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Comment by 8note | Hacker News Reader

I've been a lunch buddy before.

I don't remember there being anywhere on the interview app for me to put in feedback. I see lunch buddy's responsibility being to make sure you're well fed and caffeinated, and ready for the afternoon interviews/excited about the team/org.

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Depends on the company. OP is quite correct, often the lunch buddy is another interview, sometimes it's just a way to give junior employees some exposure to the process, sometimes it's it really is just lunch.

I interviewed once with a finance company that recorded the entire day, openly, including the break room. I interviewed with another company, where the ride from/and to the airport was part of the interview - I was a little suspicious at the time due to the nature of the "conversation" and had it confirmed through a contact later.

Human creativity exists on both side of the hiring table.

Need more details! Was it the cab driver, or did they send an employee to meet you at the airport?

I've heard old stories of interviews where you park the candidate somewhere, and get the janitor to come by and drop something, or ask for a hand - and they see how you respond. Was it like that?

They used a pick up from the airport service, and apparently the owner/driver was a relative of one of the senior managers. It was somewhat blatant, in the kind of questions he slipped in weren't quite in the zone for your typical taxi driver.

I've never experienced anything like the janitor stories, although I can well believe them, but I did once work for a company in LA, where I struck up some really interesting friendships with a couple of the janitors who were unemployed script writers. They had some stories to tell...

Problem is, tech is the easiest thing to get started talking about with a candidate. It's the one guaranteed thing you have in common.

It’s really not - lunch is part of the interview. Maybe less technically oriented, but it’s still part of the interview.

[edit: Wow, so much down votes.

I have interviewed and been interviewed at multiple big tech companies. In all cases the lunch has been part of the interview process, in most I’ve even been given an explicit “this is X, they’ll be talking about Y over lunch”, or it’s been called “lunch interview”.

If the company isn’t treating the lunch period as an interview you’re wasting your engineer’s (or whatever) time, and the candidates. ]

Nop.

People who only have lunch with the candidate are not invited to submit a scorecard and not present at the debrief, at least at my large employer.

Literally every tech interview I’ve ever had treats lunch as part of the interview. Every candidate I’ve talked to at lunch was aware that it was part of the interview.

At Google the lunch is not scored. It's a chance for the candidate to decompress a bit (the rest of the day is back-to-back) and also to sell Google culture a bit, but it's not about getting feedback.

At my last gig at Stripe we had a candidate fail the lunch interview because he spent much of the time bad mouthing his current co-workers. Not a good look. Unless there is a red flag though, the lunch interviewer doesn't have to show up for the post-interview discussions.

False.

Currently an Amazon employee. 40+ interviews + debriefs. Not once has "what did the lunch buddy think?" ever been uttered.

I've been a lunch buddy myself a handful of times. My goal is to have a good time, answer any questions the candidate has, and squeeze as nice of a meal (+ coffee) outta the process as I can. I've never been asked for feedback

That sounds like amazon is wasting employees time then. That runs counter to my experience with other large tech companies.

It benefits neither the company nor the candidate to have the candidate be overly stressed out all day. Lunch also gives the candidate the chance to chat informally to a potential colleague and for that potential colleague to make a pitch for why it's cool to work at the company and live in the area. If the lunch buddy does their job well the candidate should leave excited to work for the company and in good spirits for the last half of the interview. On top of that both people get a free lunch. Definitely not a waste of time.

Agreed. About half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

I think it is worth it to the company for me to spend the 5 extra minutes of my time (since I'm going to eat lunch anyway) and $25 on lunch to defuse those concerns and sell them on the team. With the phone screen, the interviews, the feedback forms and the debrief, the company is spending a ton of time on each candidate brought on site. Loosing a candidate you make an offer to is the worst waste of time.

> half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

And what do you tell them / what do you think?

Yup, just like letting your employees eat during work hours is "wasting employees' time"... They have to eat anyway!

When I was younger and dumber, I did two full day interviews at Amazon, 9am till 4-5pm. No lunch, no bathroom breaks, wall to wall interviews completely unrelated to the initial reasons for my contact. Actually rude to the recruiter after the first day, I was convinced to return for a 2nd round of interviews. I never bothered to return any contacts after that incredibly poor and redundant treatment. The exact same thing happened on the 2nd day: no lunch, no bathroom breaks, tons of waiting, and unrelated interviewers.

Same here.

Another Amazon employee here. It's just lunch. We're there to give candidates a moment to relax after their morning interviews. Lunch buddies are never asked for feedback.

That's not accurate. The lunch buddy is there to give the candidate some relaxing time off of interviewing, allow them to get a good lunch, and to ask questions "off the record" to a potential colleague. Informally it is the job of the lunch buddy to make a pitch for why the candidate should consider working for the company, and if relocation is on the table, what's neat about the area and why the candidate should consider moving.

The lunch buddy doesn't get the option to enter feedback for a candidate and often doesn't even get invited to the interview debrief. They really are there just for lunch.

Source: have been a lunch buddy several times.

I have been a lunch buddy too, sure they can told u that it was not an interview but nothing in this world is ever black and white. The person I'm having lunch is probably will be my future coworker so if this person doing something stupid or something I don't like during the lunch, there is no guarantee I will not hinted it to the hiring manager later on.

This is incorrect. At least for tech companies, when you are explicitly told that it's not an interview, you can take it at face value (but as always, exercise judgement, and don't be a dick).

Usually they will tell you whether lunch is also an interview or if it's just lunch. From my own experiences, Microsoft typically does a more touchy-feely interview (still a real interview) over lunch, but Google typically doesn't. With the tech giants, you can take this at face value.

That doesn't mean your lunch buddy will be a good conversationalist though. Mine mostly were not (including at AirBnB, but I only point that out for the irony against their stated cultural values). I would sometimes just ask for the last 20 minutes to meditate.

Also that's not an insult or a judgement. Being a good conversationalist in professional settings is hard, and interviews doubly so because interviewees are nervous for good reasons. So I don't judge engineers or even PM's by how good at bantering they are during interviews, because it's not their job to be good at it.

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