
Are bay area companies trying to tire candidates into submission? - venuzr
Are companies trying to tire &amp; hire engineers by forcing them to invest too much time on the recruiting process?  Or is it something in the candidate&#x27;s profile which could be giving them second thoughts.<p>I recently started a job hunt and there have been 3 companies which I talked to so far.<p>a) Early stage startup: Interview process: I counted at least 1 homework and presentation, along with 3 separate on-site visits to their office.  I declined to pursue.<p>b) Late stage startup: Had phone screen + 4 hrs of on-site interviews.  Was told as I was leaving that there would be another round of interviews.  Wish I had known earlier.<p>c) Established company: After (a) and (b), I asked what was the process before starting.  Was told it would be just phone screen and half a day of on-site interviews.  Now after finishing that, they want to have 2 more interviews (phone&#x2F;online) &quot;to meet other team members&quot;.<p>Is this the new normal?<p>PS : I have several years of relevant experience in the industry and I recently moved to bay area
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RogerL
Yes, this is the new (ab)normal, unfortunately. No one has any evidence
whatsoever that all these hoops have any relevance to on the job performance.
All we can do is push back. Be clear with HR on what you expect from the
interview (I need to interview the company just as much as the company needs
to interview me - if you give me 5 minutes to ask questions "at the end" I
_will not_ accept your offer). Even then you will walk into ambushes.

I can tell you that being honest about your treatment after the interview will
win you no friends - more likely attacks on your character. So pleasant.

Anyway, if you need a job you just have to suck it up. If you have a job, I
recommend pointing this out repeatedly - that you are not a supplicant, that
your own, tiny measure of them is this interview process, and that if it goes
poorly you will not be accepting a job offer even if offered one.

Never saw anything like this on the East coast or in flyover country
(1988-2012), yet somehow, just somehow, these companies manage to hire and
retain talent just as well as the west coast companies. Everyone ignores that
data point, but it is the elephant in the room.

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brandonb
I used to be on the hiring committee at Google, and sometimes we'd ask for
extra interviews if the person was very strong, but feedback was mixed in a
particular area. For example, if a candidate bombed one algorithms question
but performed strongly on an algorithms question from a different interviewer,
then we might want a third data point.

That happened for <10% of people -- it was really the exception case.

So I think b) and c) could be that process.

a) sounds like they were just disorganized -- which happens a lot with early
stage startups. Takes founders time to learn how to hire well and I don't
think any accelerators or VCs are providing interview training to their
startups.

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lingua_franca
I find the interview process at Google/Facebook extremely disturbing for
senior devs like author of Homebrew. Nobody can remember how to manipulate
binary trees/linked lists/(un)directed graphs after working on real world
projects for several years. Why can't you just interview like the rest of the
industry? I understand some deadwood might get in this way; just simply
fire'em after several months on the job. Netflix is an excellent example in
this regard.

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alain94040
Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations?
Which company you join will have a huge impact on your future. You should do
your due diligence as much as the hiring company does. Do I really want to
spend the next few years of my life working alongside those people?

When we were a small startup (10-20 people), we'd take candidates who we are
making offers to for dinner. It's not quite an interview. It's not quite
social. But it gives both sides a little bit extra information.

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JSeymourATL
> Do you really want to join a company after only 3 hours of conversations?

Right on! The more conversations with individuals in the organization actually
works in your favor. You'll be able to compare and contrast priorities,
vision, work flows, etc... Getting team buy-in is an important consideration
for managers.

If the time commitment is a real issue for you-- share that with them. See if
they're amenable to a Skype/phone conversation instead.

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zhte415
The 'meet other team members' may be something they like to do, to get you to
like them. Get an attachment to the potential employer. A convincer against
other offers.

Multiple interviews are a red flag to me. They don't know what they want.
Interview once and get very very deep. This requires a lot of introspective
thinking knowing who you actually are, who your organisation is, and what's
needed to be successful there. When that's done, a single interview is fine.
Multiple interviews are a sign the organisation doesn't know what it is and
lacks the substance for action.

As for duration: it could take as long as it takes. But all in one take, no
reason for spacing out over multiple days.

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brudgers
The discussion trend around tech hiring seems to be toward careful selection
of candidates for employment. This is explicit advice in the orbit of YC with
the six months to make the first hire at AirBnB the case study. Not to mention
Google is well known for their potentially long recruitment cycle.

It's natural to want a potential employer to be so blown away by the resume
that they make an offer on the spot. In the Bay Area, that probably happens to
Peter Norvig with a high probability and ordinary ninjas with a lower one.

Good luck.

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alt_f4
You should push back and let them know that you don't have an infinite amount
of time to invest in their recruitment process.

For me, personally, a phone interview plus up to a day of on-site interviews
would be the maximum I'd be willing to do. If I am asked to come back for more
interviews, I will reject that.

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MalcolmDiggs
Lot's of interview seems normal. But the best companies I've interviewed at
have figured out ways to condense the process into one day on-site. So you
might go in and have 4 or 5 different interviews with different people back to
back, but you only had to show up on-site once.

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bsg75
Multiple offline stages might be acceptable, but it would be a red flag to me
if they can't conduct the necessary in-person interviewing in a single day,
unless they can communicate the process in advance.

Cases where they can't get everyone together at one time speaks to a lack of
coordination.

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aprdm
I am really curious if that's normal in other industries as well. I never did
code tests in any place I've worked for as a computer engineer.

A conversation was always enough.

