Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xDEFC0DE | Hacker News Reader

After 8 hours total interviewing at one company, I kinda feel like I was hired and fired in a single day

I'm interviewing for the first time in years, totally forgot how degrading it is. For one company had 1 interview/week (each relatively short) for 4 weeks, passed the technical (my third interview) and then the 4th/final interview I was asked 95% the same questions that were asked in the 2nd interview. I gave the same answers. And then I was turned down.

At least you got an answer. I was searching (being picky) for almost a year. I got through numerous phone screens and in-persons where I confirmed the timeline before leaving (ie. you're going to make a decision on 'X' day and notify candidates) and the dickheads just straight tried to ghost me. I persisted until I got an answer, even if it was one I didn't like because you owe your applicants a goddamn answer either way.

My favorite is when you apply for a job and you get there and magically the job title/responsibilities have changed. It's like, y'all don't even know what you're looking for… get bent.

Recently went through something similar with a fairly well known tech company. I was told after nearly a whole day of workshops and interviews that I didn't make the cut. Was called back 3 months later and asked if I'd be interested in another role, organised an interview and the company cancelled it the night before.

WOW! That would very exhausting.. is this norm these days to have full day interview sessions?

Definitely not

As someone who spent 5 months interviewing, studying, applying, tech screening, full-day-onsiting, healing from rejection, washing and repeating

Definitely yes, majority will do full day interviews and reject you because you can't write on a white board.

A couple years ago I had TWO full-day interview sessions with a single company. That I had to take time off of my then-current job to attend. After a one-hour phone screen. Who ended up not hiring me anyway.

Unless the position was for serious fuck you money and I really needed it, there's no way in hell I would tolerate 2 full day interviews.

I'm also guilty for spending lots of after work days studying for jobs I really wanted and getting rejected but at least I didn't burn any of my precious vacation days.

I fell prey to the “sunk cost” fallacy - after the first full day when they asked me to come back, I thought: a) it would be a shame to “waste” that first full day of interviewing by saying no now and b) surely nobody would be a big enough asshole to ask me to take two full days off of work to interview with them only to reject me after the second day, so surely this second day is just a formality.

Apparently I was wrong.

And no, it was just a regular programming job, nothing special.

I have found that lightly pushing back on such requests makes them value you a little more. Doesn't matter too much since they should've valued you in the first place. I've had a couple processes expedited in this way, sometimes skipping a call here or there or changing a second onsite to a call.

As much as it sucks, it sounds like you dodged a bullet on that one.

I've done about 3 of these kinds of "interviews" in my career.. basically a small work for hire each. Didn't get the jobs.. but took great joy in checking in on each of these companies after 6 months to find they no longer existed.

My gf interviewed at google from 8am to 2:30pm (after 2 half-hour to hour-long phone screens).

Northrop Grumman had a (wasteful) 8 hour "college day" that was an hour of technical interviews, 4 hours of propaganda, and 2 hours of arbitrary fluff like team building games among the applicants.

The ~5 or so on-sites I've had apart from NG were 2-4 hours.

Told the last Google recruiter that contacted me "No, I've been through your interview process once years ago, I'm not subjecting myself to that again."

I got my current job after a brief phone screen and a one hour in-person interview. It came with a big pay increase and the smartest people I've worked with so far.

I'm not sure why so many companies insist on the days-long torture interviews (I've been through several), but I know they're not necessary to find good people.

Facebook wasted loads of my time before I even got onsite, with several shared-screen coding phone interviews spread over a month. Each time I would solve all the problems and get to working code but a week later they would ask me to do another interview.

I got reasons like "the interviewer quit without submitting his feedback" or "interviewer said he had hard time understanding your voice on the phone" (I'm a native english speaker and interviewer was not), or "interviewer lost his notes", etc. Maybe my code just sucks and they were lying but I don't think so. It took so long to get through that stage to the onsite that I felt like I'd already worked there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com