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Point 3 is pretty important. I have seen so many small companies, that did not need really the very best engineer on the world to do their C# API suddenly ask Google questions straight from the "Cracking the coding interview".

Asking a 21 year old about a recursive O(nlogn) algorithm solution or how many ping pong balls fit on an airbus because you heard Google asks it when all you need is someone who can write a good integration test suite, use springboot, and create documentation for the clients to make the API useable and scalable is such a weird way to go about it.

And it seems entirely based on "if FAANG does it, it must be right".

The hardest interview in my life was a long time ago when I tried getting a part time/side job updating content on a mostly static PHP website (no database or backend). Thought this would be a nice way to get some extra beer money or something. The interviewer was the person who was currently maintaining the site and had just graduated from Yale and wanted to move on. Not a single question about PHP, javascript, HTML, instead question after question about implementing various algorithms in pseudo code. I figure he was asking me questions from a textbook or something. I didn't get the job.

Been a while since I've been in an interview but everything has been cake since.

I'll point out just one side effect. A highly qualified candidate interviews with three companies. One does two interviews in a week and extends an offer. The others take two weeks to get back to the candidate, then do two interviews and a take home, then two more rounds of interview. Meanwhile, the first offer is on the clock.

The only reason not to accept the first offer is because one of the other companies is that much better to work for. So the companies with the most onerous processes lose out on the best candidates or have to offer double the compensation to keep them in the maze.

The reality is that most companies can do fine with average employees. Bad hiring practices that lower the talent or increase costs don't kill them.

That's just it. They are willing to lose the occasional great hire in order to avoid the risk of a bad hire.

Sure, that's the reasoning, but I've yet to see any evidence that it actually does reduce bad hires

> I've yet to see any evidence that it actually does reduce bad hires

And the OP's own point "responsibility is diluted so if there's a bad hire you can blame the process rather than one manager" would be needless if the process actually did avoid bad hires.

A good general rule is that most things can be explained by people trying to avoid responsibility for making a mistake.

It's not a reasoning I would agree with either. The core of my original comment is "avoid responsibility": people don't want to be held responsible for a bad hire (or a discrimination lawsuit), so adding multiple rounds to the process shares that responsibility among as many other people as possible. By cargo-culting from FAANG you can also use the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" argument and this dilutes responsibility further.

So does that actually reduce bad hires (or increase good to excellent hires)? Probably not, but that's not really the purpose of all this theatre. The purpose is that if there's a bad hire, do I, personally, get the blame?

> to avoid the risk of a bad hire

But the silly thing it, the convoluted interviews don't avoid the risk of a bad hire because they test for the wrong things.

The analogy I use is that it's like a hospital trying to hire a heart surgeon by extensively grilling candidates on trick questions about organic chemistry. I mean sure, the surgeons probably took that class a few decades ago prior to medical school. So they end up with surgeons that are wizards in organic chemistry but might well not know how to use a scalpel or know where the heart is.

I think this actually works in their favor. If a candidate invests a week into you, they can only match that commitment a few times with other companies, and they might not actually get offers everywhere. Then you don't have to negotiate offers as hard, and they are more likely to accept your offer.

If candidates can get an offer after only a half day, they may as well have a dozen options, and you only have a 1/N chance of getting picked.

So your premise is that a company should draw out their interviewing process so that the top 60% of candidates will accept offers elsewhere and they can lowball the 40% that stick it out? And you justify this because they would only have a 10% chance of landing any of the good candidates?

Let me guess, are you an actual hiring manager?

I actually ran into this. I was considering two companies, both about equivalent in terms of being "places I would want to work for", but one was quick to turn around with an offer and the other dragged their feet. I went with the company that made the offer. The other company I never heard from again, despite their engineering director totally assuring me "we get back to every candidate".

> It's an endurance test.

From the company point of view that might make sense if they don't think about the consequences. But for the person, since we all know that usually any such projects are silently rejected without explanation it's totally not worth the effort.

Having been on the inside watching some people review take-home projects and arbitrarily reject them for the most random reasons ("I don't like the way he writes comments, what a loser") I also have zero faith on them being evaluated fairly.

The only way I'd ever consider doing any kind of endurance project for an interview is if the company guarantees results if I put in the effort. Could be something like: Write code to interact with and/or provide these well-documented APIs, it'll be run against a test suite where I can see the results and it needs to meet xyz performance criteria and if you can deliver it in X hours or less we guarantee a competitive offer. Only then would it be worth the work.

But to spend a lot of time just to be ghosted? Big no to that.

The answer is simple:

Companies should be hiring people on a contract basis to perform REAL WORK. This work should ideally be the very type of work they would be doing if they were hired full time.

If they do a good job, then great! Hire them on full time.

If they don't do a good job, but they meet the acceptance criteria of the contract, then they get paid, but don't get hired full time.

If they don't complete the contract requirements, then they don't get paid at all.

This arrangement is completely fair to both parties, and doesn't waste anyone's time. It's a win/win scenario.

Unfortunately, most companies are too lazy to set up a hiring process that looks like this.

These are actually all great reasons. Speaking from experience a bad hire can be extremely detrimental.

While all valid points i do dislike how often those tests and interviews focus a lot on areas that you will not be doing in the role. This is where I see the biggest frustrations. When we hire we do try to tailer the interview process in a related to the work involved as possible. It adds confidence that we have hired the right candidate for the job.

But usually there’s a 90 or 120-day probation period for new hires. How about letting them “interview” for the job, on the job. Screen them obviously, but after that… I mean the best way to see if they’re a good hire is to actually hire them. There’s no interview question or interview process that can perfectly duplicate that.

Probation periods seem to be a thing in some countries but they’re not universal. I have never had a job with one.

Also, even with a probation period, a bad hire can damage morale and waste a lot of the team’s time.

In the US I suspect "contract to hire" fills a similar function. I see that all the time but I don't think I've ever seen an official "probation period" on an employee role. (Could also be regional or industry dependent.)

The idea behind probation period is that it becomes much more difficult to fire someone after that due to labor laws. US doesn't have such laws, most states are at-will employment so you don't have to give any reason to fire someone.

Probation periods are seen in the US, despite "right to work" labor laws because A) the company is large and has employees in California, or another state where labor laws favor the employees a bit more or B) the company wants to minimize the chance of getting slapped with a wrongful termination lawsuit. Regardless of labor laws, it's universally illegal to discriminate/fire someone for their race, religion, gender, marital status, age, et. al. and I think companies, especially when they want to fire someone who might believe they are being discriminated against, want an airtight defense (usually a PIP). Even though the employer will probably win the legal case, they still would rather not have a lawsuit at all.

I'm in the US and the last few jobs I've had all came with a probation period. All were salaried positions.

From the point of view of the applicant, I wonder if I would prefer a long probation period over a long interview period.

If I'm unemployed and I have bills to pay, a paid probation period is the better option - even if I get fired after 90 days, that's still 3 months' salary. On the other hand, if I already have a job, joining another company is a big risk - I'm giving up a comfortable position for a job I might lose in 90 days if it doesn't work out - maybe I'll be in over my head, maybe I don't get along with the manager or the team, whatever. A long interview process gives me plenty of opportunity to gauge my prospective employers and back out at any point.

Sure, but, at least in my experience, new hires are ALWAYS on probation. So to me the status quo is this: you get vetted "harshly" in the interview process, then you have to clear the probation period. That said, I think it's pretty much a given you clear the probation period if you don't clash with coworkers, and write decent code. During your first ~90 days, you're ramping up, learning the company's procedures and coding conventions (and code base itself), and getting to know your coworkers... so I think the only time probation really bites you is if it's a bad fit culturally (which I would think you're at higher risk for the smaller the company - those startups are selective as hell about who they hire).

You can and probably should negotiate that clause away. If an employer offers you an at-will contract, it should have a US salary written on it or at least a large sign-on bonus.

I've never had a job where there wasn't a probation period. It's one of my major gripes with the current hiring process. They can fire you at any point during the probation period, so why the hunger games during the hiring process itself? That's the whole point of probation periods: because sometimes they get it wrong.

My guess is because of the opportunity cost. If you hire the wrong person you end up firing 3 months later, you likely missed your chance to hire a better candidate (who is unlikely to apply again to work for you) and you will need to restart the whole expensive hiring process again (even a more lightweight process is expensive in employee time, maybe paying recruiters and job listing sites, etc).

Also onboarding is expensive: even an experienced developer who has all the skills you need still has to learn your codebase, processes, business logic etc. while drawing a salary, and all that goes to waste if they leave before they can start becoming a net positive to your company.

Perhaps this is the right place to ask -- what would be the point of a probation period in the USA? All contracts I've seen here are at will and can be terminated for any reason or no reason. Now my experience is rather that most managers are uneasy about firing, but legally they are in the clear afaiu.

Probation in Germany goes both ways. Recently I worked there at a (small end of medium sized) company where work and pay was just so-so (nice, smart colleagues though). Then in a meeting the superior or my superior mentioned that there was some redundancy. Aha, I thought, I take that as a sign and promptly resigned some two weeks before the end of the probation period. They still expected me to come in 'til the last day, which I didn't mind too much, but still found a bit silly, since both parties agreed about the separation (also given the finite funds of that company).

It provides additional legal protection to the employer in the case they decide to terminate the employee during the first X days. Additionally, it serves as a "motivator" for new employees to be on their best behavior and to give it their all, at least for the first x days.

Laws that benefit the company, such as "right to work", mean that employers will often win lawsuits from former employees for things like wrongful termination suits, however companies would prefer to not be sued at all- even if they have a strong case. Court is expensive and a hassle.

That said, I did some moonlighting work for an employment law firm, and they say that they take less than 5% of the prospective clients who contact them, because they (and most law firms who only get paid if the client wins) want to be as sure as possible they will win the case. Of course if the prospective client were willing to pay up-front regardless of the case outcome, I'm sure most law firms would oblige. In such cases, I expect the former employers like to settle out of court to save time and money, even if the odds are good that they'd win in court.

This works well. I’ve been in the industry about 20 years now and every job I’ve taken has had a short interviewing process followed by a probationary period, and then a full time offer is made after the probationary period.

I’ve only seen this approach fail once, and it wasn’t that big a deal, because very little time was sunk in to hiring the employee that had to be let go. At most a day or two was lost on-boarding.

If you have 10 promising candidates, and you'd like to hire one of the better ones among them -- then how are you going to accomplish that, with the strategy to "actually hire them"?

If among promising looking and speaking candidates, few are actually good, then what will the current employees think about people getting hired, fired, replaced a lot

This depends on where you are. What if the company is paying for the candidate's relocation? That can be quite expensive if it's international. And probationary terms might not be so easy to do in some countries.

Part of this is due to fraud from the last couple of years. I know multiple companies who dealt with remote employee fraud over the last 2 years. Companies are defensive now.

What kind of fraud in remote work?

I interview and then you show up to do the job, possibly

I saw a lot of that while doing phone screens: People who were getting coached via earbuds, people who were frantically searching Google for answers, etc.

The 100% virtual hiring process means that it is much easier to sub out your interview as there’s no point in the process where you show up for an on-site, present your government issued ID, and then interview.

I don’t remember ever showing my id in onsites. In some of those big places one could def skate by having someone else interview and then show up on first day and nobody would notice. Ime id doesn’t come up until hr wants work authorization on your first day

Yeah, I worked for a large employer who complained about this happening when people were onsite all day. Different people interviewed and showed up for work.

This is nothing new, it's just a media blitz by status quo lovers.

There were a few articles about people getting multiple remote jobs, doing the bare minimum to avoid getting fired for a while, eventually getting fired, and accruing large sums of money by doing that for years while presumably also holding a normal job in secret.

Is that fraud though?

I would say so. Fraud is when you intentionally deceive someone for gain. Whether the particular fraud is criminal or not is a separate matter.

I think it's potentially more complicated than that. If an employer asks you if you have another job and you are working a second one, it is lying for you to say that you don't.

But what exclusive right does your employer have to your labor? That depends on your contract of course.

So if you signed away exclusive access to your labor, it's fraud. And that's not uncommon - there's often at least a "you will disclose other employment" clause in developer at-will contracts. That said, I think the only consequence of not disclosing is potentially getting fired with cause if you get found out. IANAL but I don't know of precedent for clawing back pay (which would be fitting for actual fraud).

If you didn't, then it's your employer trying to get more than they signed. And in that case, the lie is a necessary evil.

You know, when a working class dude busts his ass taking two, or even three jobs to improve his family's living standard, he's admired and they call him hard working. But when an office worker manages to slice up his day such that he can take two jobs (and do them up to performance expectations) they call it fraud. Not sure I understand this double standard. People get so hung up on this idea that full time should imply exclusive.

I think it's employers playing the game and optimizing.

Full-time employees are salaried. They cost the same no matter how much work they do. So full-time employers want them to do as much work as possible. They view time as zero-sum, so any hours you spend on another job are hours you could have spent on them. Even if - as we all know - there are diminishing returns on hours and those hours at job 2 would not produce the same output if pumped into job 1.

So, as always, full-time employers resort to soft power and psychological tricks to exert control over salaried employees. And I'd say it's increasing lately because remote work as shifted the power imbalance and employers are realizing the other side of at-will, salaried employment is that employees can work as little for them as they can get away with so long as they are good enough to remain willfully employed.

My employment agreement states that I agree to only hold one full-time job and that I agree to inform my employer if I decide to work another concurrently. This seems like pretty standard practice.

I checked a few of mine and none of them quite do that.

They're all very similar, American salaried at-will agreements.

They say that

1. I must disclose any prior agreement that may affect my eligibility to be employed by Employer.

2. I must disclose any outside activities.

3. I am employed at-will.

(2) doesn't mean I can't have another job, but combined with (3) it does in practice.

If someone is that dedicated I don't think a rigorous hiring process is going to stop them. Perhaps just ask for a couple references?

Personal favorite was refusal to turn on cameras while a different voice participated in each conversation, if at all. There was always a different reason why the camera couldn't be turned on too, while it clearly wasn't a problem during the interview. Tracked IP address access and it was hopping all over the world on a day to day basis.

Constantly acting confused after acing the interview. Never getting anything done and insisting on pairing with somebody else who just did the work for them.

Essentially the goal seemed to be to collect a paycheck for as long as possible until somebody noticed and you ended up fired. I heard variations of this from a few people and saw one first hand.

> By having multiple rounds - which in turn requires a lot of people involved - responsibility is diluted so if there's a bad hire you can blame the process rather than one manager.

That's an interesting take I haven't heard emphasized before, but it seems plausible.