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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

That seems like a lot of work. The last thing I want to do when applying for a job is open up some random code and hack it. I have many other things I'd rather do, like sleeping or working on some code I care about.

Google doesn't do it, Amazon doesn't do it, so if that's who you're competing against for developers, why would you do it?

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I've never actually applied for a job at Google, but going to 7 interviews (or however many it is now) seems like a lot more work than what they're asking for. I'd rather spend 30 minutes writing code than 7 hours on interviews, and either way you're going to have to answer technical questions at some point in the process.

Also, if you can't be bothered to spend 30 minutes proving that you can code, how much do you really want to work there? The only time I've done one of these challenges was for a company that I was really excited about working for.

All those interviews are done only after they're reasonably sure you're competent, rather than as an initial screening. By this time, they've decided to invest their time in you.

It's four interviews and lunch. (Which is longer than the average interview, but if you are going to fly to another city and stay in a hotel, what's the difference between 2 hours and 5 hours? The actual interview is not the inconvenience, the travel is.)

I'm pretty sure I had 7 interviews when I visited Mt.View five years ago. Maybe Google's standards are slipping? ;-)

Google has experimentally determined that interviews 5 through 7 provide negligible additional signal, and so they've been eliminated from the process.

Contrary to latch's comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3062001, Google does tweak the process from time to time.

But don't worry, they've kept the random noise "hiring committee!"

Do they still have the 'founders must personally approve everybody' step?

With Google it seems though once your get to this stage they are fairly interested, in this case 90% of people who take some time to do the code exercise get no further.

The hiring process isn't one sided, especially with the demand for talented developers at the moment. So not just how much I want to work for the company but how much the company wants me to work there.

Actually, Amazon will sometimes give out "homework" assignments after the initial phone interview usually comprising of 2-6 hours of work.

Fair enough. The difference between giving out homework after giving a potential candidate a change to talk with future coworkers than doing it before is huge. Companies that bitch about how hard it is to find skilled programmers shouldn't be making it harder for skilled programmers find out why they should be interested in working for said companies.

That's fair, but that's after the initial phone screen. I'm with jrockway: if you want me to complete a coding exercise before both (1) the initial phone screen with an internal recruiter and (2) a technical phone screen, then I just stop responding to emails. Companies get zero work before they give me a reason to be interested, and I am absolutely not going to take a test just to try to talk someone into looking at my resume. You have to sell me before I donate hours of my time. And I don't think I'm the only candidate that feels this way...

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