
My Three And A Half Month Facebook Job Interview - icey
http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-job-interview/
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synnik
I don't have a clue about HR at Facebook, but this sounds like someone who was
never seriously considered, and only kept "in the running" because he was
submitted by an internal candidate. Especially if he was explicitly told that
they were doing due diligence on OTHER candidates. To me, that is very clearly
a message of, "You are good enough to hire, but only if our first 10 choices
decline the job."

But there is a lesson to be learned here -- don't start scaling back your
personal work/projects just because a potential job would be a conflict of
interest.

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philwelch
"I can only speculate as to why so many layers of job interviews seem to be
required here in California — possibly because this is an “at will” state.
That means you can quit a job without notice, and also get fired without
notice. Given the cost of hiring and training a new employee to fill a
vacancy, it’s understandable that potential candidates are given a gauntlet of
interviews. I’ve heard of colleagues going through as many as eleven sets of
interviews with some of the older web-based giants — especially for manager
roles — and even waiting as long 8-12 months for an offer. I’m just not used
to that."

That's the opposite of what you'd expect, actually. Countries where it's very
hard or very socially taboo to fire people without very good reason (Europe,
Japan) you would expect to have very difficult hiring procedures, but in at-
will countries and states, you can afford more risk taking and hiring
shouldn't be quite as arduous.

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lmkg
Being able to fire people at-will would encourage companies to save costs with
a shorter hiring process. Employees being able to quit at-will would encourage
companies to be judicious not to get someone who will flake, or get a free
ride on training/certification and scoot.

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lsb
Training time is quite costly: not only are they learning your systems on your
dime, but they're learning them from people far senior (who are teaching them
on your dime), so you need to make sure you're going to get a good ROI, and
the interview's goal is to confirm that.

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rjurney
The google style long-term interrogation is a major turn off. I wouldn't even
consider working somewhere that interviews in that style. One six hour white
board grilling is bad enough. Two is the limit. More than that... seriously,
piss off. Why do people go through all that - days and days of evaluation?

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gmurphy
I come from a country where resume decides most things and interviews are mere
sanity checks, so at the time (2005), I didn't know what to expect of my day-
long Google interview. At the end of the day though, I emailed home: "Even if
I didn't get the job, that was AWESOME" - if you can accept the potential ego-
bruise, interviewing that way can be pretty fun. It's like mountain biking,
but with whiteboards.

Not that there aren't better interview systems, but I'm not sure how well many
of them scale.

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hga
Geeze, is 3.5 months a typical current or California hiring period???

My rule in the '80s and '90s was that any company that couldn't make up its
mind within one month was dropped from consideration; the only time I perhaps
regretted this was with Thinking Machines, which started the offer process
many weeks after I'd timed out on them and had found another job.

But I later gathered they had the worst Boston area hiring practices pretty
much for all time, e.g. it took them three tries to fill the position I
applied for and in one notorious case, they contacted an applicant's current
employer without clearing it with him....

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_delirium
It's not "typical", but 1+ month isn't uncommon, especially at large companies
that require the group actually hiring you to first make up their own mind,
then clear it through (possibly several) higher levels of management. Intel
seems to not infrequently take 2 months or so, from anecdotal evidence, even
for successful applicants (not just forgetting to reject unsuccessful ones).

(It'd be interesting if anyone could compile some data.)

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alex_c
_During that period, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to create my own outside
Facebook applications. However, my would-be-colleague didn’t know the answer
and the HR person didn’t answer. So I suspended working on my in-progress apps
and doing any writing about Facebook for my clients for most of the latter
half of 2009, losing out on earnings I badly needed._

For what it's worth, when I interviewed with Facebook in 2008 I was told that
it wouldn't be a problem to keep maintaining and working on my Facebook apps
outside of work. I guess writing about Facebook might be a bit more difficult.

Also, I got an answer only a day or two after the on-site interviews. I
wouldn't say the whole process moved quickly, but definitely not unreasonably
slow.

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ashu
That is uncommonly long. In most cases, decisions for Engg. positions are made
in _a lot_ less time. [I work for FB]

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ojbyrne
Given that he wouldn't be a "software engineer" (TN-visa compatible) and a
contract employee, I don't see how the USCIS would have let him work in
California (unless he's an american citizen or something - the article implies
he's Canadian). Perhaps it took facebook a while to actually figure that out.

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djcapelis
He could also have a permanent residency card. There are quite a few Canadians
floating around the US who maintain Canadian citizenship but have US residency
for some reason or another, sometimes via marriage, sometimes for some other
reason.

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ojbyrne
He suggested he was working in Toronto. I do know that there are plenty of
Canadians with permanent residency in the US, because I keep hoping one of
them will adopt me.

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ashishbharthi
From my experience so far, longer it takes lesser are the chances of getting
selected.

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MicahWedemeyer
I dunno about CA, but I've interviewed with 2 startups in Atlanta, GA. In both
cases I had a response in under 24 hours.

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rjurney
There's a spectrum. Lots of companies have that policy - response within 24-48
hours after an on-site interview. Its sensible.

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aditya
Why is recruiting so broken??!!

