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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

This problem extends beyond Palantir and internships. Every job interview I have been through, you have to go through a recruiter screen, a hiring manager phone interview, another phone interview with a senior person, first day onsite with 5-6 people, second day onsite with a homework presentation. ARE YOU KIDDINg ME ?? I have another job, and I have to constantly lie to find time to interview with ONE company. Then these guys all complain about talent shortage and unable to fill up their vacancies. May be, you don't need 20 interviews to determine if a person is a good fit for your role.

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Meanwhile, family and friends that are traveling nurses (ie a job that ACTUALLY effects life and death) have 1 phone interview with a hiring manager that can last 20 minutes to an hour. That's it.

Then they receive a decision within a week (though often within a day or two).

That is amazing. Would kill for an interview experience like that

Right? A family member was out with me at a wine tasting a year ago, stepped outside for 30 minutes to take a phone interview, and came back. She received an offer two days later.

I think it all boils down to being in a profession that's in very high demand.

Wow, that's fucking terrible.

I've been incredibly lucky to either have two short interviews with companies on separate days or just a 5-6 hour interview. I wouldn't tolerate having to jump through so many hoops.

Yeah, don't try to get a job at Google, then. They basically make you do the HR + HR quizzing you on tech trivia they don't understand ("that's not the answer I have in front of me") + 2 tech phone screens + full-day onsite. The real rub is that you go through this entire months-long process 2-5x to convince them that you really want it. Their recruiters frequently won't tell you what's going on; weeks of radio silence is the norm with them, missed interviews on their side, last-minute re-schedules, long delays and dropped balls everywhere. Then you'll get a rejection with no clear reason, and they'll encourage you to try again, even setting up another interview 6 months down the line "when you're ready" (basically, after you've studied how to pass the Google Trials). They now have a standardized salary for all new employees, and in the end they make their money selling ads. Once you do get hired, you'll be doing Orkut support or Google Apps password resets. They have tons of crazy over-qualified engineers working on basically oiling the gears of the advertising money machine. You could try to do something very impressive (on the surface) to get promoted to middle management, then never get the chance to maintain it...this is a big part of why so much stuff they launch doesn't improve beyond v1 and just gets shut off a couple of years later.

Spot on. It is amazing that after 20 rounds of interview, you get a generic rejection email "We have decided to not move forward at this time, although we liked your profile blah blah blah". If I recall correctly, Google actually started this trend of over interviewing. I remember my friends started bragging about how they got a job after 17 rounds at Google, or how they cleared 22 rounds, but were rejected at the 23rd round. I wonder if this is truly about weeding out or just that no one wants to make a decision and just punt the ball to someone else.

It's the generic rejection email without feedback that's particularly egregious. If there's such an issue about not provided feedback, b/c mythical litigious rejected candidates would sue b/c of alleged discrimination, then someone should try to fix that. Institute some sort of legal disclaimer that allows candidates to receive feedback if they promise not to sue.

Yeah, the more that I hear about interviews at the Big Four, the more I'm glad I've stuck with smaller companies and startups. My experience has been so much better and I've learned tons from having to be more bootstrapped.

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