I do a lot of contract work these days and I recently found out about a service that promises to put high quality programmers together with high quality clients. The average fees are somewhat high (high for a global average but low-ish for top-grade programmers). I won't mention them here because I'm not going to give them a free plug.
Their interview process has half a dozen independent steps including live coding tests, HR screens, etc. I had some very specific questions that would have been a deal breaker for me and tried to contact them to get them answered directly before I considered jumping through all of hoops they have set up.
Long story short they gave me the runaround and refused to put me in contact with someone who could answer my questions. They told me my questions would be answered at stage 3 (or whatever) of the interview process. I said no thanks (seriously, I was polite about it, said I wasn't interested and even thanked the guy for his time) and he responded with a snarky reply about them being very selective anyway. Not sure if he was implying that I wouldn't make the cut or not but I found it offensive.
Now the funny part -- the only reason I found out about the service was I had googled the name of another programmer and he has a "resume" posted on their site. He has apparently done dozens of projects for them. Someone approached me to fix a project that this particular programmer had messed up to the point where he couldn't take it forward. While it was in a notoriously difficult area, in no way should it have been an intractable problem for a competent programmer, at least in my opinion.
My takeaway is that these protracted interview carnivals are good at filtering out two types of programmers -- the worst and the best. Having made it through probably says more about your tolerance for bureaucracy than your actual abilities. There are exceptions of course -- Google et al -- but I would imagine the average company or service is missing out by not allowing people to circumvent this process when they're discriminating enough to want to do that.
> The whole process is a real pain. I'd love to just grab a coffee and discuss how we can work together. Is there any way to circumvent/short-circuit this whole tech interview process?
Exactly. If you want to hire exceptional people, don't treat them like they're average.
Their interview process has half a dozen independent steps including live coding tests, HR screens, etc. I had some very specific questions that would have been a deal breaker for me and tried to contact them to get them answered directly before I considered jumping through all of hoops they have set up.
Long story short they gave me the runaround and refused to put me in contact with someone who could answer my questions. They told me my questions would be answered at stage 3 (or whatever) of the interview process. I said no thanks (seriously, I was polite about it, said I wasn't interested and even thanked the guy for his time) and he responded with a snarky reply about them being very selective anyway. Not sure if he was implying that I wouldn't make the cut or not but I found it offensive.
Now the funny part -- the only reason I found out about the service was I had googled the name of another programmer and he has a "resume" posted on their site. He has apparently done dozens of projects for them. Someone approached me to fix a project that this particular programmer had messed up to the point where he couldn't take it forward. While it was in a notoriously difficult area, in no way should it have been an intractable problem for a competent programmer, at least in my opinion.
My takeaway is that these protracted interview carnivals are good at filtering out two types of programmers -- the worst and the best. Having made it through probably says more about your tolerance for bureaucracy than your actual abilities. There are exceptions of course -- Google et al -- but I would imagine the average company or service is missing out by not allowing people to circumvent this process when they're discriminating enough to want to do that.
> The whole process is a real pain. I'd love to just grab a coffee and discuss how we can work together. Is there any way to circumvent/short-circuit this whole tech interview process?
Exactly. If you want to hire exceptional people, don't treat them like they're average.
[Edit: wording]