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Comment by notsuoh | Hacker News Reader

This is definitely satire. It took me until the "interviews must be six hours" before I realized it. Well done.

FAANG companies are like this. I’ve been to other “big names” that run engineers through several hours as well (as interviewee).

It’s exhausting, a huge waste of everyone’s time, and ultimately it put me off.

6 hours? WTF is this shit?

We do 30 minute blocks with your boss, one director + one developer, one with the CTO and then the wrap up with the internal recruiter.

The other departments do roughly the same (finance does comptroller + one of your coworkers at the same level instead of director + developer)

Edit: We also make sure to allow the candidate to get some water, pee breaks and take them out for lunch (if it happens it to be during the lunch time)

The interview loop is generally 4-5 45 minute to 1-hour interviews + a 1 hour lunch. You get bathroom/water breaks etc.

Each interview is rubric-based and related to job skills.

It depends on the company. Startups and teams with autonomy are more informal.

The main things they care about are: 1. Can you do the job (and do it well)? 2. Are you really interested? 3. Are you batshit crazy, or can you work with the tiny/close team?

Large companies put you through the grinder. My most unpleasant interview experiences were with some very big names (but not all are like this).

I’m not a good fit for small companies, I don’t have the desire to study for FAANGs anymore (a week of studying isn’t enough), and I’ve personally had great luck with medium sized ones.

YMMV.

Apple interviews are over two days for senior engineers.

The official rationale is that it reduces bias. A single 1-hour interview has a low signal to noise ratio. Two interviews is better. At four interviews a fairly reliable signal emerges. Add a fifth interview so that you can train/calibrate new interviewers, take an hour for lunch, and you're at 6 hours.

6+ hour interviews are common for senior-level+ engineering roles at big orgs. They fly you in for a day of interviewing. Some orgs will even break this up to a 2-3 day thing to even it out.

If you're a bay company that's taking a $250k+/yr risk on someone you typically rake them over the coals (for better or worse).

Sure, I'm aware of this and have been flown in to various locales to be grilled in interviews that started before it was really light out and finished after dusk (late in the year to be fair). My point isn't that companies do this, it's that the giveaway was that interviews must be like this that gave it away.

On a personal note I'll add it's even more exhausting when you schedule these types of interviews at different companies back to back on consecutive days so you don't have to keep flying in for each company.

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