Hacker News Reader

Comment by ddelt | Hacker News Reader

Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage.

What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more people because of that one. Who knows if all of their negative karma ends up being worse in the grand scheme of things?

I personally avoid applying to places that other engineers tell me to avoid because I trust their opinion more than I trust a company selling me the highlight reel in an interview. If a trusted engineer said he got a rejection in an interview, asked for feedback, and none was given, I’d avoid that place too.

View on HN

A company has to hire someone. So they're forced to take the risk.

They don't have to provide feedback, so they don't have to take the risk if they don't want to.

Don't really think your comparison was fair.

But hopefully they interview more people than they hire.

What's your point? That increases the risk through increased exposure.

Yes, I think I misread the person I was replying to in retrospect, and agree.

which makes it even worse - if you interview 20 people, and 1 in 20 is a media rampager - every time you provide feedback on a hiring cycle you will have a rampage.

This is a tried and true practice in dating, and it translates well to hiring, which is basically the same thing.

Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you.

Edit: I don't remember ghosting anyone personally in either setting, but it's happened to me plenty. Getting upset about it just means you're new to the experience.

> Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback.

The data I've seen suggests you're totally wrong about this.

I work at a company in the recruiting space. My primary role is interviewing technical candidates, and we provide very detailed feedback to candidates of all levels, regardless of whether or not we move forward with them.

People consistently tell us they love the feedback that we provide - in fact, people say the feedback we provide is one of the best parts of their experience with us.

Does your company actually hire programmers directly? I'm a bit confused by what you mean with working at a company in the recruiting space.

Detailed feedback can mean a lot of different things. Recruiters always think they're giving people detailed feedback. That's nothing compared to an honest code review.

Bearing in mind that code reviews often cause tension even in fully employed people, it's hard to imagine they're always well received by job seekers.

I also have data on this. I previously worked for a marketplace company that had to vet freelance writers.

The application process was partially automated, with multiple human reviewers that provided detailed scoring on the applicant’s performance.

Initially, we provided a score breakdown to applicants, but we turned this off within a few weeks after a cascade of hostility.

The difference is in the first case the feedback was constructive?

Probably. Our feedback doesn't contain question-by-question breakdowns or numerical scoring. Instead we try to make it actionable, practical and specific. It looks roughly like this:

"Based on our interview we think you would really benefit from studying up on data structures and algorithms. If you want to study this stuff on your own, many people find (link) and (link) useful. But there's also (link) or (link) books available on amazon that we've had people recommend."

Or: "We were impressed by your spoken communication skills, but sometimes you seemed to struggle to remember specific technical terms for some of the concepts and areas we discussed...."

The feedback emails themselves are assembled from a mix of interviewer notes and reused snippets for comments we give frequently. This sort of stuff has been very time consuming for us to prepare. At the volume of candidates we interact with, we think its definitely worth it. But its possible that no feedback is better than bad feedback, and most organizations might not have the time to write good feedback to candidates.

But I can say with confidence that almost everyone really appreciates the feedback we send. While its easy for senior people to find work at the moment, there's lots of junior people out there sending dozens of resumes for every call back. Receiving rejection after rejection from companies (or worse, being ghosted) without even being told what you're doing wrong is a really awful experience.

Constructive feedback is the key. No one is going to feel good about getting back a score card that says "Communication: 6/10, Technical Ability: 5/10..." etc. That just leaves you with more questions and no actionable feedback. "6/10? I'm at least 7/10!" or "I'm mostly 6-7s, why was I not given an offer".

Honestly as someone who is looking for a junior role this could not be further from the truth. I just want to know how to improve so I can stop being unhappy at my current job and get a new one.

I'd be happy to take a look at some code if you like. noahjkingsley//gmail

This has the implicit right answer: A job interview is the worst moment/place for feedback. There is just too much heart/animosity at stake on both sides.

I've been interviewing candidates for more than 15 years (for PhD /RA positions and then for Engineering) and every time I've given honest feedback, candidates just get into an argument on why they think the feedback does not apply to them...

It is just not worth it. If I want to know how am I at certain skills... I test myself in a less "charged" environment.

That means that in 15 years you have not learned how to give not honest busy constructive feedback.

This could be true, and people probably believe it, but my experience stepping in towards the end of an interview and guiding candidates towards the solution was nearly always immediate counter arguments. "I was going to do that next!"

I'm a little bit busy temporarily but I feel I can help you out. Email is the following backwards with symbols added: com live brandonbrowning

“They want to get in a fight with you.”

They want to explain themselves. There is a difference. What you consider an argument or fight is just a Hail Mary, almost an involuntary recovery attempt, for some.

Accepting feedback without trying to dig your way out of a hole or justify your actions is a sign of maturity.

This. It took me one single experience of being threatened after sharing feedback to never want to do it again. Lesson learned.

Once you've been a hiring manager and reviewer long enough, it becomes obvious that, while the intent behind giving feedback is good, the reality of it is messy, and provides no consistent upside to the company.

A couple of years ago, I was ghosted by a company after being interviewed. A few weeks later, I realized that the guy that interviewed me was just hired as a consultant by the company, and convinced the boss to hire him instead of me for my job.

How did I find all of this out? Over A month later, they called me back.

This was after I had been strung along by the business owner and the guy that interviewed me for over a week where they were going to make a final decision about hiring me..and then nothing. They couldn't be bothered to return my phone call or respond to any emails.

They left a message that I had to schedule an appointment with the guy that interviewed me to basically interview me again.

I, of course, never called them back, but sent both of them a nasty email telling them to fuck off in so many words.

I never thought I would be ghosted like this from a potential employer.

> I never thought I would be ghosted like this from a potential employer.

Get used to it. It sucks but if I got upset like I used to when a company ghosts me (I'm not just talking about after initial phone screens but even after lengthy on-site interviews), I'd be dead from the stress by now. It happens so often these days. Some companies behave decently but it seems that many more companies are following the lead of recruiters and behaving like jerks.

But there's a massive shortage of talent. Of course employers would ghost you. They can just hire the next consultant in queue.

> Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you.

I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous: we give every applicant we speak to feedback and not once has anybody "got into a fight with us".

Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

If they blab their mouth on social media and it goes viral they've already done the damage before you could serve court papers. Why even bother with the risk?

Because that’s allowing risk adverse mentalities to prevent companies from innovating in their hiring processes to build a more transparent and improved culture of hiring, and a chance to differentiate themselves from competitors with a reputation of good interviewing practices?

Sure.

> Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

This ain't gonna help though, because it's not particularly useful at preventing the damage that these companies are afraid of, so it's not really going to tilt the existing balance.

I just think companies don’t nearly take anonymous social media backlash as seriously as this discussion alleges they do. Anecdotally, companies barely take customer/client complaints on social media seriously, unless it goes viral- but how would that happen in the case of giving feedback to an applicant? Hard for it to be big news unless actual discriminatory practices emerged- in which the current system already fails to protect against.

Perhaps companies are just behaving too conservatively, and there is room for interviewing platforms to improving the hiring process by giving the helpful feedback that applicants crave.

Not really worth improving the pipeline of candidates you don’t want.

This is the sad truth of it. As a candidate I greatly appreciate feedback but I know there are others who will try to paint their not getting hired as due to bias (classism, racism, sexism, etc) without any evidence. I don't blame those who have been burned and ended the practice. An accusation might as well be a conviction in some situations.

So that we can all work together to improve the hiring process. Seriously. I could get hit by car because I stopped to pick up some trash on the side of the road. But it's still a decent thing to do.

What right does someone have to sue before they’ve been hired, anyways, unless it’s on a discrimination basis (in which this case, it is clearly not)?

Here in Texas, at least, that sort of thing does not seem like something that would ever be a real legal risk. This is a right-to-work state; I figured it’s pretty hard to get sued here.

Hiring bias litigation is common and expensive in other states.

The advice you will get on HR side is because no binding arb. agreement is in place you are exposed to full litigation efforts including attorney fees.

These can involve disparate effect or implicit bias - which can be difficult to defend against.

Are you serious? Imagine the first HN headline that reads "Company X requires you to waive your ability to sue if you apply to them". Come on, man. Apply some tests to your ideas.

That's already how most EULA click-through NDAs are, and no one blinks an eye. People are just numb to legal disclaimers now. One outrage article will not go viral, and will not sink any companies.

And deal with all the blowback for yet another NDA? Plus the inevitable decision where you need to decide to enforce it and come across as even more of an asshole? For what benefit again?

The best feedback is completely fact based.

> Most candidates finish the coding section in 40 minutes. You took 60 minutes.

> In the system design part of the interview, the candidates we hire talk about SLA requirements.

Facts. No interpretations.

I am not even telling the person what they should do.

80% of the time this is not true. But 20% of time it is. That's often enough to scare folks away.

In our case, it's not an iron-clad no feedback allowed policy. We're just much more careful about giving it, approval is given on a case-by-case basis.

A good typical whiteboard interview naturally includes hints, feedback, and collaboration. After several hours of it, we have a very good idea of how well they may respond to feedback from members of our organization.

Honestly, I love giving feedback. I love helping candidates be better at interviewing. Bad interviews are painful to the interviewer too. I'm out of a small market so people and word gets around.

If it really isn't their fault they didn't get the job, we try to make that very very clear. It really sucks when we have to pass up on someone who absolutely killed the interview because someone else did better.

The harsh reality is, many people that don't pass on the interview are people we do not want in the industry. The good ones we give every hint and help we can.

There's also more tactical ways of extracting feedback from companies rather than directly asking for it. We can't tell you about how you did well after rejection, but we can talk about what our expectations are during the interview; put two and two together. I've noticed the good candidates that are serious about improving their interviewing do it, and from the company side, it's a strong signal they're not trying to contest a decision.

Food for thought, when was the last time you gave a company feedback on their interview process? I've traded feedback for feedback quite successfully many times when I was interviewing.

I try to give interview feedback on every interview I go on, where I am the person being interviewed. Obviously, companies who provide me with actionable or useful feedback get actionable and useful feedback from me in return:

Interviewer: you have great interpersonal communication but I think you need a bit more knowledge in python techniques XYZ. I like being up front and transparent, and the python stuff is a big deal to us, so although you had a great set of traits, we want someone stronger in python.

Me: Thank you for giving me a clear indication on what was important, where I was strong, and most importantly, for not giving me a “we’ll call you if we want to move forward” response. I highly respect you for not wasting my time unnecessarily.

>The harsh reality is, many people that don't pass on the interview are people we do not want in the industry. The good ones we give every hint and help we can.

It's pretty bold of you to claim your interview can accurately qualify candidates across the entire industry.

Maybe you have found an interview that works for most companies? There's chests of gold waiting for you if you have.

I can pretty boldly claim that I can filter out "definitely not". I'd say most interviews can too. There are a handful of companies that do this for you.

These are the candidates that can't FizzBuzz or even write a line of code and/or are humongous asshats.

    > A good typical whiteboard interview

There is nothing good in a typical whiteboard interview. If anything, any whiteboard interview is typically bad.

> If a trusted engineer said he got a rejection in an interview, asked for feedback, and none was given, I’d avoid that place too.

So, your employer does give feedback to candidates on request? It must be difficult for you to find places that are acceptable to you to work, since very few companies typically give feedback. Or do your friends just not usually ask for feedback and as a result that clause on your criteria never trips (i.e. the company wouldn't have given feedback, but since your friend didn't ask, you don't strike it off your list)?

I think a big part of it is also most companies hiring decisions are a lot more subjective than they’d like to admit. I suspect in many cases the interviewers aren’t able to provide specific feedback that won’t immediately sound strange.

    Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage.

Nearly every company has a policy regarding social media usage with regard to company-related content. If the negative comments get back to the company, that individual will likely face consequences. The "no interviewee feedback" is just another part of a communications policy.

Your last sentence rules out most companies. Are you sure about that?

I get what you are saying, but sometimes there may not be any useful feedback to give. Lets say you just don't like the candidate personally or think they aren't a good culture fit, feedback might be hard to give without just hurting someone's feelings.

Social media rampage after an interview is a bad look for anyone. Tell your friends about it sure if they're thinking about going in but no reason to burn a bridge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com