What does it mean for the industry when there's one of these articles on the front page every other week?
The article presents a picture of a guy “studying up” for a career and his adventures in interviewing. As someone who’s interviewed hundreds of candidates I noticed red flags right away. For instance, if someone asks you to design a micro service - you don’t say “I can’t”. No FAANGco interviewer wants you to fail. In fact, they want to help you. The best worst answer would have been “I’m not really familiar with micro services but I’ll give it a shot. Could you explain a bit more about them?” This shows the candidate doesn’t falter at a challenge, is willing to dive deep, and is committed to the task.
The lens shift comes into play when 50% of the candidates can’t complete fizz buzz, another 25% simply lied in there resume about any relating experience, and the other 24% don’t have any real understanding about algorithms.
There are software developers and then there are great software developers. It’s generally initiative and algorithms that separate the two.
Tangentially, candidates should read “Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job” for prep. It was recommended to me a long time ago and it was enough.
- someone who gets anxious and blanks out given hardcore requirements these kind of interviews have, smart people can also go bad at tests
- someone who's having a tough day and would fare better taking the challenge home with quiet relaxing time like they would expect to have at work if they need to code complex algorithms
- no interest in past code written that could potentially show other traits of the candidate a quick coding quiz can't
- etc (no need to be extra creative here, just be humble and imagine what the candidate might be going through to get a dream job)
The simple fact an apparently smart young person joining the industry gets burned out like that due to stupidly arrogant hiring processes like these is a sign HR are failing miserably in the computer industry, and it's not something that started last month. Simplifying the burden of such process for actual people looking for a job to show how they are worth is dehumanizing.
There's no world in which there is an elite (e.g. FAANG) tier of employers who reject most applicants and one in which no one complains about their hiring.
That doesn't say anything about whether the hiring process is good or bad, obviously. But that is what it says about the industry.