Job interviews that go too far

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220511-the-working-job-interviews-that-go-too-far

by pmoriarty • 4 years ago

65 122 4 years ago

"But we have a labor shortage" /s

On a serious note, I've also been nearly burned out by these week-long take home assignments which are only one stage of several and end up eating my weekends completely only to find myself rejected or ghosted after completing them (I'm a penetration tester so most common candidate testing methodology I've seen is a week long CTF set up by their security team, where you need to find as many flags/vulnerabilities as you can and also write a report, so it always ends up into a huge time sink of finding needles in a haystack and also write a multi page report about how I did it, only for then to be rejected). Often there's also some IQ test and other nonsense stages, plus the usual Zoom/Teams/Meets calls in between with their recruiters/hiring managers, during working hours. Oh, and don't get me started on the 20 page online form with 50 questions some companies want you to fill as part of your application.

I honestly have no idea how people with full time jobs who can't slack off at work and have other responsibilities, hobbies and interests, are able to keep this up. I feel like these long and stressful interview processes are mainly geared towards ambitious new-grads or people with no other goal in life than always interviewing for the next best job.

I sometimes want to give up on the IT industry and go to med school instead as I don't see how I can keep this up long term, for the grand sum of €50K/year, if this interviewing process is the norm or if it will get even crazyer. Or maybe I should quit my job, start learning leetcode, and move to a country with some FAANG jobs.

formerly_proven• 4 years ago

I feel like these long and stressful interview processes are mainly geared towards ambitious new-grads or people with no other goal in life than working.

The point is probably very much this - finding people who will over-perform without reciprocation.

kayadera• 4 years ago

On a some related note, I struggle to understand how those with no-slack full-time technical jobs have technical hobbies. I'll give it a go every so often but get burned out quickly. I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software.

id• 4 years ago

Maybe there aren't that many no-slack full-time technical jobs.

Spooky23• 4 years ago

Don’t. It’s bullshit.

At big tech companies when times are good, many people are sitting around waiting for paint to dry. (Ie some nutty process) Remember they are a profit center and get slacktime and fancy stuff.

Ditto outside of engineering. I knew one SE with a pretty big territory who travelled with his wife. They were swingers. The dude would just setup random meetings so the company would spring for their hotel. We’d get our steak dinner, they would get their freak on. At the end, he’s pulling in 3% of whatever crap we were buying.

Cthulhu_4• 4 years ago

I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software.

That's already more than I have; I get my job satisfaction from my job, I like to spend my free time with family and hobbies that don't involve more work.

But, different strokes for different people; I like playing video games, others like writing code for fun.

bluGill6• 4 years ago

I used to. Then I got married, a wife and kids are far more fulfilling. When I get any free time (rare) I want to be out in my shop doing something not technical. Or at least not technically in the way of my job, sometimes the things I work on are mechanically complex.

BlargMcLarg2• 4 years ago

Often there's also some IQ test and other nonsense stages

I actually support IQ tests and the likes, but it's the way that all these companies are doing this which sticks out. All of them somehow have their own flavor and keep the information to themselves (or to the company which they outsource their shenanigans to). It would be so much more efficient if we had an employee-centric approach where employees could provide access to this information, with verification, and it was up to the employee to give employers information on their current status and growth. You want the data? There you go, verified, now move on to stage 5 and no dawdling.

If you're going to toss out CVs, portfolios, certificates, diplomas, that's one thing (why again are we doing this?). If you're also going to give us all different kinds of "here's this whacky syntax no one uses" questions along with the umpteenth "IQ test" because god forbid we shorten the process, you're not suffering from a labor shortage. You're suffering from being a pretty princess too afraid to take a risk.

mattcwilson11• 4 years ago

Pretend you’re hiring in this landscape. If people will submit to it, if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do, and if you feel like it’s required to stay competitive, why wouldn’t you?

(To be clear: I don’t condone the practice at all, but I at least can understand possible rationales)

binarymax• 4 years ago

This is fraud. If the firm doesn’t have an open role available but advertises as such, and then extracts free labor as a ruse, it’s fraud.

cbg0• 4 years ago

Good luck proving that.

65102• 4 years ago

It is very easy to hammer it into law.

Government should treat the fake job formula like what it is: Sabotage of the economy. In our system applicants have to pay for their own education, spend time doing it and government is investing in education.

We are extremely serious about training and employment. Parties that want to get involved should be held to high standards.

It's not like we've never created (and enforced) a standard for anything.

s_dev• 4 years ago

It's also a terrible security practice to advertise. Getting a remote code execution bug in to production would only entail building a free feature for the company and getting it past a trivial code review during an interview you could subsequently turn down!

secretsatan• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure one example project I was requested to do was just a way for them to solve a problem, I solved it and never heard back. It turned out to be pretty tricky to accomplish, requiring tracking down some obscure tool.

I did do it in the time limit required, but looking back on it, it was a very particular problem with very specific constraints that most common industry tools did not solve...

Nextgrid• 4 years ago

This is why I have a policy of not doing any take-home tests, exactly to discourage this kind of bullshit and force the company to incur a cost (if they want to "test" me they need to sacrifice an hour of their own dev's time for an in-person/screenshare test) so they can't just "spray and pray" the test to everyone that comes by.

bluGill6• 4 years ago

I'll do the take home tests if I find them interesting.

Interesting to me is important. Last time I did one I found a recursive (not tail recessive) solution to a problem that I already knew was a simple iteration using a couple standard library functions - but where is the fun in that? I learned a lot and didn't care that I didn't get the job. (I did earn a call back, which is great considering at the time I didn't qualify for the advanced position they were hiring for)

incomingpain2• 4 years ago

My favourite job interview that went too far... I applied for a sysadmin/netadmin job at a 24x7 facility that basically can't go offline. As many 9s as possible. So they required a rather senior tech for the position and I surprisingly did qualified. The requirements were very steep like 10 years experience, loads of certs etc. You know the type.

I got the interview. First I needed to fill out paperwork before I could go onsite. It was general 'this is a factory and is dangerous blah blah, do you have experience' which sure I do. I've worked in countless factories, several were even more industrial and dangerous than theirs.

I get onsite and I'm business casual. First thing I'm told is, "the interview got rescheduled to 30 minutes later so everyone was available.' but they failed to tell me...

Then I get told that I'm dressed to 'froo froo' but I said that business casual seems appropriate. I sat there the ~45 minutes for the interview completely alone. Eventually I get brought to the interview and the conference room is packed. Well over a dozen people there to interview me.

In the interview they explained everything they actually needed. They didn't need just a senior sysadmin and netadmin who must know the tech so well they know how to fix issues instantly. There will also be no other IT people, you're responsible for everything from outlook to factory software. They also needed DBA and someone who can go on the floor to be a labourer sometimes. I answered 'I am always happen to help in an emergency but I don't know anything about how to work the factory floor." At this point I was pretty well done the interview but happy to continue and exercise that skill.

So they ask me what would be one of my top achievements. Given the no-downtime nature they would appreciate my story. I was onsite at a large enterprise and was doing cisco aironet changes as well as some core vlan to leaf changes in relation to a new ssid I was deploying. That all went great. There was another team who was onsite, literally IBM bladecenter supervisor was being paid to fully update a bladecenter. He got to patching while I was working. When i finished i got back together and asked how it was going and they said great. Ive done those firmware patches before, they are certainly annoying but given I'd spent fair amount of time doing my job I was already curious. They ought to have completed already.

I stood around and was trying to be helpful but then the IBM tech decided he needed to go for a smoke. After he came back in from his smoke his hands were shaking like mad. He couldn't type on the keyboard anymore. Middle of the night outside the secured building isn't a safe place to be, I asked if everything was alright. He said he needed another smoke and left for another smoke and he never came back. Quick note, we ended up not paying any $ for the tech. He had a mental breakdown because he realized he applied the wrong firmware to the networking card. It no longer functioned.

Long story short, I took lead to figure out what was even going on. I checked each of the chassis ports and found all traffic was coming over the first port. I broke LACP on the switch and using a single gig port the entire bladecenter operated the next day no big trouble. We were easy 2 hours out of the maintenance window but real major consequences was still an hour ahead. So getting up and running was huge keeping their business running.

So interviewer's response? 'That's the best story you have? a total failure that I would blame you for?'

I answer, "Perhaps I didn't tell it well. The owners sure appreciated my work and even got us the chefs table at a steakhouse as thanks."

His reply, "how much do you want? you seem to think you're worth more than you are."

I replied, "I am worth what someone will pay me for my skills. It's not just salary but benefits as well. I would expect this position described to me has a significant budget."

He pressed me for a number but I said "I'm not 100% what a position like this would pay, it has steep requirements and I don't have many competitors. I believe you will be fair market value you will offer."

He replied, "If I give you too much, we won't have budget for equipment. Typically equipment purchases come out of the technician's budget."

I was 100% certain I wouldn't want the job so I replied, "I would estimate this position would be $25/hr plus the usual benefits." LOL, ok my estimate might have been really far off but when he heard my number his demeanor changed bigtime. He started talking about all the benefits of working there. One of the benefits was that 'sometimes you can even come into the air conditioning and sit at your desk.' like omg.

Obviously they offered me a job at the $25/hr which i had a hearty laugh at.

ChuckNorris894• 4 years ago

One of the benefits was that 'sometimes you can even come into the air conditioning and sit at your desk.' like omg.

Damn, I started laughing out loud in my office and everyone turned around towards me. This is just comedy gold. But hey, sometimes you gotta pay rent and eat, been there myself, so I wouldn't judge anyone for taking that job.

On a similar note, one tech job I saw advertised in Austria had a benefit listed something along the lines of "living in a beautiful and high quality city", as if the 30 person web-shop is responsible for providing that and not the taxpayers and the local government. ROFL.

Dave3of53• 4 years ago

I've actually seen "free ample parking" as a benefit.

trellad2• 4 years ago

Even legit perks that are thrown around like beanbag chairs and free cereal are decisions made in lieu of better salaries without those trappings.

trellad2• 4 years ago

I replied, "I am worth what someone will pay me for my skills. It's not just salary but benefits as well. I would expect this position described to me has a significant budget."

That's a good answer

"..Typically equipment purchases come out of the technician's budget."

Nonsense. Not if you have auditors. I'd have walked out of here long before this. They don't grasp the iron triangle.

reducesuffering• 4 years ago

This is actually hilarious. It never occurred to me to do something like ask for $25/hr to a dev job I absolutely wouldn’t want anymore.

Now that I think of it, I might even take the minimum wage approach a la ‘Always Sunny’ https://youtu.be/m3rFQwTWyRc

me_me_me2• 4 years ago

"I would estimate this position would be $25/hr plus the usual benefits."

That's an excellent troll, well played.

It sounds like they are going to end up with someone who's unable to do the work but can stretch the truth

incomingpain2• 4 years ago

So... I happened to tell this story to colleague years later. I heard... they did hire someone and they ended up being down for more than 1 shift. They fired the new person before getting back up and running.

The backup IT people from the other shifts didn't pick up the phone calls and the next person on shift saw the amount of phonecalls. So he never showed up to work. It wasn't until the third shift guy showed up did he know what needed to be done and fixed it.

They threatened to fire him because he didn't pick up the phone. He explained that he was sleeping because he was the night shift immediately before the outage. They said he was now the only IT person and would need to cover shifts until they can get back up and running. He left during his next break and never went back.

The outage of their factory ended up shutting down the main factory that they supply. That would be millions in fees. They brought in a MSP and were up and running and covered off.

VoodooJuJu2• 4 years ago

You people need to get some self-respect and stop working for free. They only get away away with this because you allow them to. Next time you're asked to work for free, this is what you do: you say, "Fuck you, pay me".

If you want to be a little less blunt, have ready a template contract to write up the job they've requested, with your price, ready for them to sign. If they laugh in your face, laugh in theirs and walk away.

If you're in a position of desperation, first get out of that position before you go to these interviews. You cannot negotiate when you're hungry.

Unfortunately, the reality is, many people are hungry, which is why they put up with this stuff.

jrootabega2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, the reality is, many people are hungry, which is why they put up with this stuff.

Many? Billions.

samhw2• 4 years ago

I assume they meant "many tech workers / job hunters / the kind of people on this forum", not orphans in darkest Africa or Christian Bale losing weight for a role.

mattcwilson11• 4 years ago

An estimated 821 million people are still undernourished (high confidence).
Changes in consumption patterns have contributed to about two billion adults now being overweight or obese (high confidence).

We’re trending away from undernourishment.

https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/# - section A.1.4

ChuckNorris894• 4 years ago

If you're in a position of desperation, first get out of that position before you go to these interviews.

You're contradicting yourself here. If you're hungry, you don't have the leverage to get out of that position without first accepting some jobs you won't find ideal, unless you're incredibly lucky or talented or have huge savings, but if you were, you probably wouldn't be hungry in the first place.

VoodooJuJu2• 4 years ago

I agree it's probably a contradiction to many people, as a job may be their only ticket out of desperation, especially if they're knee-deep in debt or living paycheck to paycheck.

But I would wager many others do have options they can exercise such as becoming more frugal, cutting out rent by living with family, taking no-bullshit (no free work) wage jobs temporarily, etc.

Ancapistani2• 4 years ago

I've done a couple of these.

Once, I did the take-home assignment, which took around six hours. I submitted it by linking to a public GitHub repo titled "Company X Take Home Assignment".

I ended up taking a different position and the original company asked that I take down the repo. I told them that since I did the work on my own time, I own the resultant code and declined to take it down. They sent me a nastygram from their in-house lawyer.

I responded with an invoice for $900 - six hours at $150 / hour. That got me a phone call scheduled with their lawyer. I figured they either owned the code (in which case, they should pay for it) or I owned the code (in which case, they had no legal right to demand that I take it down).

The next day they sent me $500 over PayPal and I took it down.

leto_ii4• 4 years ago

You people need to get some self-respect and stop working for free.

"You people" need to unionize. That's the only way you get some negotiating power. Alas, that won't happen until tech workers (and white collar workers in general) realize they're workers and not capital owners. We're closer to really well paid plumbers than to Bezos & co.

ianleeclark• 4 years ago

Alas, that won't happen until tech workers (and white collar workers in general) realize they're workers and not capital owners.

Workers though they may be, it is within reach for most programmers to jump on the real estate ladder, heavily invest, and retire comfortably.

That's the only way you get some negotiating power.

For the duration of this bull market, Software Jobs have been easy to come by. Negotiating power, while never completely in employees favor, has given most programmers the chance to live _far more comfortable lives than anyone else they know or went to school with_.

That's what your message is up against.

gedy• 4 years ago

"You people" need to unionize.

Hiring would just be some other set of hoops and process to jump through. There's no silver bullet.

I love take home projects as I don't have a CS degree (EE) and usually flop leet code whiteboard quizzes.

bluGill6• 4 years ago

Unions with their "someone else's job" attitude have soured me on the whole concept. They need to clean up internally before they can attract me.

I'm given the impression that unions in Europe are not as bad as Unions in the US though. Maybe if I lived in Europe I'd me more willing for the unions there, I'm not sure as it isn't an option I have and thus isn't worth investigating.

Cthulhu_4• 4 years ago

really well paid

That's the kicker, nobody wants to unionize because they're actually pretty well off - and (and this may be an anti-union talking point) it has the risk of actually lowering the income for some, so that the lower-paid people get paid more.

Anyway that said, if you're working in tech and feel like you are being exploited - underpaid, overworked, unpaid overtime, expected to be always online / on call without specified pay, etc - by all means, unionize.

Another issue is that there's a lot of naïve, young people who still have the energy and lack the corporate culture cynicism who do end up working 14+ hour work days and ask for seconds; this is what people are up against as well. But this is where the awareness has to come in; if you do not get paid for those hours, you are being exploited. The hours you spend, you will not get them back. And, just spending long hours when you're still young does not automatically translate in success later on. If you're unlucky you'll end up with burn-out. And of course, if you need to work long hours or multiple jobs, you're not being paid enough. I know the housing market especially in SF is fucked, but working more will not unfuck that. Look into remote work and live somewhere cheaper.

ncphil• 4 years ago

No."You people" need to start forming worker co-ops, but as the previous post states, you first have to accept that you're a worker.

gameman144• 4 years ago

I personally feel that I have more negotiating power and can better apply it when I'm acting as my own advocate, rather than relying on others to advocate for me on my behalf.

With that said, I have no objection with others unionizing if they feel that they don't have sufficient negotiating power on their own; unions are really helpful in these kinds of situations.

formerkrogemp2• 4 years ago

Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. This is true of every industry going on decades of increasing productivity and stagnating pay. What's new here besides greater awareness and labor churn? Will there be an actual change going forward? Of course the demographics favor workers now, but the laws and politics often don't. Immigration and outsourcing and automation can change that power dynamic very quickly. What're you going to do? Form a union? Start a company? Vote? Quit and work elsewhere? Interesting times we live in. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact.

All of my friends and aquaintinces in nursing, tax, retail, and trucking have a few people who are trying to break into programming because of the benefits and pay. Outsourcing, scope creep, and automation exist and are expanding in my industry as well. How long until this drags down programmers as well?

xyzzy47472• 4 years ago

The nature of every job is you are paid less than the value you produce. Otherwise, there would be no point in hiring you.

mattcwilson11• 4 years ago

I’m confused - are we underpaid?

If people from all those other industries are scrambling to break into tech because it’s so lucrative, what is it you or I are bringing to the table that they couldn’t?

steveBK1233• 4 years ago

I have a company that told me their first tech round (before speaking to coworkers, manager, etc) is a recorded programming sandbox problem solving for an hour.

They give you a MSFT Teams number to call into someone on the team who is on-call while doing work, in case you have any questions re: the test.

Otherwise they stressed it is “not interactive”. They then look at your results / watch the recording and let you know if they want to talk.

A bit over the top for an experienced hire interview loop.

ChuckNorris894• 4 years ago

At least it's only one hour and not a "3 hour take home tests with REST APIs, microservices, containers, NoSQL database, documentation and unit tests", that actually takes a full weekend to a whole week to complete to spec.

steveBK1233• 4 years ago

Agreed, I’ve also done the take-home multi-hour, take a weekend ones. Worse from a time consumption perspective.

However - Something about the panopticon recorded timed test thing feels a little big brother to me.

mekoka• 4 years ago

Devil's advocate here. That's the kind of interview problem solving test I prefer.

You're given an hour to solve a problem that probably takes less than half that time (if we go by the typical problem given for tech interviews). The ticking time stress effect is thus somewhat alleviated and you can focus more on the problem.

You're left solving the problem on your own. The alternative is a distracting onlooker who keeps bugging you with "what are you thinking?" As if probing people for meta explanations of their mental processes is how we help them solve problems.

You're given a phone number to call if you need help.

If my assumptions are correct, their approach is not too far off the mark.

steveBK1233• 4 years ago

I guess I’ll just add that - as a candidate, for a somewhat niche experienced role, it is incredibly off-putting. They absolutely do not get a lot of applicants for this role. I don’t even have a job spec & having not spoken to anyone technical, I really don’t know the day to day & responsibilities of the potential job. Which is to say, I don’t know that I even want it. I will probably not bother to continue with them as there were some other red flags that point to them being very lean & stingy, which is their reputation on the street.

Cthulhu_4• 4 years ago

It sounds like that company gets a lot of applicants, enough that they need a quick and minimum-person-hour way to filter out the chaff.

I mean I'm all for having people do a technical test; at my previous company it was one that would take about eight hours in total, testing people for application design, back- and front-end, XML, JSON, REST, maths, logic, etc. It was a consultancy that "only hired the best", because of course. The technical interview was the 3rd stage though, before that there would have been a CV scan, an introduction, and an hourlong meeting. After the take-home assignment there would be a one hour chat with developers about the assignment, then a short / casual chat with the CEO because he wanted to do final grilling of everyone.

Dave3of53• 4 years ago

Having just been through the recruitment hellscape last year the take home tests are absurd. Some companies are asking for whole weekends worth of work before you even get to speak to anyone.

Needless to say if a company is asking for an 8 hour take home, you bet your ass they don't respect you as a candidate and won't respect you as an employee.

I hoped that if we collectively stopped doing these then they would go away but there are a lot of people who like doing these and believe they are a net positive for some reason.

mrjin2• 4 years ago

Walk away. Trust me, 99.99% of the time, you will prove yourself wasting time on similar situations.

lapcat6• 4 years ago

I'm self-employed and don't need a job but am still open to the right opportunity. The last job I interviewed for was looking for a specialist in a particular field, which I am (fairly well known in that circle), and they told me they've been looking to fill the position for a full year before they interviewed me. The interview seemed to go well, and they wanted to continue with the process, but they said the next step was a take-home project. I wasn't thrilled, because my qualifications should already be established, but they said it's their mandatory procedure. I thought, ok, I'm interested in this job, and maybe I can power through the project quickly. But no, the project was rather open-ended, more of an unsolved problem than an already solved problem, and I started to see that I could spend an unknown number of hours on it. So I said fuck it and told them I've changed my mind about the job.

I noticed many months later after I turned them down that they were still trying to fill the position. This is an employer just shooting themselves in the foot. They created their own "labor shortage".

It's actually the second time in a row that I got this kind of absurdity. I was contacted unsolicited by an engineering manager from DuckDuckGo looking for a specialist. I asked them what their hiring procedure was, and it was even worse: they had multiple pre-hiring projects and some kind of probationary period before permanent hire. So I asked if I could just skip this, given my qualifications, and they said no, that's just how they do things at DuckDuckGo, and they believed their hiring process has been "successful" for them. So I basically said no thanks, buh-bye. And they also were continuing to try to fill the position many months after I said no.

gwbas1c2• 4 years ago

they had multiple pre-hiring projects and some kind of probationary period

Duck Duck Go paid me to do their projects. I can understand skipping it if you don't want to put the time in; but at least they aren't taking your work for free.

lapcat6• 4 years ago

Duck Duck Go paid me to do their projects. I can understand skipping it if you don't want to put the time in; but at least they aren't taking your work for free.

Correct, they did pay. But I didn't really care about that. My only interest was a permanent job, not a short term contract. If I want short term contracts, I can find those elsewhere.

neverminder• 4 years ago

I noticed many months later after I turned them down that they were still trying to fill the position. This is an employer just shooting themselves in the foot. They created their own "labor shortage".

These are the companies that for whatever bullshit internal political reasons don't actually want to hire. When a company actually wants to hire they move fast. In the last 10 years I got my last 3 jobs after a single 30-45 minute conversation with CTO or team lead.

sys_64738• 4 years ago

I don't even say "no thanks" as I simply ignore them. I am not interested in going through some random company's BS hiring hazing ritual. I will interview and draw a few diagrams on the whiteboard for 3-4 hours max then walkout if you're wasting my time.

scruple• 4 years ago

hiring hazing ritual

A call with the hiring manager. An open-ended take-home. Rounds of interviews with "the team" that for some reason includes multiple executives, the mobile team, the frontend team, the backend team, the data team, the product team...

It ought to be unsurprising that these requisitions sit empty for months and years.

dave_sullivan• 4 years ago

Been through this quite a few times. I love programming but hate the industry.

I do fine on my own but would probably make more money working for a bigger company. I won't do a long interview process for free though. Oh well.

OnlyMortal• 4 years ago

A take home project?

I’d have told them I wasn’t interested.

If they’re not capable of figuring you out at a interview, that’s a red flag.

olsonjeffery2• 4 years ago

It’s funny you say this because the take-home project is meant to find good candidates who don’t interview well [0]

Also this practice arose as a response to the notion of high pressure coding exercises during interviews, how predictive they are, and how to improve them.

0 - https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/

oceanghost• 4 years ago

and some kind of probationary period before permanent hire

I had this same experience with a company about a decade ago. I'd been in a job for about 8 years where I was an expert in a few niche areas.

One day a CEO of some company calls and says I'd be "perfect" for his company and would I be interested? I say of course, and in the end it comes out that I would have to endure a 6-month probationary period where you didn't have benefits (I'm not even sure this is legal in California).

I politely turned him down, and he actually called back about an hour later incredulous that I wouldn't consider an offer? And I explained to him, I was in a job that was relatively stable, why would I leave that job only to have benefits dangled in front of me.

I also pointed out the asymmetry of them asking me to leave a position I'd been in for multiple years while they couldn't commit to a "perfect" candidate.

It fell on deaf ears. The dude was used to getting what he wanted.

mrjin2• 4 years ago

There are always people in vulnerable positions and there are more than enough suckers willing to take advantage of that.

My tip to avoid that is to ask for a phone screening for around a hour, walk away if cannot get one. If they don't want to invest one hour in you, then why would you spend anytime with them?

jaggederest• 4 years ago

I've found in the past that if a company presents an onerous task for interviews, and isn't interested in paying directly for the work, sometimes they are willing to donate an equivalent sum to a non-profit of your choice.

Of course, the fact that they won't pay directly is useful information when interviewing, by itself, but a donation can indicate respect for your investment of time and effort.

xyzzy47472• 4 years ago

Never do an interview where you aren’t at least equally wasting someone else’s time.

lelandfe• 4 years ago

I'm too nervous to name the company, but here we go. [Edit: whatever, I didn't sign an NDA. This was Algolia]

I've been meaning to get this off my chest. Out of all ~100 interviews I took over the last 8 months, there was a singular egregious example.

It netted out upwards of 25hrs.

You may ask, "lelandfe, why did you go through all of this?" It had been 8 months without a paycheck; I barely made rent this month (landed a dream job recently! phew). This was for a senior demo eng role:

1. 30m phone screen

2. 30m behavioral

3. 1hr technical. Asked to write a hashmap to filter JSON, binary search over an array, and a Markdown renderer

4. 8hr take home assignment. But, "if you do wish to spend more [time], please go ahead." I spend the minimum time needed, which winds up being more like 14hrs.

I have to register for the platform, come up with a fictitious company, and then design and build a real demo site using the service – turning over the source code and live demo at the end. The scoring rubric is how creative the use of the platform is, and how much value the search service adds to my fake company.

5. 2hr written email correspondence test. I'm given 3 fake emails from "customers," each asking about specifics of the platform, e.g. "where can I find X and Y on the admin?" and "please define concepts Z and A for me."

6. 30m presentation of take home to 10 employees of the SaaS company, followed by 30m Q&A with the team. I'm only made aware of this after turning in my take home. Building and rehearsing the presentation takes around 3hrs.

7. 3hr on-site

8. Day after on-site: 15m wrap-up discussion w/HR

9. 15m wrap-up discussion w/engineering manager

Through all of this, every decision maker expressed extreme satisfaction with my performance, and the engineering manager repeatedly told me how smart and well-spoken I was.

A week later, I get, as an email: "our team has decided to pass on your candidacy." They adamantly refuse to give me more feedback (though admitting: position still open, no other candidates in final stages), and don't refer me to other roles.

TrackerFF2• 4 years ago

That's awful.

In my experience, there are usually (at least) three reasons for that to happen - i.e. you getting rejected after a seemingly impeccable interview:

1) They already had a candidate they wanted to hire, but have some internal hiring protocol / process they must follow.

2) You and the other candidate(s) were incredibly similar, but one had to go.

3) Everyone but one senior decision maker liked you. Could have been for whatever reason. We like to think that most companies have a somewhat democratic recruitment panel, where all the decision makers get a (somewhat) equally weighted say. But some places, it's more like gatekeeper after gatekeeper...you might get passed all the previous ones, but not the last one.

gsibble• 4 years ago

Yikes. That's horrible.

gwbas1c2• 4 years ago

8hr take home assignment

Aaaand that's the point I walk away. If I like the company, I'll say "no." If I don't like the company, I ghost.

It's pretty much the only situation I believe ghosting a company is worthwhile.

itronitron• 4 years ago

Yeah, 4 and 5 are things they should train you on after you start. Also, I don't know why anyone would ever need to write their own hashmap, and if you have a hashmap then you don't need binary search :\ .

I agree with TrackerFF that someone likely vetoed the group consensus, also potentially a funding issue.

cholantesh• 4 years ago

Wow, this is insane. Of the last two companies I spoke to, one wanted me to come in for an unpaid daylong onsite. The other had:

1. 30m phone screen 2. Leetcode assessment 3. 1h video call in which I was to implement some DSA 4. 2h Coding + System design 5. 45m behavioural

I didn't imagine it could get worse, but here we are.

hahamrfunnyguy• 4 years ago

It's fair to ask people to do work, but they should be paid for it if it goes beyond an hour or so. I've turned down opportunities with a ridiculous recruiting process, I couldn't imagine what it would be like when you actually worked for them!

When I was managing the software division of an IT services company, we would send all candidates a fizz-buzz type programming assessment that should only take 5-10 minutes to complete. After that, we would do a 15 minute phone screen then had someone come in for a 1-2 hour long interview with some live programming. The point of the exercises in the interview was to see someone's thought process, not if they could actually "complete" the exercises.

At that point, we'd have a pretty good idea of where a candidate's skill were at and we could start the process of extending an offer if the team agreed they were a good fit.

There were a few occasions where the candidates had no experience with any of the tech we were using, but were obviously capable developers. We'd usually make an offer at the lower end of the salary range for that position with a raise being guaranteed in 10 weeks if they met the requirements. There was the expectation that they'd do a bit learning outside of work hours if needed.

Everyone who was given that offer accepted it and was given the raise.

endemic• 4 years ago

There were a few occasions where the candidates had no experience with any of the tech we were using, but were obviously capable developers. We'd usually make an offer at the lower end of the salary range for that position with a raise being guaranteed in 10 weeks if they met the requirements.

This is great. Makes sense for the business, and the results spoke for themselves.

uvnq• 4 years ago

then had someone come in for a 1-2 hour long interview with some live programming. The point of the exercises in the interview was to see someone's thought process, not if they could actually "complete" the exercises.

I don't know much about industry and interviews yet. Do you think this is the case for most interviews? That they care about your thought process, not just if you can complete the problem? Is it necessary to learn/memorize all algorithms and data structures, or is it better to practice and focus on improving my problem solving skills and thought process?

tpxl• 4 years ago

Everyone says they care about the thought process, but almost nobody actually does. The GP seems to, but there's plenty of stories where they ask an open question (What happens when you put some text in the search bar and press enter), then fail you for that question if you don't discuss the specifics they want (http/DNS/routing/whatever the interviewer likes).

TrackerFF2• 4 years ago

I'm actually all for take-home projects, because I excel at them - and I have the time. But I fully understand that others don't have the time, or don't want to risk being ghosted after submitting work.

Ideally, if we're stuck with whiteboarding and take-homes, candidates should get to choose.

But with that said, ref. the article...25 pages? Who comes up with that kind of work?

My take-home projects have been like 2-3 pages max, and took maybe 2-3 hour to finish from beginning to end.

dkersten• 4 years ago

I've just been through a job search.

While I didn't have to do any take home projects, one company I interviewed at had multiple hours of different interviews (coding, design, etc). I thought I did pretty well (everyone seemed happy with my answers) and I feel like I'm very well suited to the job I interviewed for, given the projects I've worked on previously, but ultimately I didn't get an offer. That could be for any number of reasons, of course, but the feedback they gave is that I didn't manage to "fully complete" the design interview. This is a little baffling to me because the role I was interviewing for doesn't sound like it requires people to design full, complete distributed services within one hour in a high pressure interview situation. I know I can design complex systems, because I've successfully done so multiple times in the past, and I work well enough under pressure, but that I would miss something in a mere hour of an interview is almost a given. My best designs come when I can sleep on it and take a little time. Besides, some of the greatest engineers I know don't do well in artificial interview situations.

On the other hand, I also interviewed at another company for a very similar role, yet this time it was a 90 minute chat about stuff I'd worked on in the past. They do normally do an hour long coding task, but they let me skip it because they could see from my experience and the person who referred me vouched for my ability to write code. At the end of the 90 minutes, I was basically told they liked me and hoped I would join and that they'd give me an offer the next day. I happily accepted this offer.

During this time a Google recruiter also contacted me but when he said that their process typically takes months I declined right away. I can't think of any time in my career where I'd care to spend months to maybe get a job at Google.

corobo• 4 years ago

Have you ever looked at a job at Canonical (Ubuntu)? I think that's the most jaw dropping interview process I've ever seen

Effectively you write an autobiography and they might read it. I gave up after a couple of hours realising it was such a dumb waste of time to be writing about high school.. I left over half my lifetime ago lmao. It was like squeezing blood out of a stone trying to remember anything from that time.

Don't even bother applying if you have ADHD or anything with similar symptoms, you're not what they're after.

https://twitter.com/dmsimard/status/1505262381609406467

voidfunc• 4 years ago

I prefer the take home project interviews because im not great at on-demand recall of algorithms for a whiteboard session

beej71• 4 years ago

I tell candidates to bring some code--any code--they wrote and are particularly proud of.

Then in the interview, I have them teach me how it works, tell me about potential improvements, and describe rationale.

In my experience, this has been a quick and effective measure, both technical and behavioral.

I find it immoral to ask candidates to put in hours of uncompensated work they wouldn't have normally done. And I don't think it gives good data.

Once we hired a dev with zero experience with the platform, language, libraries, or tooling. It was clear from the interview they had skills, though. After two weeks, they were producing good code. After a month, great code. Absolute win. And they never would have been picked by a "spend 16 hours making us a demo project" company.

mouzogu• 4 years ago

Something the article doesn't bother to try and explain, why has interviewing become so difficult?

Is the market oversaturated with low quality candidates? Or has the recruiter been integrated internally into companies such that the role has become more bureaucratic?

Job interviews that go too far

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