Hiring Software Engineers

"Paying for travel is a lot cheaper than paying a recruiter to find you candidates. And, while I’m the biggest believer in the value of video conferencing that you’re ever likely to find, there’s no substitute for an all-day, in person, interaction with everyone on your team."

I was interviewing at an SV company recently and was told I would be flown in for the final interview. Instead, when the final interview arrived they arranged a 3 hour Skype interview and had me do coding challenges inside Google Docs. It was the worst interview I've ever had to do, I couldn't get any sense of the office environment, and trying to write up a piece of code in Google Docs was just plain terrible.

FYI: this is a dup of the also-recently-posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11551187

At some companies, divulging performance or personal issues about an ex-employee could land you in a lot of trouble. Be sure you're clear to talk about previous employees freely.

If a company goes around and bad-mouths every employee that leaves the organization it could potentially have legal consequences.