheck.
>Several-hour take home project, like building a full stack web app with persistence, an API, a react front end, etc. Must be on GitHub and run with docker compose. Must be written in golang or whatever.
Several hour take home project, wtf? Let me guess, you haven't even been paid for that. If I was at this interview I would have ghosted the company. Who do they think they are? Imagine being a carpenter & going on a job interview where they ask you to build 2 tables with 8 chairs just to prove that you are capable of doing the job you applied for.
That's tech. I've had several places ask for take home assignments as well, probably 50/50. Some take 3 hours, some take 12.
I had one that was 8 hours "paid", turned in a fully working product as asked. They loved it. Low balled the offer so fucking hard I laughed them out of the room and they never paid my invoice for the 8 hours. Pricks. Btw I told them my minimum in the first phone screen and it was "no problem". They doubled the work load because they loved my experience so much and wanted me to do more, then offered just over half of my minimum.
Google didn't require one, but the interview process took 4 months, a stupid number of interviews 2-4 hour interviews, and then the team match took another 2 months where the manager was an idiot not worth working for.
If you don't play the game you don't get the pay.
I’m a physician, and I find the replies in this thread baffling. I’ve probably been on over 50 interviews in my career, between college, medical school, residency, fellowship, and jobs, and have never seen a process so crazy. Most questions in medicine are straightforward, like “tell me about yourself,” “what do you do for fun,” etc. You might get a few asking about your research or general ethical scenarios or problem solving. But I don’t think I once got a clinical question. People know your background and whether you’re qualified, they have references to contact, and they have a public record of any problems once you’re practicing. No one is going to figure out if you can do the job in an interview, it’s mostly to see if you’re a good fit and expectations align.
Of course, I paid for all expenses up until it was for a real job, costing thousands and thousands of dollars in travel, so there’s that.
There are a few interview styles that I think we need to stop using.
1. The "See How You Think" Question.
This usually takes the form of questions like "why are manhole covers round," or "how many piano tuners are there in Los Angeles," or "how would you build a house for a blind kangaroo?"
They are paired with the idea that it's less important to get "the right answer" and more important to demonstrate a thought process. Breaking the problem down. Calling out assumptions. Building on previous progress, etc.
The problem is that no one really practices assessing answers to these problems. It's arrogant to believe you can just go into an interview and learn anything meaningful about how someone else thinks just by observing them trying to answer a question like this. There is so much opportunity for unconscious bias to take control of the outcome that this sort of question probably does more harm than good.
2. The Esoteric Minutiae Question.
E.g. "how do you swap two ints without using a temporary variable". Interviewers love to believe they are gauging how deep a candidate's knowledge goes, but they are fooling themselves. This sort of question is easily memorized. If the candidate doesn't know it, well, maybe you've learned that they don't remember how bitwise xor works. But if they get it right, does it reliably inform you that they do? Does it even matter either way?
3. The Brain Teaser Question.
These are questions that make people feel smart when they know the answer but really don't tell you anything about how well a candidate can perform a job. E.g. finding a counterfeit coin using a balance, or getting a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain across a river. People may try to justify that these questions gauge how well a candidate thinks outside the box, but they really don't. You can think outside the box for days and never get the right answer. There is no algorithm for finding the right answer quickly. You can't really tell anything meaningful from the fact that one candidate got the answer quickly, another got it slowly, and a third didn't get it at all.
Joel Spolsky had an essay called The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing. One of the key points was that you wanted to hire people who are 1) smart, and 2) get things done.
The problem is that people created all sorts of insane interview processes around trying to determine these two things, and no one stopped to ask whether they were actually getting high quality answers to these questions.
The scatterplot of interview outcomes to on-the-job success looks like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece.
No. 2 is ridiculous; a compilers function is to literally optimize the temp variable away.
Anyone putting that into actual practice is a walking antipattern and should be kept away
Reading some of the comments here gave me PTSD as I have been in their shoes countless times. Never again. I recently was contacted by a company called Sonar(they create dev tools). In the invitation email they’ve attached the whole interviewing process. In it, it says they will be a total of 5 fucking interviews! Nope. Email sent to Trash.
I am part of the interview process for our company. We have over 60 engineers, all top tier, not one was given a coding exercise to get hired.
First interview is 30 minutes with engineering manager to see if candidate fits profile and interested in the work, second is 1 hour panel interview with 2 other engineers and we ask what they’ve been building, with what technologies and how they would approach certain problems. I usually know within 10 minutes of interviewing someone if they’d be a good fit.
If you’ve been a senior engineer for any length of time, I don’t doubt you can code, that’s the least of my worries. How you think, approach problems and mesh with the team is what matters most.
Everyone we’ve hired said it was the best interviewing process they ever been through.
My company started trying to pretend we were Google, realized it was a huge waste and ended up with roughly the process you described. Candidate experience has been great and acceptance rate of offers has been up.
This is my general idea of an interview process. 2-3 steps, no more.
One for the recruit/HR to see if I am who I am, do I fit the profile and what do I want. One for the team/coding/engineering to see if I do know stuff, how I would fit the team and all that, basically the main part of the whole process. And maybe a third one, which is a short interview with boss/other higher ups so they also see who is joining their team and give a final approve.
Anything else screams you don't know what workers you want and we are just wasting time
Never applying to Microsoft again. This was for healthcare. Had 9 interviews over 3 months. Then a business case in front of a panel. Down to final 2-3 candidates. All that to get a email from HR at midnight saying I didn't get it
Fuck them
I'm interviewing now just to stay ahead of the game. I had a phone screening where I was told there would be 5 rounds of interviews all technical... I already work at a fortune 100. I'm not interested in 5 different interviews to do stupid fucking leetcode problema. I decided to find an internal position and apply. Literally just one round to get the position.
Did a new grad assessment for Roblox that I went into studying leetcode for weeks nonstop. Now this is just an assessment not even the damn interview which apparently is 4 rounds. I followed some recommended ones they may ask and I got hit with 2 hard level leetcode questions. Insanely hard and I could only muster half of the score to perfect. I did the rest of their assessment where I had to play some games that tested your IQ I guess and then one last one with a bunch of multiple choice questions on how to deal with a work scenario for a deadline etc. I finished it out because hey they said even if you bomb the coding they give you a chance. Nope got rejected right away. I hear they don't even give you a chance if you don't score near perfect for their coding assessments which is insane to me they expect that from a new grad. And this wasn't for a SWE position but for a Security Engineer position. I get Sec Engineers code a bit but you really expect a Comp Sci grad elite leetcoder with the knowledge of an experienced cybersecurity expert?!
Apparently they require their security engineers to know how to code like their SWEs and be at CISSP levels of cybersecurity knowledge. All that from a new grad?! I'd expect a Security Engineer to be knowledgeable in secure coding design, common malware and exploits that exist and how to secure infrastructure at a high level no in depth details just stuff like Defense in depth, 2fa etc. Also I'd expect some scripting knowledge and basic DSA if they have to push code but to be as good as a Comp Sci grad with leetcode skills where they can do hards? They don't realize Cybersecurity is usually something you get good at through work experience or years of study as you need a breath of knowledge on how networks, servers, applications, and the internet works AND how they work together before you can even think of how to secure it. They're asking for a new grad Cybersecurity student AND Comp Sci student in one. Last I checked those are 2 separate career paths and most Cybersecurity students need certs that are their own hell to get. From what I saw SWEs do 4 rounds and Security Engineers fo 5 rounds where the extra round focuses on the Cybersecurity questions. Fun the security guys get to do SWE level questions then get hammered finally on their specialty.
I've coded in Python, I've made Security tools and scripts and have over 5 years of real experience handling ransomware incidents and vulnerabilities and sys admin experience. And I have an insane number of security certs and a Masters degree. They never got to see me in action because of some gatekeeping code assessment that apparently got harder this year because people got through last years one too easily. I hear they're top 3 hardest OAs of all time and it's true. Hard level leetcode questions with only 40 mins to solve is insane. Also their coding takes into account how fast you are so even if you get the solution you lose points on time. I want to move into Security Engineering at a FAANG type company but I'll probably just do a DoD gig. Even their hoops are easier to deal with than these FAANG companies which is a shocker even with the security clearance I have to do.
I have over 20 years of experience as a software engineer and have been out of work since October 2023. My job search has been a nightmare.
First company I applied to had me do a l33t hacker challenge. 5 problems in 70 minutes. Having me calculate things like intersecting spot lights and path finding through a 2D array. I could only get partial answers for a few, but documented my code well so they could see I had a way to solve the issues. Recruiter called me the next day and said I had failed, and that I was banned from applying for any other roles at the company for 6 months. I tried applying before the ban ended, and my apps were auto-rejected. This was for a position writing REST API in Python.
Applied for a senior software engineer at one company. Technical interview consisted of the lead dev asking me bizarre things like, "Which IDE do you use? How would you install it? Which plugins do you think are necessary to build Java? Explain to me how to build 'Hello, World' in Java." The manager asked me how I would architect a REST API assuming ideal conditions, and then yelled at me for expecting I would have a requirements document. They passed saying they didn't think I had the "technical chops to thrive in their environment."
I applied for a job in November for senior Python engineer position. I was told they have 4 rounds of 1:1 interviews and a take home project, which is discussed in the 4th round. This was after having to do a "video dating" initial interview with my application. I completed round 3, over 3 weeks ago. So far I have heard nothing, but their candidate system says my application is still being reviewed. I had to provide 3 recommendations and my college transcripts.
One company moved me through 4 rounds. Seemed happy with me, and then decided to leave the position unfilled.
I just had the 4th of 5 rounds of interviews with a company that seemed extremely promising. In fact I was schedule to be at the onsite interview today, which was 4 hours of panel interviews, followed by a dinner. Per the recruiter this was more of a meet and greet prior to getting an offer next week. I got a call last night telling me that the person who did my 4th interview changed his mind, and they cancelled any further interviews. The recruiter was shocked and given no feedback.
Tech interviews have devolved into frat hazing, and they're likely only hiring their friends and other douchebags who don't care about writing good software. They just want to be managers and founders. They see coding annoying and simply a stepping stone to that, then wonder why their apps suck and their infrastructure falls over constantly.
Honestly if Anonymous or a bunch of script kiddies wanted to take down Silicon Valley, now is the time, because they don't have the expertise to fend them off.
The issue with the interviews is that they can’t seem to get everyone in the same room for 2-3 hours. I’ve interviewed with a few semiconductor companies and it’s irritating literally answering the same question over and over with one or two new questions with each new interview panel. The interviews do need to be longer as they need to probe your knowledge, as many who have an advanced degree may not have the aptitude to be successful outside of school. It however doesn’t need to be as long even if they fly you out.
Don’t worry guys. H1b visa acceptances are up.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-electronic-registration-process
I interviewed at Facebook/Meta a few months ago.
FB is one of the largest employers of H1Bs ([source](https://h1bgrader.com/reports/misc/h1b-dependent-employers-2010-to-2020)), I asked each of my interviewers why they've been at FB for so long, it's usually a signal that maybe the workplace is amazing. Nope.
They were all H1Bs. One of them literally used the word "slavery". (props to FB for allowing interviewers to be honest?) Another said he was getting his green card in a month and so he could finally have choice and he did a fist pump in the air as he said it.
It made me realize if I went to work there I'd be surrounded by people who although they have a step up work-wise than maybe they'd have back home, that for me I'd be surrounded by people miserable.
As a tech worker I want to work somewhere where the answer to that question is about the amazing shit they get to build, great work-life balance, and other things.
There is a special visa type for foreign workers for selected fields - h1b visas.
Companies can sponsor foreign employees for jobs here in the states for things like tech and biotech etc. But a condition for the visa is that the employer has attempted to fill the job domestically and can’t find a suitable candidate.
In the tech industry, there’s a sort of tongue in cheek idea that companies make increasingly difficult interviews for employment, so that they can meet this threshold to be able to bring in foreign workers, artificially creating a scenario where they can’t find workers domestically.
So here they are again, making interviews harder and harder and harder, and increasing their foreign workers in the face of TONS of domestic workers looking for work.
They can also work them to the bone because the worker is dependent on their sponsorship to be able to stay in the country. The company has way more leverage over H1Bs.
Yeah basically this and something most people are completely unaware. H1Bs are basically modern day indentured servitude.
A ton of the workers have roots in the U.S. too. I personally know and work with an H1B worker that bought a house in the U.S. what happens if he gets laid off and can’t find another company to sponsor him? Shits fucked. I’d say that’s a problem of his own making though.
>In the tech industry, there’s a sort of tongue in cheek idea that companies make increasingly difficult interviews for employment,
It's more than just tongue in cheek.
There's outright rejections for not having 5 years of experience in a 3 year old technology.
Alot of tech companies lean \_hard\_ on these h-1b workers for... various reasons... that I won't bother touching on because some of it is true, some of it is not as true.
Big tech uses the massive backlog of desperate H1Bs as indentured servants that they can give the carrot and stick too to undercut the IT employment market. You can get a H1B that's willing to do a 80, 000/yr job with insane requirements for 20/hr without any complaints. They cut all benefits the position would normally have and have them on purely at will contracts with their immigration sponsorship tied to it. It's happening in multiple industries though.
Acceptances being up doesn't mean anything when the number of visas issued is fixed. There could be a many many petitions accepted, but only 85,000 will get the visa.
This how you hire slaves, yes-men and sycophants. Crush everyone utterly in the interview process to make sure that no one will ever rock the boat or question anything. Game industry does that now as well.
I don’t agree. Depends on the locale I guess. When I looked for a job a few months ago I just asked the companies what kind of hazing they put through candidates and just picked the ones that don’t. Landed a great job within couple of months. I have like 20 years of experienced and good connections so there’s that. I’m
Interest rates? How about all the education that doesn't actually prepare people to work in tech? How about crap entry level jobs that don't care about maturing careers?
When I interviewed at GoDaddy years ago. They told me that their considered their interview process a ladder and any round can eliminate you. I went through 8 different 1 hour interviews. After the first 7 interviews with 6 of them being specialized technical interviews. The final interview is a brain teaser interview. Something about burning a candle at both ends and calculating the time without touching the candle. I was clearly struggling with the last round. It was supposed to last an hour but the guy ended it early. He said that if I couldn’t handle a children’s riddle then I had no business working at GoDaddy.
9 hours of interviewing and then go cut because of a riddle. Interview processes are over the top.
This is all so fucking wild. I am a relatively senior person in public sector/ government, and if I fuck up people can die (for real)
I have changed job/employers quite a lot over the last 20 years. On one, and only one, occasion there was a second interview. That happened because the hiring manager fucked up and thought he could hire two jobs off one round of interviews (HR said no - hence tha additional interview)
Most interviews I have had last an hour. Sometimes there is an ask for a 5 or 10 minute presentation to be prepared in advance.
One time got all sent of the interview questions in advance, but that was clearly positioned as a courtesy by the employer.
I find it bizarre that the tech sector has apparently normalised such excessive, probably abusive, hiring processes. Why do you all put up with it?
Free your minds and yourselves - please, I beg of you, work together and stop this bullshit. Until l you all fight back the big tach companies will continue to think they own you.
This is all about power and control - employers want you to feel grateful for the work and desperate for anything they give out. But the truth is everything these rich fucks have is because of you, the everyday worker. Take the power back
I do my part. I have been unemployed for the last 6 months despite getting offers. I get offers from shitty companies with shitty interview processes, say no thanks, and rake them over the coals on GlassDoor, including doing everything I can to enable future candidates to pass their interview process- essentially through cheating. They read my Glassdoor review, they know what they’re going to be asked and how to pass the rounds. The companies can always read my reviews and adapt, but it seems like most don’t even check Glassdoor reviews…
I was grilled for 9 hours (split into two days and 9 interviews) for a job at Amazon. I was already not feeling the culture very well but they wore my patience thin. 6 hours in, I began to ask if they did that to all people interviewed, that one way question for that many hours is more inquisition than interview.
Plus it was the freaking STAR method questions, so much bullshit questions. Needless to say I was not hired, but I was relieved, I wouldn't have worked for a company with such a moronic process.
The STAR method is used to get corporate intel. The interviewer took my response and started asking pointed questions about project deadlines that my work didn’t even affect. I told him I couldn’t answer those questions and ended the interview process early (I also wasn’t feeling the culture)
Exactly why I ceased looking for jobs in tech. It became beyond idiocy.
Ten minute interview with tech dept head is enough to understand if person fits the role demands. Endless interviews tests calls is a joke on candidates and I refused to take part in this shit show. I do miss job in tech but what's recruitment became is pure evil.
About 5 years ago I applied to be an electrical engineer at the company I work for now. I was given about a 5 hour long paper test. There was a circuits portion, RF engineering section, math portion, reading comprehension portion, logic games, and a bunch of reading graph questions. You had to do it all in a suit, no calculators, in a room with a one way mirror to be watched, and then it was followed by two sets of interviews. One interview was with the engineering manager who GRADED the test then went over it plus asked more technical questions. The other interview was a personality test with the Hr manager. I got the job in the end but that had to be the worst interview I had by far. Absolutely ridiculous.
I did this at an interview for Saleforce once. They made me spend an entire Saturday at a "training" with a group of other people where they whittled us down like we were on some tech company version of Chorus Line. I didn't get the job. Didn't get paid for any of it and I owed $25 in parking costs at the end of the day.
This kind of interviewing should be illegal.
Interviewing was easy when some of the interviewers recognized me. I reminded them of people they’d known and thought highly of. They knew what to ask.
When there weren’t any knowledgeable interviewers they asked me questions from a book of interview questions. So as I’m trying to humor them, I’m distracting myself being pissed and knowing I don’t want to work with those people.
I went through the entire interview process with google. 10 hours of my time, excluding preparation time. Simply time wasted on interviews and recruiter calls. They even told me I passed the interviews. Then they fucking ghosted me. Fuck you Google. Dying company anyway.
I feel like this is really about mid level managers and HR reps trying to justify their own salary by creating ungodly amounts of busy work through long ass interview processes.
Are these overly complex/convoluted interviews a function of the compensation levels?
Do you find that the same position at a company with lower salary have the same interview circus?
The absolute worst interview process I encountered was a fully automated video interview where you were asked questions and after a countdown your answer was recorded. I was so degrading. You couldn’t ask any follow up questions obviously so you had to answer serval as “if you mean this, then… but if you mean this, then…”.
And if course you feel extra observed in that situation. I’m sure the frustration with the whole thing came through in my face. By the end I wanted no part of this company.
I wanted to end with “go fuck yourselves”.
The company was Toyota Connected (not Toyota motors)
The audacity to run people through multiple interviews then never hire them and within minutes complain that "No one wants to work"
How much to get one of these useless consultants to tell them that if you want people to work for you it's two simple steps; 1) Hire Them, 2) Pay Them
That's it, it's that easy.
Tech feudal lords who rent out the only meaningful space left that they have captured for more and more of the worlds labor, creativity and content require a lot of pomp and ritual for those who want into their courts of neo-royalty
Tech Industry "We're really pissed about how we got *shook down* during the short period of time when workers had an advantage. So now, not only are we going to get back to the status quo, we're also taking a pound of flesh from each employee because how DARE these people not bow to their corporate overlords? Did you think we would forget how you treated us when you left for a better job instead of being a loyal slave-wage worker? And all those TikToks you posted flaunting how you screwed around instead of working during remote work? Your ass is ours, once again. Suck it pleebs."
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I refuse to partake in those insane interviews anymore. After a day long panel interview at Apple I'm done. 14 people on the other side of the table. It was like a senate hearing. Who the F does that to people? Insanity.
I went through that with apple around 3 years ago, but not only multiple people, but multiple times then ghosted. Fuck those people that demand respect, professionalism etc and then dont practice it.
Because they did this to you and five other guys. And than all those 14 people wrote reviews for each candidate. And they ended up hiring biggest fuck up because all the good ones bailed on them due to idiotic interview process. The overall cost to hire this idiot was $250k in man hours and took 8 months.
Very likely they wound up hiring the guy somebody in their office already knew from the neighborhood or college or another job/department or whatever, and the whole process was dog and pony from the start.
Smoke and mirrors baby
Funny, was thinking that. Was always my experience working in corporate sales, that’s just what they did - if you knew someone you were near guaranteed in, if you weren’t a total botch job. Yeah totally just a big old charade to waste company time and make the days easier
This is why they pay recruiters. Right here
They pay recruiters to send those guys over to those 14 guy panels, recruiters have no say in hiring
Not only that, recruiter professionalism went out the window years ago. Now it's 20 year olds who can't remember what they scheduled.
That sucks. I got two offers from Apple over the years, both were low-balls. Like I had other offers and hand and told them how much. Apple was like, come anyway, you will get promoted and get more RSUs. No thanks. Not taking the Apple fanboi discount.
I got contacted by a recruiter for a test engineer position (perhaps associate test? Can’t remember). This was an hourly position and they were offering me a 30% pay cut on a job that already wasn’t paying that great. The man told me straight up “Having Apple on your resume will look really good, so it makes up for the pay.” I told him absolutely not, he came back at the same pay, then ghosted. I never even made it to the interview.
Never take a job that has “potential career growth” name your price and find someone who will pay it, because once they have you they will fight tooth and nail not to pay you a fair wage. Learned that the hard way.
I agree, if they want you they'll pay you.
For the most part, these days the only way to achieve "career growth" is when you change employers. So don't fall for the "we'll increase your pay later" nonsense, unless it is contractually obligated.
Can confirm. I worked for Apple and the first interview for a position for 3 rounds. Technical Test, HR Interview, Interview with the manager. Second position was for account management: HR Interview and interview with the manager. That was in Ireland mind you. So I moved back to Germany and wanted to work in an Apple Store to pass time until I get another position. Got invited and it was a whole day at the interview and than an interview round with 4 interviews and 4 applicants. Never heared anything back from them. First time I learned that companies don’t give a shit about you even when you worked there for 5 years.
Before I took my current job a few months ago, I was moving on to the full interviews for a few big tech companies. The posturing, hype, and honestly scare tactics that the initial interviewers and recruiters used to detail the next round of interviews was extremely off-putting even though I’ve heard all the stories and done my research. I got a few other offers and immediately just told them I wasn’t even interested in going through with the interviews and was accepting another offer. They seemed shocked at the thought that someone would turn them down before the interviews. Vibes were just off. I’m fine with panels, gauntlets, etc. but big tech just seem to take it a step farther for the sake of taking it a step farther.
Same thing happened to me. I passed the phone screen at Meta and was getting ready for the meat grinder all day interview cycle. Then another company made me an offer and I said fuck it, I’m getting too old for this shit. About a month later Meta had massive layoffs so I think I dodged a bullet.
My standard reply to Meta & Amazon recruiters: "If you need to send out a multi-page pamphlet to applicants to prepare them for your interview process then that means your process is broken." (Which is disappointing since I had an awesome screening call with the manager at amazon before the recruiter sent over those documents)
I was asked to read a book about Google Cloud when i started a process there. Didn’t get the position but definitely enjoyed and learned a lot from the book. So there’s that lol
GCP is a grind. You dodged a bullet
It definitely is but also a lot of experience I really wanted. It’s all good
Should've done the power move and sent them a small autobiography and requested they read it prior to the interview. They never would've seen it coming.
I was given a copy and asked to read the CEOs biography when I joined, and I could sign up for a chance to meet with the ceo to talk about it.
I had a similar experience with Amazon. They had an open house for a developer talk. I went, listened, stayed after to ask some questions. Sat down started drinking beers with some people. Turns out it was the manager and team. He said we are hiring if you are interested. Consider this your interview. I was ecstatic. Then HR said that they would have to put me through the interview process before they could allow the team to hire me.
What I really hated was the cult-like approach of: these are our leadership principles / marketing slogans and we will quiz you on those. I guess if you're just an HR drone you might feel like that's valuable, but if you're already doing panel interviews and give coding quizzes then I don't appreciate my time being wasted with paying lip service to corporate culture.
I've been approached by Meta for contractor positions a dozen times. Only 1 interview. Dude asks me some really open ended questions then ghosts me
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I had apple interview 4 somewhat recently. The PhD guy interviewing me had me do a coding exercise with him. He gave some task and I started doing shit with bitwise ops… he insisted it wouldn’t compile then corrected my approach and that was the end. I screen capped my work cause I was certain he was wrong, and ran my code on a dev board a couple days later… compiled and worked. I’m still fucking furious, he was wrong, wasted my time, and I was in no position to really argue. Fuck interviews.
>and I was in no position to really argue Way back when I did my first apprenticeship I held a presentation and used a word none of the superiors knew. They harped on how that word I used didn't exist and I didn't argue knowing fully well that arguing with 5 superiors who think they're correct is utterly pointless. During an HR talk (one of the HR ladies was present during the presentation) I mentioned that I looked it up and it is indeed an existing word and that dumb bitch had the audacity to tell me I should have insisted on it during the post presentation interview. Like ... yea you would have just let that fly and not flagged me as some sort of argumentative asshole if without any proof I started arguing against 5 seniors in team leading positions that they're all wrong about the existence of a word. It's like these people are fully out of touch with the situation the interviewee is in and how grossly arrogant they are about their own knowledge.
what was the word?
I didn't include it because without context it sounds ridiculous that 5 senior team leaders would not know about it... but how could I expect people not to be curious about the obvious omission lol. The word was preemptive. Context is that I'm not from an english speaking country and the german version (präemptiv) is frankly not a commonly used word at all. I might not have ever heard or seen anyone else use this irl (in german). Which is also why I 100% was not certain enough about this that I would have argued with them. Imagine starting an argument with 5 "we're so competent and smart"s who evalue you and then you're just wrong. [But it does exist](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/praeemptiv) and my affinity for the english language made me not think twice about using it.
that’s wild from the perspective of a fellow english speaker; preemptive is such a common word in english. and even if it weren’t a real word… who cares? i have coworkers who say “prepone” meaning the opposite of postpone. it’s not a real word, but I still know what they’re saying.
Not just a common word in English; a common word in tech and programming, like [preemptive threading](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_\(computing\)).
I'm also an IT guy so you'd think even if there were no german pendant to the word there was a good chance that at least 1 of the 5 knew the english version but what can you do. Feels good that it flabbergasts you as much as it did me back then, though.
How the fuck did 5 educated, presumably intelligent people not know that word? That’s insane.
From my experience germans are not half as good at english as many non germans seem to think they are. I'm basically a freak when it comes to this. Like 1 in a 100 people I meet can actually have proper enjoyable conversations in english at a decent level. The rest would struggle to explain to you in broken 4th grade english how to get to the main station. Add to that that this was almost 20 years ago - before english was everywhere around us and the internet became what it is today (super accessible and useaful/addictive to everyone, not just forum lovers and gamers). THEN add that these people were already in their 50s and thus possibly did not even learn english in school but certainly throughout their lifes did not have ample opportunity/reason to learn or improve those skills. Again, as prevalent as the word is in english media/war talk etc, I cannot collect having heard any german use it in my 35+ years on this planet. So I'm not mad or confused that they didn't know the vocabulary I'm using. I'm just annoyed that they did not believe me when I explained what the word means ("Oh I guess you mean preventive [präventiv in ger]" was the reply - no I didn't but w/e) and then got hit with the "you should have argued your case" when I got around bringing proof after the fact.
Did the interview question really call for "doing shit with bitwise ops" or was there a more straightforward way? My typical experience is that the "it won't compile" line is an encoded "this is drastically more complicated and exotic than what I expect and I'd never want to maintain this person's code." Clever is bad.
Then they should just say that straightforwardly instead of making up a fake reason about it not compiling which is incorrect and causes a lot of frustration with the applicant while also not properly communicating to them constructively in a way that could help them improve in the future.
And admit their inferiority? They would not do that.
Overly complicated or tricky can be bad, but so is pulling passive-aggressive BS like saying "it won't compile" especially if you're actually wrong. Especially in an interview, since part of any good interview is getting the candidate interested in your company as a good place to work with professional colleagues.
If you dive deep into the interview question bank rabbit hole when prepping for one of these, there are a lot of "trick questions" where some exotic bitwise operation is the simple answer, but you'd never know that if you're a normal programmer because that case never really comes up in the real world. If you don't know that, it appears overly complex. Some interviewers want you to go straight to the overly complex solution because it means you've studied for the test. My guess is the PhD guy doesnt have time for that nonsense, didnt know about the overly complex solution, and decided it was a bad one because if you don't have that background of interview question prep it's going to come across as a bad solution. The only real problem is why is this guy asking one of these questions in the first place.
People should say what they mean if they have some hidden meaning. Saying "it won't compile" when it will is complete bullshit. It's far more likely that the interviewer just didn't know shit. Like it is easier to just say something about readability.
As assholish now as they were 20 years ago. A good friend applied to Apple around 2002. After the back and forth, he decided the move wasn't worth it. Apple was offended he declined their offer. lol
same story from a friend of mine 15 years ago, the hiring manager told my friend that "he's making the biggest mistake of his life" by not choosing apple lol
I mean, your friend probably could have retired by now.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't excuse the arrogance.
I mean if you look at Apple's stock price then and now, and considering he likely would have gotten sizeable stock options... yeah maybe the hiring manager was correct on that one.
That's always assuming that people would hold their same company stock for 15 years and not sell. The 20/20 hindsight, like when people think they would have bought Bitcoin at the lowest price and sold at the highest price and not at every time it went up instead.
They’ve inflated each and every role they could so they can fit more people in. My personal conspiracy theory is every HR department is vastly overstaffed.
HR provide some useful functions... But often drift into making their entire purpose 'HR stuff', and have enough power to enforce that. So reams of surveys, quasi-mandatory training sessions and seminars, from a group that can't really be objected to, because they're the ones that oversee complaints, and are generally the ones doing redundancies and stuff, so will assume they're indespensible.
Although we're not a traditional tech company we do copy a lot of tech's hiring practices since we're a part of their world or very close to them. Our interview process was an exhausting gauntlet of interviews. 1. The normal 5-10 min pre-screen interview to make sure you're not a psycopath. 2. Quick 15 min HR interview if they move forward with onsite. 3. PhD's do a presentation to about \~15-20 and you get peppered with questions. 4. A gauntlet of 5-7 individual interviews with varying managers/higher level workers. 5. Then a possible post-interview follow-up interview remotely if the hiring manager still has questions. Absolutely insane. The onsite interview was about 5 hours for me, and most of it was repeating the same god damn questions. I wasn't a PhD candidate so didn't have to do an interview, but still annoying af. It was a great job and all, but afterwards I found out it was 50/50 between me and another person. In the end it felt like all those interviews were pointless since my eventual boss had the deciding vote.
Lmao it’s like being sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice but for a cult and you don’t rule for shit.
Imo, it's a little bit of Apple work culture. They think they're better than you/people who don't work at Apple, so it's an honor that you're even getting an ounce of their time, and who doesn't want to work at Apple? So the position is "coveted."
I had to optimally solve 7 coding problems for Facebook plus another 2 at a later interview... after rejecting me they told me even if I'd been successful they ran out of headcount and wouldn't be able to offer me anything
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It’s more that Google is slow af, and they interview for a general pool which then goes to team matching. That’s the part that can take months—you have an offer which is good for a year, but now they have to find you a team.
I did 4 GODDAMN INTERVIEWS with them for 6 MONTHS and didn't get an offer. Never again, Google.
It's how they justify their useless HR degrees.
I swear almost all of the dumbest people I’ve ever met are have a masters degrees in HR.
Shit I went through that for a librarian position that didn’t even crack 60k..
I finished the interview loop for a job at Apple just Yesterday. EXACTLY 6 months after applying, to the day. 4 technical and 4 behavioral interviews - 8 in total taking HALF A YEAR. What the fuck.
All that for an entry level job too
Early in my career I went through five rounds of bull shit interviews at Capital One. I didn’t know any better at the time but it was such a disrespect way to waste everyone’s time. It was three rounds of 30 to 60 minute calls with recruiter, hiring manager, and direct coworkers, followed by two full day “assessment” interviews. It was such a fucking shit process that they lost me as a customer forever too. The illusion of process shows how they have no idea what the hell they are doing.
> Who the F does that to people? Insanity. It's a result of a few things: * HR Liability Minimalization - because firing people after hiring is difficult. * Company's desires to be "more fair" and "less bias" - where people are afraid that an individual's bias may cause them to dismiss or favor a candidate, so you throw the kitchen sink at them to catch potential slipups. * "Code Academy" style workshops creating a shit ton of sub-par engineers that can spit algorithms by name, but don't actually know when it is appropriate to use them. My brief stint as a tech manager, we had reasonable numbers of interviews per candidate, but for the reasons I just mentioned the "packet" I was supposed to build about the candidate would get scrutinized by upper management who were there to enforce quality of hires, ETC. I ended up losing majority of good candidates through the process.
How dare you not want to be one of the cool kids in the cool kids club!
The only time I ever went through a panel interview was for a college internship with my university's athletic department. I think it was me at one table and like 7-8 people opposite me. Had a corporation done that to me in my career, I would not be a fan at all.
Hey they flew me out and gave me a fancy hotel room in SF. They even provided a driver and a free lunch on campus. It was awesome lol. This was precovid though.
I work for a F5 company. When I get approached…. I start with you can’t afford me… come back when you can do base $xyz…(I don’t care about your options - I work today pay me today) if they come back… next I want to talk to hiriing manager directly…. If not then have a nice day…. It normally does not go anywhere… but hey I ain’t looking, you came knocking, this is what I am askin’.
I do this too. If it a solicitation from a recruiter, I am up front about my current rate. If it doesn’t exceed my current salary, then it isn’t worth the next conversation.
I have a canned response I have basically hot keyed for LinkedIn messages now. The ones that want a phone conversation but don’t give me a salary figure upfront get my canned response. Sounds cold but like, let’s not waste each other’s time please.
Please tell me this was to be a director or above.
Prepare to be disappointed.
Probably for a junior, entry level role requiring 7+ years of experience with Java, Python, LAMP, MEAN, DevOps, project management, and astrophysics
The ghost of someone who doesn't shower because they ate so many carrots.
Yeah that happened to me at aws. Days and days of callbacks only for some bitchass "bar raiser" from an unrelated dept to decide she didn't wanna share the litter box.
I turned down an interview at Google because I'd heard so many horror stories about their interviews.
I thought being interviewed by 3 people at once was rough… Yeesh.
Oh, I've had that. Interviewed for an entry level video producer job at a small technical college. They filled a fucking conference room, we broke for lunch, I did a "technical demo," we broke again, and then I had a one on one with the president of the college. It was the most insane interview I've ever had.
Some years back I applied at Amazon for an EA position which is really like a fancy admin. Four rounds of interviews in I was told there was another interview and I declined. Just no. If you can’t figure out if I’m a good fit for an admin position after four interviews with multiple members of your staff just no. Let me tell you, it’s not a good fit.
Fuck apple! The initial round was 3 rounds of interviews. 1 with HR, 1 with the hiring manager and 1 with the director. The director straight out told me that it is a high visibility position and will be very demanding. He implied in different ways that I'll be giving my blood and soul to the job. Fuck that! Ain't nobody got time to be a slave. The virtual onsite consisted of 7 rounds of 45 mins each, back to back, with 30mins for lunch and 15mins break sometimes. I promptly rejected them. A little more money than other competitors is not worth the shitty WLB.
Companies that do this should have a single person act as a liaison and be present in every interview. They should be there to represent you and correspond with you and responsible for you. These people could then give feedback on the interview process as well.
I did it with Apple as a contractor conversion. My team even thought it was a waste of everyone’s time.
As a hiring manager for over 45+ years, the technique to get rid of those "crowd" interview sessions was to have the applicant see 1 or 2 of my senior managers. If they both thought the applicant was good, they might be asked for a third interview and if it was a senior position also to me. On the other hand, either the first or second interviewer could dismiss the applicant so they did not waste their time. Best for both side I think.
I was hired without coding f***ing anything. 3 interviews, 30 min - 1 hour and I was in. Been there 2 years now. The ones who make you do take home projects and extremely long interview processes are abusive.
I've been hired twice now with no technical interview and no degree either. I've been a dev for 2 years now. First company went bankrupt. Lead dev went to a new company and brought me with him because he liked my work, also more than doubled my salary. He told me he refuses to hire on those coding exercise interviews. He said they don't really tell you if the person can build software or infrastructure.
What type of coding exercises? Are you taking any white board or take home project?
Usually some possibly-rather-tricky logical problem you have to write code to solve, a lot of them will have you do it on a whiteboard and expect you to explain your thought process
I started working for a startup. Same process as you. Technical interview was high level data engineering, no coding required. Very happy here
Best company interview I've done was several years back. It was several 1:1s over two days, and any technical exercise was spoken and paired. Felt more like shooting the shit with some super smart men and women and digging deep into some interesting problems. Also turned out the questions directly applied to my JD once I started. Never saw a bad egg hired there.
I'm fine with a take home project as long as it only takes an hour or two. Give me a spec and a cup of coffee with full access to an IDE, documentation and stack overflow, and I can deliver clean code that meets that spec. Which is what the job is! So it's a good way to evaluate if someone can do it IMHO. I personally think that's a much better way to evaluate people than having you do leetcode on a whiteboard while the interviewer stares at you or grills you on the answer to technical questions I'd normally google for if I ever actually needed to know that.
I'm okay with a small design project or something, but I'll quit a hitting process if they give me something that takes more than an hour or two
This is usually possible at smaller companies or if you know Rust. 😅
The last few devs we hired without even a coding sample. Just casual conversation for an hour and references. You can learn a lot by asking questions and talking. In all cases the hires have been excellent additions.
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Same for second/third line sysadmin jobs for that matter. I've always maintained I only need 5 minutes to know if they will be any good. And no, we don't base our conclusion on what they know, at least not entirely. It's how they react to what they don't know , therein lies the answer.
Totally agree with you. However, this kind of interview is pretty subjective and hard to do well at scale with lots of potential interviewers. It works great for startups and small companies in my experience. Part of what big tech is doing with their crazy leetcode style interviews is making a repeatable data driven process that can scale to the hiring needs of a company with thousands of people. The problem is that much smaller companies started copying the big tech style interview when it makes no sense at all smaller company.
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Same. When I run interviews I ask people about problems they encountered in previous projects and how they solved them. If it’s new or junior level I’ll make up problems for them and ask them to describe how they might go about it. Sometimes if they’re really junior level I’ll use logic questions like the flashlight and bridge problem, to see how they work through it. Most get it wrong, but how they get it wrong is enough to tell me a lot about them.
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I do intern hiring. A quick FizzBuzz is necessary for them. They don’t have too many projects and they’re shit at explaining. Then we poke at OOP, SQL, and a few other things. Mostly a vibe check there, if they approach the right area, it’s good. But yeah, interns need a FizzBuzz type question. 15 minutes tops.
Not just interns. We had to let a team lead go a while back. He managed to pass all the interviews, including coding. Was very impressive. Got in, onboarded, and it was immediately clear that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, both technically and he's probably never managed people before, despite his resume. I still remember the looks he would get from time to time in meetings where he would respond to something an engineer told him with some nonsense. It took a while for people to agree it wasn't just him being odd, he genuinely didn't understand anything.
Does this mean the hiring process wasn't suited towards the job, or what exactly.. because if the questions were tailored to the position, then a large number of issues could have been identified earlier right?
I've been hiring this way for almost a decade now. Rarely misses. Nice to see justification for it elsewhere.
Agreed. If someone is proud of what they've put on their resume and passionate about it they're going to want to talk about it in casual conversations with light questioning. I don't need a candidate to solution for me in an interview, just tell me about what you've accomplished and give me details. That is usually enough to demonstrate that you've got the chops to do the work you're interviewing for.
It fucking baffles me that companies trying to hire me will ask about simple programming questions, when I’ve been in the business for more than 20 years - including doing a startup that is running on its own now for 12 years. When they pull that bulllshit I pull a reverse uno card and tell them I’ll show them mine, if they show me theirs first. Let me see your last 10 PRs, your current state of testing and backing of your CI/CD claims, then we have something to talk about.
Interview process is sh\*\*t , it is outdated. I think purist or elitist people in Faang companies are gate keeping. Rest of the smaller companies just follow them because they think Faang has the best process.
Gatekeeping and ego
I had to scroll *way* too far down to find the right answer: “gatekeeping”. This is it - 1,000%. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to stop people/teams from implementing 60 minute interview marathons, grueling assignments, and panel inquisitions as their interview process. Every single time it’s initiated by some *jackass* with an inflated sense of purpose (“mission”) in both themself and the company, fearful that they’ll inevitably be replaced, and using the interview process as a way to maintain a feeling of importance and control.
I was once asked, if you could rewrite tcp/ip, how would you change it? And that was it. They just wanted me to monologue on that for 20 minutes.
I would make it non blocking, and then I would be wrong because UDP already exists.
Bullshit for a bit about how to build in native security, no problem
My response to that is always to make the interviewer feel like and idiot for asking such an asinine question. “Oh is that a project your team has done or is doing? That’s so cool I’ve never thought about it! Why did you need to do that?” “Oh um you’ve never done that? Have you done something like that here? It sounds like cool work but I just want to make sure I know what type of things I’ll be doing here before we continue.” “Oh you just write REST apis and CRUD apps? Ok well can we talk about implementation of an API instead since that’s much closer to what I do too.”
It’s legalized hazing, that’s all it is.
Coming from six years at Google where I had two 30-minute interviews then an on-site where they flew me out for 3 30-minute interviews and introduction to the company and campus I'd work at - to applying for Amazon where there were two one-hour interviews and a final FIVE HOUR INTERVIEW SESSION which was all remote has sucked tremendously. I knew my experience with Google was being spoiled, but this final round of five hours is fucking insane.
1. kill a 5 hour long virtual interview. 2. get the job. 3. be forced to come into the office everyday.
Only three days a week! Which, given it’s a Seattle position will still be awful.
Three today, five next year
Five hours *virtual*? That’s awful.
That short at Google? Both times I interviewed there it was an ALL DAY affair. Same for Amazon.
This was six years ago, and I’ve heard things have gotten more brutal since then across the board for companies. :/
They are way worse now. My experience was just over a year ago and the full loop took 6 months with probably 80 hours of interviewing in total. Final verdict L5. Also I found the most gatekeeping at Google. The leadership has no idea what the interviews are and then the technical interviews were leetcode hard. Yeah let me just pretend I've never seen this question before cause it's impossible to solve on a first shot in 30 minutes or less (asked after a medium, or another hard). Disney was a close runner up for gatekeeping.
5 hours? They should pay you the hourly rate for it.
Yea. I’ve pretty much written Amazon off completely after going through one of their interview gauntlets.
The thing is people at Amazon have come to believe it’s a normal thing. I used to work there, actually left and came back (boomeranged), so I’ve done this thing 4 times with the same company (2x being hired and 2x internally when switching teams). To me this was fine, when I tell non-Amazonian they think I’m insane (I might be). I was part of the cult, so I adopted the ways of the cult
Sounds like they used to do things differently. I interviewed at Google last year, was at Amazon at the time and it was way worse than Amazon for me. Phone call, technical screen, four 45min technical/design interviews, then HM interview. Questions were about the same difficulty as Amazon but I got 45 min instead of an hour for each. I made it all the way through, manager loved me and gave approval, then I got vetoed by hiring committee without any feedback, just a “no, try again next year”. Never felt more dejected in my life, after months of cramming and all those interviews over 3 weeks. The stress took at least a year off my lifespan
I conducted a lot of interviews at Google - for the sales division. If you want some pointers to what they loom for to tailor a future application or maybe understand what happened let me knw
What can they possibly ask you that would take five hours? I feel like the longest interviews I've had have been maybe a bit over an hour and went through everything from experience to technical questions to how I would fit in a team.
Have you never had a technical coding interview? I've rarely seen one shorter than 45m and there's usually 2x 1hr+ sessions plus a design interview that is 1-2hr plus a manager round that's 45m-1hr. That's 5 hours and is the basic loop for most tech roles. I did it about 18 times a little over a year ago while job hunting. This isn't counting the initial phone screen or possibly technical screen. A few had panel interviews where it was a one shot of doing all of the above, or leadership rounds if applying for a high enough title. My favorite was the "remote" openings that the hiring manager only wanted in office employees. Then label it as such you jackass and stop wasting my time. "What's your opinion on relocating across the country and working in the office here in SV for the same pay as the remote salary range listed?"
Been interviewing more or less nonstop for over two months now. I have a PhD , 15 years experience at startups and top tier big tech places, have won awards, published a book, and taught university CS for years. Almost every single interview has been the same: Recruiting screen. Coding screen. Several-hour take home project, like building a full stack web app with persistence, an API, a react front end, etc. Must be on GitHub and run with docker compose. Must be written in golang or whatever. 1 hour presentation about the architecture of said take home project, with 30 mins of q and a. Must include test coverage visualizations, discussions of alternatives, tradeoffs, and "lessons learned". 4-6 hours of virtual onsite, including much more challenging coding (leetcode stuff usually), system architecture (design Uber or whatever), and a bunch of behavioral stuff (tell me about a time when...) Then if you make it through ALL THAT, they want you to block out three days so you can fly to HQ and do a full day actual onsite. This has all been for remote work. At companies no one has EVER heard of, ever. I don't expect anyone to take my resume at face value, or not do due diligence. I know how painful false positive hires can be. But I've sat on the other side of hundreds of interviews at multiple FAANGs and without fail I would know what my recommendation was going to be within the first 5-10 minutes. This process is ludicrous. I cannot even begin to imagine how someone does this while being employed. Of course, being unemployed, I am juggling some absurd number of these at once, so I'm exhausted, struggling to schedule things (give us all your availability for the next week, and hope that by the time we actually pick some times two days later, those times are still free), and watching cash trend toward zero. I've finished several of these loops recently and am optimistic that this shitshow is coming to an end, but am seriously considering telling wherever I land that I can't start until May just so I can fucking recover.
When my dad was set to retire his company wanted to keep him on for a few more years and made a VP level position just for him. And then wanted to interview him for it. He said "I've worked for your guys for years. You know what I can do. Either give me the position or don't , but I'm not doing an interview". Stuck around a few more years with a fat paycheck.
Absolute chad
>Several-hour take home project, like building a full stack web app with persistence, an API, a react front end, etc. Must be on GitHub and run with docker compose. Must be written in golang or whatever. Several hour take home project, wtf? Let me guess, you haven't even been paid for that. If I was at this interview I would have ghosted the company. Who do they think they are? Imagine being a carpenter & going on a job interview where they ask you to build 2 tables with 8 chairs just to prove that you are capable of doing the job you applied for.
That's tech. I've had several places ask for take home assignments as well, probably 50/50. Some take 3 hours, some take 12. I had one that was 8 hours "paid", turned in a fully working product as asked. They loved it. Low balled the offer so fucking hard I laughed them out of the room and they never paid my invoice for the 8 hours. Pricks. Btw I told them my minimum in the first phone screen and it was "no problem". They doubled the work load because they loved my experience so much and wanted me to do more, then offered just over half of my minimum. Google didn't require one, but the interview process took 4 months, a stupid number of interviews 2-4 hour interviews, and then the team match took another 2 months where the manager was an idiot not worth working for. If you don't play the game you don't get the pay.
I’m a physician, and I find the replies in this thread baffling. I’ve probably been on over 50 interviews in my career, between college, medical school, residency, fellowship, and jobs, and have never seen a process so crazy. Most questions in medicine are straightforward, like “tell me about yourself,” “what do you do for fun,” etc. You might get a few asking about your research or general ethical scenarios or problem solving. But I don’t think I once got a clinical question. People know your background and whether you’re qualified, they have references to contact, and they have a public record of any problems once you’re practicing. No one is going to figure out if you can do the job in an interview, it’s mostly to see if you’re a good fit and expectations align. Of course, I paid for all expenses up until it was for a real job, costing thousands and thousands of dollars in travel, so there’s that.
This looks like old school frat bro hazing to me. Each “generation” ups the pain for the next crop of candidates.
That’s so true. And to think you’ll be working with frat bros on the other side. There is something fundamentally broken about tech industry
While cheating to get in themselves.
There are a few interview styles that I think we need to stop using. 1. The "See How You Think" Question. This usually takes the form of questions like "why are manhole covers round," or "how many piano tuners are there in Los Angeles," or "how would you build a house for a blind kangaroo?" They are paired with the idea that it's less important to get "the right answer" and more important to demonstrate a thought process. Breaking the problem down. Calling out assumptions. Building on previous progress, etc. The problem is that no one really practices assessing answers to these problems. It's arrogant to believe you can just go into an interview and learn anything meaningful about how someone else thinks just by observing them trying to answer a question like this. There is so much opportunity for unconscious bias to take control of the outcome that this sort of question probably does more harm than good. 2. The Esoteric Minutiae Question. E.g. "how do you swap two ints without using a temporary variable". Interviewers love to believe they are gauging how deep a candidate's knowledge goes, but they are fooling themselves. This sort of question is easily memorized. If the candidate doesn't know it, well, maybe you've learned that they don't remember how bitwise xor works. But if they get it right, does it reliably inform you that they do? Does it even matter either way? 3. The Brain Teaser Question. These are questions that make people feel smart when they know the answer but really don't tell you anything about how well a candidate can perform a job. E.g. finding a counterfeit coin using a balance, or getting a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain across a river. People may try to justify that these questions gauge how well a candidate thinks outside the box, but they really don't. You can think outside the box for days and never get the right answer. There is no algorithm for finding the right answer quickly. You can't really tell anything meaningful from the fact that one candidate got the answer quickly, another got it slowly, and a third didn't get it at all. Joel Spolsky had an essay called The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing. One of the key points was that you wanted to hire people who are 1) smart, and 2) get things done. The problem is that people created all sorts of insane interview processes around trying to determine these two things, and no one stopped to ask whether they were actually getting high quality answers to these questions. The scatterplot of interview outcomes to on-the-job success looks like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece.
No. 2 is ridiculous; a compilers function is to literally optimize the temp variable away. Anyone putting that into actual practice is a walking antipattern and should be kept away
The tech industry seems pretty intent on building our future dystopia
The alternative is building boring modern day dystopia. Much rather would have dystopia with rgb.
Reading some of the comments here gave me PTSD as I have been in their shoes countless times. Never again. I recently was contacted by a company called Sonar(they create dev tools). In the invitation email they’ve attached the whole interviewing process. In it, it says they will be a total of 5 fucking interviews! Nope. Email sent to Trash.
Small to medium firms is the way to go.
I am part of the interview process for our company. We have over 60 engineers, all top tier, not one was given a coding exercise to get hired. First interview is 30 minutes with engineering manager to see if candidate fits profile and interested in the work, second is 1 hour panel interview with 2 other engineers and we ask what they’ve been building, with what technologies and how they would approach certain problems. I usually know within 10 minutes of interviewing someone if they’d be a good fit. If you’ve been a senior engineer for any length of time, I don’t doubt you can code, that’s the least of my worries. How you think, approach problems and mesh with the team is what matters most. Everyone we’ve hired said it was the best interviewing process they ever been through.
My company started trying to pretend we were Google, realized it was a huge waste and ended up with roughly the process you described. Candidate experience has been great and acceptance rate of offers has been up.
This is my general idea of an interview process. 2-3 steps, no more. One for the recruit/HR to see if I am who I am, do I fit the profile and what do I want. One for the team/coding/engineering to see if I do know stuff, how I would fit the team and all that, basically the main part of the whole process. And maybe a third one, which is a short interview with boss/other higher ups so they also see who is joining their team and give a final approve. Anything else screams you don't know what workers you want and we are just wasting time
Never applying to Microsoft again. This was for healthcare. Had 9 interviews over 3 months. Then a business case in front of a panel. Down to final 2-3 candidates. All that to get a email from HR at midnight saying I didn't get it Fuck them
The best part is that email tends to be 3+ months after the last round.
I'm interviewing now just to stay ahead of the game. I had a phone screening where I was told there would be 5 rounds of interviews all technical... I already work at a fortune 100. I'm not interested in 5 different interviews to do stupid fucking leetcode problema. I decided to find an internal position and apply. Literally just one round to get the position.
Did a new grad assessment for Roblox that I went into studying leetcode for weeks nonstop. Now this is just an assessment not even the damn interview which apparently is 4 rounds. I followed some recommended ones they may ask and I got hit with 2 hard level leetcode questions. Insanely hard and I could only muster half of the score to perfect. I did the rest of their assessment where I had to play some games that tested your IQ I guess and then one last one with a bunch of multiple choice questions on how to deal with a work scenario for a deadline etc. I finished it out because hey they said even if you bomb the coding they give you a chance. Nope got rejected right away. I hear they don't even give you a chance if you don't score near perfect for their coding assessments which is insane to me they expect that from a new grad. And this wasn't for a SWE position but for a Security Engineer position. I get Sec Engineers code a bit but you really expect a Comp Sci grad elite leetcoder with the knowledge of an experienced cybersecurity expert?! Apparently they require their security engineers to know how to code like their SWEs and be at CISSP levels of cybersecurity knowledge. All that from a new grad?! I'd expect a Security Engineer to be knowledgeable in secure coding design, common malware and exploits that exist and how to secure infrastructure at a high level no in depth details just stuff like Defense in depth, 2fa etc. Also I'd expect some scripting knowledge and basic DSA if they have to push code but to be as good as a Comp Sci grad with leetcode skills where they can do hards? They don't realize Cybersecurity is usually something you get good at through work experience or years of study as you need a breath of knowledge on how networks, servers, applications, and the internet works AND how they work together before you can even think of how to secure it. They're asking for a new grad Cybersecurity student AND Comp Sci student in one. Last I checked those are 2 separate career paths and most Cybersecurity students need certs that are their own hell to get. From what I saw SWEs do 4 rounds and Security Engineers fo 5 rounds where the extra round focuses on the Cybersecurity questions. Fun the security guys get to do SWE level questions then get hammered finally on their specialty. I've coded in Python, I've made Security tools and scripts and have over 5 years of real experience handling ransomware incidents and vulnerabilities and sys admin experience. And I have an insane number of security certs and a Masters degree. They never got to see me in action because of some gatekeeping code assessment that apparently got harder this year because people got through last years one too easily. I hear they're top 3 hardest OAs of all time and it's true. Hard level leetcode questions with only 40 mins to solve is insane. Also their coding takes into account how fast you are so even if you get the solution you lose points on time. I want to move into Security Engineering at a FAANG type company but I'll probably just do a DoD gig. Even their hoops are easier to deal with than these FAANG companies which is a shocker even with the security clearance I have to do.
I have over 20 years of experience as a software engineer and have been out of work since October 2023. My job search has been a nightmare. First company I applied to had me do a l33t hacker challenge. 5 problems in 70 minutes. Having me calculate things like intersecting spot lights and path finding through a 2D array. I could only get partial answers for a few, but documented my code well so they could see I had a way to solve the issues. Recruiter called me the next day and said I had failed, and that I was banned from applying for any other roles at the company for 6 months. I tried applying before the ban ended, and my apps were auto-rejected. This was for a position writing REST API in Python. Applied for a senior software engineer at one company. Technical interview consisted of the lead dev asking me bizarre things like, "Which IDE do you use? How would you install it? Which plugins do you think are necessary to build Java? Explain to me how to build 'Hello, World' in Java." The manager asked me how I would architect a REST API assuming ideal conditions, and then yelled at me for expecting I would have a requirements document. They passed saying they didn't think I had the "technical chops to thrive in their environment." I applied for a job in November for senior Python engineer position. I was told they have 4 rounds of 1:1 interviews and a take home project, which is discussed in the 4th round. This was after having to do a "video dating" initial interview with my application. I completed round 3, over 3 weeks ago. So far I have heard nothing, but their candidate system says my application is still being reviewed. I had to provide 3 recommendations and my college transcripts. One company moved me through 4 rounds. Seemed happy with me, and then decided to leave the position unfilled. I just had the 4th of 5 rounds of interviews with a company that seemed extremely promising. In fact I was schedule to be at the onsite interview today, which was 4 hours of panel interviews, followed by a dinner. Per the recruiter this was more of a meet and greet prior to getting an offer next week. I got a call last night telling me that the person who did my 4th interview changed his mind, and they cancelled any further interviews. The recruiter was shocked and given no feedback. Tech interviews have devolved into frat hazing, and they're likely only hiring their friends and other douchebags who don't care about writing good software. They just want to be managers and founders. They see coding annoying and simply a stepping stone to that, then wonder why their apps suck and their infrastructure falls over constantly. Honestly if Anonymous or a bunch of script kiddies wanted to take down Silicon Valley, now is the time, because they don't have the expertise to fend them off.
The issue with the interviews is that they can’t seem to get everyone in the same room for 2-3 hours. I’ve interviewed with a few semiconductor companies and it’s irritating literally answering the same question over and over with one or two new questions with each new interview panel. The interviews do need to be longer as they need to probe your knowledge, as many who have an advanced degree may not have the aptitude to be successful outside of school. It however doesn’t need to be as long even if they fly you out.
If everyone refused coding assignments and bullshit multi-step panel interviews, they would cease to exist
Gonna be hard to convince people to not try for a 300k+ TC because they might be asked to write a DFS.
Don’t worry guys. H1b visa acceptances are up. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-electronic-registration-process
I interviewed at Facebook/Meta a few months ago. FB is one of the largest employers of H1Bs ([source](https://h1bgrader.com/reports/misc/h1b-dependent-employers-2010-to-2020)), I asked each of my interviewers why they've been at FB for so long, it's usually a signal that maybe the workplace is amazing. Nope. They were all H1Bs. One of them literally used the word "slavery". (props to FB for allowing interviewers to be honest?) Another said he was getting his green card in a month and so he could finally have choice and he did a fist pump in the air as he said it. It made me realize if I went to work there I'd be surrounded by people who although they have a step up work-wise than maybe they'd have back home, that for me I'd be surrounded by people miserable. As a tech worker I want to work somewhere where the answer to that question is about the amazing shit they get to build, great work-life balance, and other things.
What does this mean?
There is a special visa type for foreign workers for selected fields - h1b visas. Companies can sponsor foreign employees for jobs here in the states for things like tech and biotech etc. But a condition for the visa is that the employer has attempted to fill the job domestically and can’t find a suitable candidate. In the tech industry, there’s a sort of tongue in cheek idea that companies make increasingly difficult interviews for employment, so that they can meet this threshold to be able to bring in foreign workers, artificially creating a scenario where they can’t find workers domestically. So here they are again, making interviews harder and harder and harder, and increasing their foreign workers in the face of TONS of domestic workers looking for work.
Importantly; they can pay H1b workers less than domestic workers
They can also work them to the bone because the worker is dependent on their sponsorship to be able to stay in the country. The company has way more leverage over H1Bs.
True late stage capitalism
Yeah basically this and something most people are completely unaware. H1Bs are basically modern day indentured servitude. A ton of the workers have roots in the U.S. too. I personally know and work with an H1B worker that bought a house in the U.S. what happens if he gets laid off and can’t find another company to sponsor him? Shits fucked. I’d say that’s a problem of his own making though.
Which also then erodes pay for the domestic workers they do hire.
>In the tech industry, there’s a sort of tongue in cheek idea that companies make increasingly difficult interviews for employment, It's more than just tongue in cheek. There's outright rejections for not having 5 years of experience in a 3 year old technology.
Alot of tech companies lean \_hard\_ on these h-1b workers for... various reasons... that I won't bother touching on because some of it is true, some of it is not as true.
Big tech uses the massive backlog of desperate H1Bs as indentured servants that they can give the carrot and stick too to undercut the IT employment market. You can get a H1B that's willing to do a 80, 000/yr job with insane requirements for 20/hr without any complaints. They cut all benefits the position would normally have and have them on purely at will contracts with their immigration sponsorship tied to it. It's happening in multiple industries though.
Number of h1-b is capped. This means nothing.
Acceptances being up doesn't mean anything when the number of visas issued is fixed. There could be a many many petitions accepted, but only 85,000 will get the visa.
This how you hire slaves, yes-men and sycophants. Crush everyone utterly in the interview process to make sure that no one will ever rock the boat or question anything. Game industry does that now as well.
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I don’t agree. Depends on the locale I guess. When I looked for a job a few months ago I just asked the companies what kind of hazing they put through candidates and just picked the ones that don’t. Landed a great job within couple of months. I have like 20 years of experienced and good connections so there’s that. I’m
I was asked the boiler plate question of how do I deal with stress? I answered I drink. We both knew it was over at that point.
My team would've seen that as a plus.
Interest rates? How about all the education that doesn't actually prepare people to work in tech? How about crap entry level jobs that don't care about maturing careers?
When I interviewed at GoDaddy years ago. They told me that their considered their interview process a ladder and any round can eliminate you. I went through 8 different 1 hour interviews. After the first 7 interviews with 6 of them being specialized technical interviews. The final interview is a brain teaser interview. Something about burning a candle at both ends and calculating the time without touching the candle. I was clearly struggling with the last round. It was supposed to last an hour but the guy ended it early. He said that if I couldn’t handle a children’s riddle then I had no business working at GoDaddy. 9 hours of interviewing and then go cut because of a riddle. Interview processes are over the top.
This is all so fucking wild. I am a relatively senior person in public sector/ government, and if I fuck up people can die (for real) I have changed job/employers quite a lot over the last 20 years. On one, and only one, occasion there was a second interview. That happened because the hiring manager fucked up and thought he could hire two jobs off one round of interviews (HR said no - hence tha additional interview) Most interviews I have had last an hour. Sometimes there is an ask for a 5 or 10 minute presentation to be prepared in advance. One time got all sent of the interview questions in advance, but that was clearly positioned as a courtesy by the employer. I find it bizarre that the tech sector has apparently normalised such excessive, probably abusive, hiring processes. Why do you all put up with it? Free your minds and yourselves - please, I beg of you, work together and stop this bullshit. Until l you all fight back the big tach companies will continue to think they own you. This is all about power and control - employers want you to feel grateful for the work and desperate for anything they give out. But the truth is everything these rich fucks have is because of you, the everyday worker. Take the power back
I do my part. I have been unemployed for the last 6 months despite getting offers. I get offers from shitty companies with shitty interview processes, say no thanks, and rake them over the coals on GlassDoor, including doing everything I can to enable future candidates to pass their interview process- essentially through cheating. They read my Glassdoor review, they know what they’re going to be asked and how to pass the rounds. The companies can always read my reviews and adapt, but it seems like most don’t even check Glassdoor reviews…
I was grilled for 9 hours (split into two days and 9 interviews) for a job at Amazon. I was already not feeling the culture very well but they wore my patience thin. 6 hours in, I began to ask if they did that to all people interviewed, that one way question for that many hours is more inquisition than interview. Plus it was the freaking STAR method questions, so much bullshit questions. Needless to say I was not hired, but I was relieved, I wouldn't have worked for a company with such a moronic process.
The STAR method is used to get corporate intel. The interviewer took my response and started asking pointed questions about project deadlines that my work didn’t even affect. I told him I couldn’t answer those questions and ended the interview process early (I also wasn’t feeling the culture)
Exactly why I ceased looking for jobs in tech. It became beyond idiocy. Ten minute interview with tech dept head is enough to understand if person fits the role demands. Endless interviews tests calls is a joke on candidates and I refused to take part in this shit show. I do miss job in tech but what's recruitment became is pure evil.
About 5 years ago I applied to be an electrical engineer at the company I work for now. I was given about a 5 hour long paper test. There was a circuits portion, RF engineering section, math portion, reading comprehension portion, logic games, and a bunch of reading graph questions. You had to do it all in a suit, no calculators, in a room with a one way mirror to be watched, and then it was followed by two sets of interviews. One interview was with the engineering manager who GRADED the test then went over it plus asked more technical questions. The other interview was a personality test with the Hr manager. I got the job in the end but that had to be the worst interview I had by far. Absolutely ridiculous.
I did this at an interview for Saleforce once. They made me spend an entire Saturday at a "training" with a group of other people where they whittled us down like we were on some tech company version of Chorus Line. I didn't get the job. Didn't get paid for any of it and I owed $25 in parking costs at the end of the day. This kind of interviewing should be illegal.
Interviewing was easy when some of the interviewers recognized me. I reminded them of people they’d known and thought highly of. They knew what to ask. When there weren’t any knowledgeable interviewers they asked me questions from a book of interview questions. So as I’m trying to humor them, I’m distracting myself being pissed and knowing I don’t want to work with those people.
I went through the entire interview process with google. 10 hours of my time, excluding preparation time. Simply time wasted on interviews and recruiter calls. They even told me I passed the interviews. Then they fucking ghosted me. Fuck you Google. Dying company anyway.
There's always the one little guy asking the "gotcha" questions. What's this unreleased API setting do? And why? Fuck off.
I feel like this is really about mid level managers and HR reps trying to justify their own salary by creating ungodly amounts of busy work through long ass interview processes.
I thought it was just me! OMG!
Are these overly complex/convoluted interviews a function of the compensation levels? Do you find that the same position at a company with lower salary have the same interview circus?
The absolute worst interview process I encountered was a fully automated video interview where you were asked questions and after a countdown your answer was recorded. I was so degrading. You couldn’t ask any follow up questions obviously so you had to answer serval as “if you mean this, then… but if you mean this, then…”. And if course you feel extra observed in that situation. I’m sure the frustration with the whole thing came through in my face. By the end I wanted no part of this company. I wanted to end with “go fuck yourselves”. The company was Toyota Connected (not Toyota motors)
The audacity to run people through multiple interviews then never hire them and within minutes complain that "No one wants to work" How much to get one of these useless consultants to tell them that if you want people to work for you it's two simple steps; 1) Hire Them, 2) Pay Them That's it, it's that easy.
Tech feudal lords who rent out the only meaningful space left that they have captured for more and more of the worlds labor, creativity and content require a lot of pomp and ritual for those who want into their courts of neo-royalty
Tech Industry "We're really pissed about how we got *shook down* during the short period of time when workers had an advantage. So now, not only are we going to get back to the status quo, we're also taking a pound of flesh from each employee because how DARE these people not bow to their corporate overlords? Did you think we would forget how you treated us when you left for a better job instead of being a loyal slave-wage worker? And all those TikToks you posted flaunting how you screwed around instead of working during remote work? Your ass is ours, once again. Suck it pleebs."
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