
Tech Interview Torture Chamber - nickgr
http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/tech-interview-torture-chamber
======
bit_logic
As a senior engineer who already has a good job, here's how I've adapted to
the stupid tech interview and plan on doing for future jobs:

\- Stay at my job longer and push for more raises/promotions. So far this has
worked well. I may not get more in raw $ amount vs job hopping, but when risk
adjusted (the risks of any new job such as bad manager, etc.) it's worked out
ok so far. I think some job hopping is still good early career, but at this
senior level, job hopping loses most of its advantages. Also, being senior at
a company (not just in title, but also tenure), has other benefits such as
more influence and connections within the company.

\- For future job searches, companies that don't have the algorithm/data
structures interview will get a big boost in my list. They will get first
attention.

\- If I find an interesting job that still has the bullshit process, then my
investment in the process will be very low. Basically, one or two evenings
refreshing my memory on basic algorithms/data structures and that's it. If the
interviewer asks a question expecting me to know some exact algorithm or
trick, then they are a very poor interviewer and the problem is them, not me.

~~~
bsvalley
I like your first point, though your 2nd and 3rd points tell me you haven't
applied for a while :) They've all adopted the google model, small or big
companies it doesn't matter. You start with a 45 minute technical phone screen
(algorithm/data structures), sometimes a second tech phone screen, an onsite
of at least 5 hours with at least 3 to 4 45-minute technical screens
(algo/data structures) as if it wasn't enough... let's repeat the same
exercise 10 times to make sure you'll fail at least once... Finally, an
additional "culture fit" 45 minute chat with a director or VP at the end of
the onsite. An additional home assignment is given to you when they have too
many candidates to chose from.

So it's not just about skipping companies who ask stupid questions and
definitely not about working only one or two evenings on algo stuff. Trust me
I've been through this process recently with 15 companies! I worked for a
bunch of top companies in the past and I can attest, it is extremely painful.
They want robots now and interviewers are lazy and annoying. How naive I was
when I carefully selected the only company and job I was interested in at the
beginning. Then I went through the process and got smashed in the face. I had
to align another 20-30 companies to get at least 10 to 15 tries, then an
offer. An offer from choice #15?? That sucks... it's 2017 and things have
dramatically changed.

~~~
acheron
This is not really true everywhere. I'd be really surprised if I encountered
an interview like that.

I think it's just a weird California thing, kind of like "thinking In-n-Out is
better than Five Guys", or "driving your state into bankruptcy".

~~~
merlincorey
In-n-Out is way better than Five Guys.

The rest of what you said, we have no quarrel!

------
johnnyb9
I once had to do a take home project... the spec said I could write either a
console application or a GUI.

Fast forward to the in person meeting, they go through my solution and nitpick
random things like "why use NuGet packages" or "why no test cases" (I had
written them but they got mysteriously removed from the solution).

Finally the CTO speaks up and asked why I didn't write a GUI, as many other
candidates had (mind you this was an application that accepted inputs and ran
a calculation). I responded, "it's less effort to write a console application
and the assignment said it was acceptable". CTO then snarkily asks me "do you
always do the minimum"? I should have snarkily responded "only when I'm asked
to code for free".

Thankfully did not get an offer...

~~~
lacampbell
_CTO then snarkily asks me "do you always do the minimum"?_

I would have responded "Yes". The less we do, the less scope to go wrong, the
less maintenance we have, etc etc.

In fact I don't want to work with anyone who would answer "No" to that.

~~~
moftz
If it was a company that does a lot of contracting, then doing the minimum (to
spec) is pretty much required. Do anything more than what the customer asked
for and you are wasting resources.

------
snake_plissken
Heh I've been applying to some gigs recently and those job application pages!
They can be infuriatinggggg.

Oh, upload the resume that you just spent 2 hours tweaking and feel great
about? Simple enough you think. No, a parser tries to extract all of the
relevant information from the PDF and place it in the appropriate fields with
about a -50% success rate. Now it looks like you've had 5 jobs in the past 5
years.

Want to upload a cover letter? Not an option, but you can use this text box
widget thing with some basic functionality. Of course, you just can't copy and
paste the pre-written cover letter, because the widget completely screws up
the formatting and now it's a jumbled mess with no structure between
paragraphs. Easy to fix, but still.

I guess the worst part is, there is nothing to indicate that your perfectly
formatted resume that you uploaded will ever been seen by someone.

My mistake, that's the second worst part. The worst part is having to create a
new account for each of these career "portals".

~~~
sverige
I've actually gotten to the point where I just skip applying to jobs when I'm
redirected to one of those portals. Fuck 'em. The _only_ exception is when I
think it's a company I _really, really_ want to work for, and there aren't
many of those any more.

~~~
WaxProlix
If you really [think that you] want to work somewhere, and this is what I've
done in the past, you can just look up their recruiters on linkedin or
something and cold call them - most recruiters or HR departments are overjoyed
at this kind of personal attention, and can even get you some perks and
recognition along the way. Plus you just send a nice email (your cover letter
essentially, but not as forced) and attach a resume formatted as you please.

Might not be anywhere near 100% overall but when it works it makes for a
really lovely experience.

~~~
truetuna
This!

I did exactly this before leaving my previous position. We had a friendly
45min call the next day, just talking about my current situation at the time
and he was thrilled I reached out to him directly.

------
expertentipp
My experience with initial stage of recruitment to Amazon, Google, and other
"we can afford false negatives" jokers.

 _Write O(n) algorithm for bus ticket allocation. Use yellow unbalanced binary
tree, you have 40 minutes. Then we will run it against exhaustive tests our
engineers have been working on for the last couple of weeks. Uhhhh... what 's
that?... your algorithm melted down... We wish you good luck in your job
search, thanks bye!_

Luckily I approached these tests while still being employed, otherwise it
would be quite soul-sucking experience. Now I just don't take them seriously
anymore and feel an urge to troll them somehow.

~~~
jarsin
During the part where I get to ask them questions I always ask about their
current project and whats it built in. Even at the big guys they always reply
with the same frameworks everyone else uses etc. Then I say something like oh
so your project is using framework x so you're not coding your own libraries
from scratch using graphs etc.

One interviewer took it personal and hung up on me haha.

~~~
namelezz
LOL. You have to have guts, to ask such question.

~~~
jarsin
One time i coxed the interviewer to show me the solution on the whiteboard
when i could not figure it out. I kid you not he could not do it and got
confused like i did.

I caught the punk red handed asking a question he did not know very well.

~~~
moftz
Depending on how early into the interview process it was, that guy just might
have been looking to see how you arrived at a solution no matter how correct
it was. I would rather see someone's problem solving skills than how many
whiteboard problem solutions they can memorize. Even in school, I've had
plenty of professors that would give partial credit for exams that may not
have the right answer but the steps to arriving at a solution or deriving a
formula to come up with the solution were on track.

------
mfrisbie
Author here. I'm both pleased and dismayed to see this is as relevant as it
was when I wrote it a year ago.

Obviously, this piece is satire. When giving interviews, I do whatever I can
to make the candidate walk out of there with a smile whether they did well or
not. I stand by the idea that it should be possible to entirely assess
someone's ability without ripping their guts out or making them sweat.

~~~
jakebasile
As someone who only recently went through about 25 interviews this article
gave me a bittersweet laugh. I wish more people understood how awful the
torture chamber interview process is for everyone involved. Maybe the industry
will catch up one day.

~~~
imdumquestioner
25 onsites?

------
palakchokshi
The one I love is when they ask questions that are completely unrelated to
what the position is for. e.g. I applied to a startup company that sold used
cars online for a senior web dev position. Their junior dev asked me about a
maze solving algorithm.

I knew the VP of engineering through one of my contacts and sent him an email
asking him how a maze solving algorithm relates to web development. To his
credit the VP apologized and set up another interview albeit with an even more
junior developer who asked about finding loops in a linked list.

 _sigh_

Thankfully I didn't take the job because the company shut down recently.

~~~
mastratton3
I agree with this mostly, but I've also heard that algorithms questions can be
a good proxy for actual software engineering skills. I've never validated this
claim but I'm curious if anyone has any research on either side of the
argument.

~~~
noir_lord
> but I've also heard that algorithms questions can be a good proxy for actual
> software engineering skills.

In my world (Line of Business/SME) they aren't, I used to know the exact
properties of a doubly linked list and all that stuff but I haven't had to
think about it for 18 years.

The question I've had the most success with at predicting if someone will be a
good dev (in my domain) is some variant of :-

> "I run an electrical testing company, I want a system to manage my
> engineers, ask me the questions you'd ask a client"

If the response is "How many engineers, how many sites, how quickly are you
expanding, do you need this to be available on foo/bar etc" then they are
showing the skills they need, it's not about them having good answers but
knowing how to ask _good_ questions.

Others I like are "Tell me about the worst bug you ever wrote and how you
figured out the fault" and here is some code, what would you do to improve the
quality, looking for things like refactoring large methods, consistent comment
style, fixing indentation.

That gives me a hugely more useful insight into whether someone will be a good
developer over "Explain to me in detail the thing you might have been lucky
enough to have boned up on two days ago or might not and will never have to
use".

The dirty secret is that (for most of the programmers in my domain) you don't
need to be some algorithm wizard who can tell you the O(n) time of the Spasky-
Fischer Recursive Tree Search, you need to be able to write clear, concise
code that shows intent and is going to maintainable in a year.

------
tetrep
> Always start off by asking the candidate, "Is this still a good time?"

Is there a better way to ask this? It would be relatively awkward for the
candidate to bring up on their own, so it seems like a good idea to make sure
nothing unexpected has occurred since the call was planned.

> Alright, that's enough chit chat. Curtly prod them to submit to the
> interrogation.

Assuming it's still good to have the call, why would you not just jump in? The
call can't last forever, and I'd rather have a solid ~40 minutes of technical
content with time for questions than an opening of awkward forced small talk
that, especially in the context of technical candidates, there's a good chance
neither of us find pleasing.

Anecdotally, I've found that most good candidates will "small talk" about the
technical subject matter that gets brought up during the call, if only to
appear as a person familiar with it. (Although I do get a little lucky with
security related things occurring pretty regularly in the news, so it's easy
to reference.)

~~~
freyr
> _Always start off by asking the candidate, "Is this still a good time?"_

I prefer when the interviewer reschedules the interview two or three times,
calls 15 minutes late, and then asks "Is this still a good time?"

~~~
chrisper
My favorite is if you then ask them a question you have to repeat yourself
because obviously they are doing something else while talking to you.

~~~
freyr
I love that. Or when they audibly sigh, tap their pen on their desk, or stare
out the window. These actions say, "I have more important things to be doing,"
and that's how you know the company is doing big, important things.

------
UweSchmidt
It is on everyone who is not in a desperate job seeking situation to push back
on any practice you deem wrong. Expect a respectful and fair treatment
throughout and when you're being manipulated, take the initiative.

If you can tell the interview isn't going well, why not leave on your terms?
"My experience and expertise is in A and B, and it seems the job is more about
C and D, maybe this isn't a good fit? Ok thanks, pleasure to meet you, let me
know if something comes up related to A and B. Bye".

Only you can keep the other side honest. Do it for your own dignity and for
all the others who really _need_ a job and will put up with anything.

~~~
bsvalley
If you do that you'll end-up jobless. It is not a candidate's market right now
:)

~~~
laughfactory
I disagree. There's always jobs for valuable candidates. It's average to
below-average candidates who find any market challenging. I believe in always
having standards, and if you run across this kind of bullshit, set them
straight and move on. The reason this kind of crap persists is because too
many people put up with it.

------
chatmasta
Wow, this blog has some painfully funny "The Onion"-style articles on it
(click the links at the bottom)

I particularly liked "Startup Engineer Unwittingly Implements Crappier Version
of Open Source Project" [0]

[0] [http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/open-source-
rehash](http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/open-source-rehash)

~~~
cheath
I'm so glad you agree. I've been dying laughing over these posts. They're
gold.

------
joezydeco
Wow, what slick organized company is this where each onsite interviewer has
read the resume ahead of time and has a copy in-hand?

I'd add

 _" Hide the fact you just grabbed this resume off the printer. Make sure to
take the first 5-10 minutes reading the resume silently in front of the
candidate, then asking the same questions the previous 3 interviewers did
about your school and work history"_

------
d--b
This is starting to be a bit annoying... I think we read enough about painful
interviews. If anyone has a better way, please share... But it'd be nice to
skip the ranting...

I personally have been the evil interviewer for some time. I'm giving paper
coding tests that make sense to me, and I'm generally very happy with my
recruiting. I have never met anyone who slammed the door screaming "I'm too
good to take your stupid test". I've passed people who completely screwed the
test. I've failed people who nailed it in 5 minutes.

I've taken interviews where I was asked brain teasers, fibonacci things,
pointer swapping, class hierarchy things. I've been accepted to some jobs
where I failed the tests, I've been thanked to some jobs where I passed the
test.

The point is it is NOT about the test.

When I read someone saying "I've taken countless interviews, and I don't get a
job", I'm thinking: well, either he's been very unlucky (which happens), or
there is something wrong with the guy's attitude.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_I 'm giving paper coding tests that make sense to me, and I'm generally very
happy with my recruiting. [...] I've passed people who completely screwed the
test. I've failed people who nailed it in 5 minutes._

 _When I read someone saying "I've taken countless interviews, and I don't get
a job", I'm thinking: well, either he's been very unlucky (which happens), or
there is something wrong with the guy's attitude._

Yeah, must be their attitude. Not the arbitrary and biased test given by an
interviewer who doesn't even realize it's arbitrary or biased or that they're
selecting for qualities they personally think are important rather than
whether the candidate can actually do the work.

~~~
mastratton3
Coming from the other side of the process, even if a question may be arbitrary
(Although, I'd argue a lot aren't) it can still be helpful in evaluating a
candidate's thought process. Additionally, using the same questions on
multiple candidates is a good way to actually cut bias out of the system as
you have a lot more data points to evaluate responses against.

------
ng12
> Speaks with an accent so thick you could spread it on toast

Oh god, this is giving me flashbacks. In college I phone screened twice with a
certain Seattle megacorp and both times the interviewer was completely
unintelligible. This was before the popularity of codepair so the interview
was completely verbal. I specifically remember that during one interview it
took at least 5 minutes for me to tease out that the interviewer was saying
the word "millions". Not to mention I took the effort to find a quiet space
and locate a headset while the best the interviewers could do was a
speakerphone in a wind tunnel.

~~~
ryandrake
I remember a phone screen where it sounded like the interviewer was calling
from their hands-free headset in a moving convertible car. I pretty much could
not understand a word of what was said. Asked if this was a good time, but he
wanted to continue. It was a senior exec-y guy so cruising down the 101 was
probably the only chance he had to talk. Company not interested after that
call.

------
spcelzrd
We all agree the tech interviews are broken. I suspect that the next trend in
tech interviews will be worse in just a slightly different way.

We got rid of the "Why are manholes round?" questions, now we have live coding
tests.

~~~
polishTar
Do we though? What if the current system is the least bad option out of a set
of much worse alternatives?

~~~
zzzcpan
Before oversupply of programmers simply talking to people for a few minutes
was good enough to determine their competence.

~~~
watwut
That favours people with high charizma and pleasant personality (not same as
pleasant to work with) regardless of skills or work ethics. Compared to those,
whiteboard or live coding is improvement.

~~~
jakebasile
Why have only one option that caters to those that can memorize algorithms?
Have multiple types of interviews instead of forcing everyone to take the same
type.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Always this "memorizing algorithms" strawman. If you can't code basic
list/tree/graph algorithms on the fly then there are serious holes in your
programming ability. This has nothing to do with memorization.

~~~
throwaway9475
How often do you waltz into work and write list/tree/graph algorithms on a
daily basis?

~~~
hackinthebochs
But its not about the list/tree/graph algorithms, its about having the mental
flexibility to code the algorithms on the fly. If you can't do a depth-first
search on a tree after being given the definition and time to think about it
then you may lack the mental flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any
domain. Intelligence is unspecific to domain, and so showing intelligence in
one domain correlates with outcomes in other domains. The list/tree/graph
algorithms are just a microcosm of programming skill in general.

Also, my codebase does have an honest to god tree traversal, on the front end
no less. This stuff shouldn't be seen as esoteric trivia.

~~~
throwaway9475
> If you can't do a depth-first search on a tree after being given the
> definition and time to think about it then you may lack the mental
> flexibility to do arbitrary algorithms in any domain.

It's this condescending attitude that ensures that companies only hire recent
grads instead of people with actual software development experience. I will
write you a depth-first search (assuming that, god forbid, my libraries don't
have that functionality for some reason) if it's not a contrived example in an
interview. But I have to say, so far, 99% of my pure algorithms code have been
contrived interview questions.

If you can't do depth-first search in a stressful interview situation that you
sneaked away from your actual job for, you might just be a human being. But
either way, if your interview process is only interested in testing my
knowledge of trivia, instead of my actual development skills (like how I
manage complexity or design systems) then I think I'd rather work for more
competent people.

------
joeskyyy
> Purge the room of erasers. This forces the candidate to erase with their
> hands, reminding them that mistakes will be smeared all over them.

I actually had to laugh out loud at my desk at this. My office is absolutely
guilty of terrible markers and lack of erasers.

All in good fun folks. All in good fun.

------
VladKovac
One thing I found out from interviewing a lot (for junior-ish positions) was
that dynamic programming questions are actually your friend. Since it's a
"hard topic" they give you a relatively easy one that can be solved using
brute force recursion with memoization slapped on top so it takes like 5-10
mins and looks super impressive.

~~~
akhilcacharya
But for which companies?

For some reason I doubt that would work for the Big4+Unicorn interviews - then
again, I've never gotten a DP problem from those companies.

------
rajathagasthya
> When the candidate eventually offers a solution and asks for validation, fan
> the flames of their inner doubt by being non-committal and hesitant. "Yeah,
> that's sort of right, I guess that's good enough. Uh oh, looks like we're
> out of time! Do you have any questions?"

I had a good laugh at this. It's too accurate :)

------
0xdada
> Everyone that interacts with the candidate must offer a beverage or a trip
> to the bathroom as many times as possible throughout the day. Bladder
> manipulation is a powerful interrogation tactic.

I used to do this, I guess it's time to stop

~~~
amattn
Don't stop this. It's essentially harmless and in the case of certain people,
welcome. You want your interviewers to think have empathy for your candidates.
Interviewing is already stressful and a full bladder or dry throat makes it
worse.

~~~
joezydeco
I like the bathroom break.

I've been in a number of offices where the equipment on the desks is shiny,
but the bathrooms look like they haven't been maintained or even received a
coat of paint in a decade. Tells me a lot more about what goes on under the
surface than people want to let on in an interview.

~~~
jakebasile
You can learn a lot about a company by the state of their bathrooms, and not
just the ones out front for customers and visitors!

------
ryandrake
> "I see your background is in artificial intelligence, you've written your
> own compiler, and you maintain an open source project - how nice. Now
> implement radix sort using only red-black trees."

Sadly this quite could almost be pulled right out of a real tech interview
we've all had.

------
buf
I failed a technical interview recently. I was asked to write a rule engine,
so I opened up Google and read about all the best ways about doing that for
about 15 minutes of the interview.

They weren't a fan. In the rejection email, they said I wasn't technical
enough to fit in. I replied with my offer letter from Google.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I failed a technical interview recently. I was asked to write a rule engine,

Dear god, what? I mean, it's not an operating system, but that's hardly a
reasonable interview task.

------
pklausler
Damn, now I'm going to waste time today actually trying to figure out how to
implement a radix sort with red-black trees, just in case.

~~~
yumaikas
My understanding (somewhat limited), is that you would never want to use a
radix sort with red-black trees, as a tree should already have some sorting to
it as is. Otherwise, why not just used a linked list?

Besides, radix sorts are generally good for fixed-width data that has a known
bound, like integers.

Basically, this is made-up nonsense. It's good made-up nonsense though.

~~~
pklausler
Whoosh.

------
georgemcbay
Don't forget to treat everyone the same on the technical questions, whether
they are a new grad with no professional experience or a 20 year veteran with
a proven (and easily verifiable via references) track record of success. Make
sure they all run the gauntlet!

Bonus points for grilling open source developers who wrote some critically
important tool your company depends upon, and/or are the person who literally
"wrote the book" on the technology you expect them to use.

~~~
Cakez0r
> Don't forget to treat everyone the same on the technical questions, whether
> they are a new grad with no professional experience or a 20 year veteran
> with a proven (and easily verifiable via references) track record of
> success.

Don't know if you're being sarcastic here, but this is actually true. I've
interviewed people who have worked in senior coding positions for years who
have struggled to finish fizzbuzz style coding competency checks.

~~~
watwut
I would grill people who ask senior position more then those who look for
junior position. Doing it other just don't make sense to me.

~~~
flukus
It needs to be a different style of grilling, based in their career. I don't
remember how to write a bubble sort anymore, let alone other algorithms, those
memories have been replaced by much more relevant information.

------
danyim
This is so painful to read after having recently gone through the gauntlet of
Bay Area tech interviews myself. It seems like all the companies follow this
exact same pattern of how interviews are conducted and few stray from the
standard, not realizing how intimidating the entire process can be for the
uninitiated. It's easy to say "the interview process is broken", but how do we
fix it?

~~~
hackinthebochs
>but how do we fix it?

Certifications. Companies are duplicating effort to find the same algorithm
masters when we can just have a cert that demonstrates your mastery of
algorithms. Have different certs for different specialties. Then actual job
interviews can just be a culture check.

And the great thing about certs is that they're relatively low pressure. You
can always take it again if you fail or score lower than you feel youre
capable.

------
desireco42
This is awesome and true unfortunately.

Hey, but it doesn't end there. You spent all this money and time to hire
someone, why treat them nice, give them a desk in a hallway and crappiest
laptop you can find. Let's see how they work with that. :)

There are some nice places, thankfully, but this is fairly common theme
unfortunately.

------
TeMPOraL
You can actually waterboard me during the interview, while asking to describe
an implementation of recursive quicksort in the newest CSS framework du jour -
and as long as at the other end there's a personal office with doors _that
close_ waiting for me, I'll send my resume in a heartbeat.

------
CoolGuySteve
Why is this slipping down the front page faster than other articles? It has
way more votes in less time than the other articles.

I noticed the same thing happened last week with an article about stupid
hiring practices. Is some moderator penalizing these things?

~~~
mfrisbie
Yes. Irrespective of who posts my content, the links are consistently bumped
from the top of the front page.

No humor allowed on HN I suppose. Their loss.

------
hunglee2
The internet is not short of open letters from developers despairing of the
broken recruitment process.

The prevailing sense is an objection to the submission to process required by
candidate; submission to a reductive process designed to break a person down
from a holistic human being to a set of scores, attributes or values, upon
which a judgement is then passed. It is no exaggeration to say that this is
inhumane.

We can change this, but the first thing that has to go is the idea of the
'candidate funnel' (check it out yourself - this idea is so pervase in
recruitment, we even build software around it) - which in 2D looks exactly
like what it is: a sausage machine.

------
throwanem
Work for companies that need you more than you need them, and know it.

If you can't find companies like that where you are, consider being somewhere
else. There's more to the world than the Silicon Valley treadmill.

~~~
marktangotango
Indeed, I'm in the Midwest and my equivalent San Francisco salary is $240k,
straight salary before bonus. The tech is old and shitty, but a lot of
companies are in a position to modernize or die. Senior devs are in high
demand.

------
fnordsensei
If I found out that my recruitment agency had been treating my candidates this
way, I would take them to task and then fire them. That's my reputation they
are squandering.

~~~
schmookeeg
Frankly, all a tech recruiter needs to do to earn a gold star from me is to
spell my name right and have a job req that would at least, theoretically, be
in the same building as the job that I am actually qualified to do.

Bonus Sparkles for it being in the same state that I currently live in.

I will squee like a schoolgirl with delight if they deliver the above with
coherent English of a 3rd grade level or better and I can parse the point of
their Email in a single pass.

------
SFJulie
I learned to hang up dryly after 1 notification the interviewers were going to
far, or leave a room after reading the technical tests and seeing it was crap.
Now I feel better.

99% of the interviews I done so far were wtf.

The 2 that were respectful and seeming to correctly check for my abilities to
do the job were when applying as a mover and a car mechanic. Lol.

------
dvcrn
One thing I always thought would be interesting (but no idea if viable): allow
trusted engineers / seniors who have been in the company for a certain time to
vouch and directly push a referral through to the final interview stage.
Something like a joker. You could also link the referrals performance to the
engineer directly and limit the joker to one per year or something like that.

When I refer someone I usually do so because I worked with that person in the
past and / or highly believe in their technical ability. I want to work with
that person because I believe him/her to be a valuable asset for the company.

It's very frustrating to loose a smart person and possibly friend because of
some trick interview question

~~~
Namrog84
Trusted/senior is an interesting metric.

Is there untrusted senior people? Or trusted non senior?

How is trust defined? Does this become completely political of who likes you?

------
siliconc0w
I've done a lot of interviewing and do hit a lot of these but it's kind of the
unfortunate 'state of the art' for figuring out whether to hire someone. For
example, phone screens are often less than a hour (because most applying to us
are likely already working somewhere else) but we need as much data as
possible. They're done from a script because we want a consistent metric to
iterate on and it's really important we get a good read because on-site
interviews are incredibly expensive, especially for a smaller company. It'd be
great to just call up and chat about personal projects or whatever but it's
just too inconsistent and subjective.

------
lacampbell
_Don 't give them any updates for weeks, if at all. Who will appreciate
hearing back from your company more: Joe Shmoe, or Joe Solitary Confinement?_

If I apply for a job, and they have no interest in me, I honestly prefer they
don't bother contacting me at all. Generic rejection letters are a waste of
both of our time.

Once I've applied for a job, it's out of my mind completely unless they
contact me again for an interview. I move on to applying for the next Job - I
don't wait around wondering whether they'll get back to me. It's a much better
mindset for me personally - I apply for more jobs and rejection doesn't phase
me.

------
m3kw9
These take home projects are a bit inconsiderate to a candidates time. I've
done a few and if you don't watch your time. You could be spending 5-6 hours
just trying to please people

~~~
collyw
Yes, I did one for a crappy company three weeks back. Still haven't heard a
word from them after the following face to face interview. Fair enough if you
didn't want me, but I spend a day of my weekend doing that shit for you.

------
adrianggg
> Mildly ill; interminably coughs, sniffs, or sneezes

YES! One of my pet peeves. The worst, doing a phone screen/interview with
someone who sniffs constantly while you're trying to problem solve.

There is a strong correlation between self awareness and intelligence, (I'd
google for the white papers for those who will no doubt disagree).

Anyone who chronically sniffs is not very smart and not someone I want to work
closely with or at all. How about that as a key indicator, lacks self
awareness or consideration of others.

~~~
dragonwriter
This:

> There is a strong correlation between self awareness and intelligence

Does not support this:

> Anyone who chronically sniffs is not very smart

Chronic sniffing isn't necessarily (or even likely) a sign of a lack of self-
awareness.

~~~
adrianggg
lol, ok

~~~
stagbeetle
Seems more like you have personal beef with the chronically congested crowd
(CCC).

As a representative of the CCC, I'm going to have to ask you to stop being
sinusist.

------
lj3
Step 1: Use Taleo.

------
jdhopeunique
Do major tech companies ever consider randomly pulling an employee from
another department not well known and subjecting them to the interview process
as a QA sanity check?

------
tomkaith13
Dont forget the recruiters with their standard template of tech/behavioral
questions at the start of every round. "How do you find the inode of a file"
or "Can you calculate 2^23 without using a calculator" or "tell me what drove
you to apply to our beloved unicorn. What makes you worthy ?"

------
section9
Currently doing a lot of tech interviews. This was hilarious to read.

------
WalterBright
Tech interview threads appear constantly on HN and Reddit.

~~~
aphextron
It's a symptom of a process that is completely broken. I have given up
entirely on interviewing for SV companies, and work 100% remote now.

~~~
WalterBright
If there was a better process, companies would adopt it, as it would give them
a major competitive advantage. They're not complete fools.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Also applies to frameworks and languages?

------
orless
I love cold calls from recruiters which, having found out that I'm not
interested in their proposal, ask if I can recommend someone or ask around.

------
nunez
if you go through websites, then yes, this is the experience you'll get.

i prefer messaging folks on linkedin or finding recruiters.

step 0: send email

step 1: wait for phone call

step 2: interview

step 3: negotiate offer

step 4: get job

------
ttam
Hilarious! And felt really close to home!

------
Ceddy
that entire article was hilarious - guess I need to stop offering my
candidates bathroom trips or drinks...

------
irfansharif
due to timing constraints I had to most recently end my search at google's
host-matching stage, I do wish the process didn't feel so one-sided. oh well,
perhaps next time.

------
awinter-py
always carry a sharpie

~~~
jameshart
You write on my whiteboard with a sharpie, we're going to have you escorted
from the building.

~~~
awinter-py
I don't make mistakes though

------
CriticalSection
Surprised I don't see my main pet peeve - early reference check. Before I even
talk to anyone I'm asked to provide three phone numbers of three former
managers. So I have to call them up, make sure the number is still working,
and ask for the favor that they can give me a reference in case anyone reads
my application.

All of these other things are on me. References I have to call two or three
(or at one company, six) people and ask for the favor of giving a reference -
just to apply to a job.

Of course I can fold my arms and refuse to give them, but if we're starting
off on that footing, I might as well just break off the interview.

If we're nearing an offer, I have no problem giving references, it's just
silly to have to worry about my references getting calls before I've even
talked to anyone at the company.

My more minor peeve with interviews is not mentioned as well. That is,
scheduling the in-person interview. If a company is flexible, I could take an
extended lunch and have an interview wrapped up within a 60-90 minute lunch
break (or better yet, go after normal business hours). But companies keep you
around for hours, sometimes just sitting there waiting to talk to people.
Inevitably one of the main people you were supposed to talk to is unavailable
to speak to you that day. It's understandable an in-person interview is during
business hours and can be a few hours long, it's more the ones that waste my
time for no reason that annoy me.

~~~
ryandrake
> That is, scheduling the in-person interview. If a company is flexible, I
> could take an extended lunch and have an interview (or better yet, go after
> normal business hours).

Good point. Having to always blow a vacation day on an interview seriously
limits the number you can do per month/year. Want to do 10 interviews a month?
You've blown half the month right there.

~~~
skj
I mean, the interview _ER_ has to be there, too...

~~~
ryandrake
The interviewER take a half hour of his day (an hour tops, if she actually
reads your resume). You're investing the at least 1/2 a day.

------
ar15saveslives
I would say that the alternative to that crappy process is something like
"gradual hiring" (sorry, I'm the guy whose accent can be spread on bread) -
you just start working with a guy, giving him basic isolated tasks, and as he
successfully progresses with his work, task are getting more and more
complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such freelance-
ish work you can know for sure that this dude is compatible with the team,
able to solve problems, able to learn. And only then he becomes an employee
with offer, benefits and SO.

I know a company (profitable, no-VC, small private hw/sw business) that has
been practicing that for years. The scheme is quite simple: they "rent" people
at bodyshops in Russia (it's relatively cheap there), work with them for some
time and then offer them relocation to the HQ, paying some penalty to the
bodyshop.

Another well-known company has different version of this: they just hire
everyone after very basic sanity check. It's pretty easy to get in, but at the
same time it's even easier to be fired. Turnover at the company is horrible,
but there's very strong core of managers/designers/devs, that survived all
battles.

My point is there's no way you can find out for sure the candidate is good for
a) company b) project c) codebase d) team etc etc, unless he's clearly
crazy/arrogant/stinks or whatever. So maybe that "gradual hire" is the answer.

P.S.: Being at the other side of hiring process sucks too. May be even worse.

~~~
paulannesley
> _you just start working with a guy, giving him basic isolated tasks, and as
> he successfully progresses with his work, task are getting more and more
> complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such
> freelance-ish work you can know for sure that this dude is compatible with
> the team, able to solve problems, able to learn. And only then he becomes an
> employee with offer, benefits and SO._

Careful not to presume or disseminate the idea that all candidates/hires are
men.

~~~
cyphar
Would you have made the same comment if GP had qualified everything with
"she"?

Also, many European languages have gendered grammar, which means that it is
hard for English second-speakers to speak about someone in a gender-neutral
way (for example, it would not be syntactically possible to create such
sentences in Slavic languages).

------
king_magic
I read through maybe 10 paragraphs, but the author's toxic style was just too
much for me. Spoiler alert: this person sounds like someone I would never hire
on attitude alone, which reeks of "entitled, sarcastic brat".

~~~
jakebasile
It's plainly satire. It's in the style of a The Onion piece but with more
depth, and probably personal experience.

