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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make.

I’ve done some mentoring of CS grads for the past few years. We some times get people with unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process. We advise them to decline the really excessive ones. However, it’s rare to see that.

Often we’ll get people complaining about excessive interview loops, but when they describe the process it adds up to around 4-5 hours total. I think the expectations for interviews became really distorted during the period a few years ago when some companies were hiring anyone willing to do a short interview. Many younger engineers entered the workforce when that was normal and now any amount of interviewing feels unreasonable.

I frequently have to convince people to do simple take-home problems (often 60 minutes or less, I see them because they post them into the chat frequently) because Reddit tells them to decline all take homes. Some days I’m pulling my hair out because someone who has been unemployed for months has valiantly refused yet another take home problem that could have moved their application forward with a minimal time investment.

Another problem I’m seeing a lot is people who halt their job search as soon as they receive a response from a company. We have to repeat over and over again that job searches are a parallel process, not a sequential one. It really hurts candidates who interview with one slow company and then wait around for months for a response before they move on to the next application.

While there are definitely some excessive interview loops out there, the average case honestly isn’t as bad as I read about on the internet.

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I entered the workforce 25 years ago and interviews were less than an hour many times hired by the time you made it home. Somewhere in the last 5 years someone thought I don't want to be on the hook for a bad hire and I will not get in trouble for not hiring so unless someone else recommended a person don't hire until it's not your decision. Get as many people in the loop as possible and make sure they meet with everyone twice. Now no one is responsible. Instead of hiring restart the process. At year's end talk about the amount of people you put in the pipeline and how many interviews you did and put your flag down.

A bad hire might cost you 3 months salary 30,000. A bad hiring process costs millions.

In the end these companies are not shutting down because of not hiring developers so maybe their process is working as intended. The demand for developers was inflated precovid because manager headcount pride, hiring so other companies wouldn't and company valuations tied to spending.

Back in the day you had small teams and little management. Now you have layers of management, and huge teams that use complex tools designed for huge teams that create new work so even bigger teams are needed. They produce the same amount of work the small team does but take much longer. Management is able to measure daily progress in an artificial way through constant status meetings. They get addicted to the constant data stream and think they have a pulse on the team. Meanwhile the amount of important work that gets done hasn't changed just the cost.

You're almost right, but firing a bad hire in many places is near impossible.

Even in France, there's a trial period during which the employee can leave, or be fired freely; in most cases, 2/3 months should be long enough to detect a bad hire.

Assuming there's enough time & resources to manage the new hire properly; if there isn't, then I think it's fair to consider this a failure of the hiring process.

I think this is the root cause of most problems.

No hiring process has a zero false positive rate. A company needs to be able to fire people quickly and humanely, otherwise good people will leave and you have a mediocracy / Peter principle problem.

If you keep a reasonable hiring bar and enforce a reasonable firing bar, you’ll do fine. Netflix famously did a lot of experiments on this that have been written about in public.

Being squeamish about freeing people to find a better mutual fit job is really harmful, to an underrated extent.

> freeing people to find a better mutual fit job is really harmful, to an underrated extent.

That’s a wonderful corporate speak sentence. I’m almost looking forward to being “freed to find a better mutual fit job.” And I’m not even eligible for unemployment benefits.

You have very strong management potential.

Do you think that people who are self-consciously underperforming in a role are happy? Do you think their team is happy?

In software, if you aren’t a complete lemon, you’ll have no trouble finding a new company, hopefully one where you can be a better mutual fit and therefore be happy. It actually is freeing, if you view it with a longer time horizon than the day of your last paycheck.

If you are 100% invested in the long-term happiness of someone who’s underperforming and unwilling to improve (obviously within reasonable bounds of expectations, these are table stakes), the best thing you can do is write them a recommendation and give them severance.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being a lemon in software, you should seek work in a field that doesn’t make you feel or treat you like a lemon. No amount of money will compensate for the feeling that you could be fired with cause any day.

My comment was about calling out the euphemism. Fired or laid off is unpleasant and not to be taken lightly. Let go or, as you called it, freed to find a better mutual fit is disingenuous because it makes it sound like the company is doing the person they’re firing a favour when they’re actually only looking out for themselves with little to no consideration for the human they’re « freeing ».

If I’m the lemon you’re talking about, I’d very much prefer to be treated as an adult (which involves using big, adult words) rather than patronized by the HR dept who is reframing it as if they’re doing me a Favour firing me so they can better sleep at night.

> be able to fire people quickly and humanely

In order for that to happen there needs to be a culture shift, where being fired because you aren't a good fit doesn't mark you as unhireable for most other employers.

Since when is the firee’s future employment prospects any business of the company doing the firing?

The previous comment capstoned the discussion by concluding, correctly imo, that this is a cooperative, non-zero sum game.

Well, in the current culture, if you get a reputation for firing people three months after hiring them, you'll have an awfully hard time finding people who want to work for you. And you will probably see your best workers leaving to work elsewhere.

It hasn’t been since we’ve elevated sociopathic techbros to near god status. You might also remember it as human decency.

> Netflix famously did a lot of experiments on this that have been written about in public.

Did Netflix really succeed with their strategy though? I don't see them branching out and making new things, so they seem to lack the people to to branch out into more domains like the top giants do.

Where do you live? In the US (private sector), I've seen people get let go pretty regularly. When they can't let them go (like if it's government), I've seen people put them on the job that no one cares about and no want wants to be on.

In Germany, within the first 6 months, you can fire without giving a reason.

Not in the US though. And the op comment applies just as much there as anywhere.

> A bad hire might cost you 3 months salary 30,000

I think this sounds "correct" at first glance but really neglects the fact that there is onboarding and other team dynamics at play. Maybe if you are a giant org and can deal with churn it's okay, but if you're a "small" company, new hires are a drain on everyone's time and emotional resources. You're going to lose that persons salary sure, but also what's the dollar equivalent for how much time others spend onboarding? Probably 2-3x that? And then if you keep hiring and firing people you are going to burn out your team of people that liked being at your job but now hate that you have so much churn and they are tired of onboarding people that are going to quit or be fired in a few months.

This is so very wrong it's almost shocking. How have you been working 25 years that you've learned bad hires get weeded out in three months? (They don't, at a minimum there's usually a PIP for legal reasons, but it takes a six months if you're lucky and usually at least a year) Or that the cost of onboarding a dud is just that person's salary? (It's not, it's at least triple that in terms of time and resources... a bad hire is vastly, vastly worse than no hire over the same period of time).

The "good hiring process" of "spending an hour chatting with someone" isn't good, it's noisy. Why would a more restrictive hiring process that has a lower false-positive rate cost my company "millions" in the long term? Especially compared to what you're advocating?

"Back in the day you had small teams and little managment" - what? Big Corp programming wasn't an invention of the 21st century. If anything it was more endemic twenty to thirty years ago at airlines, banks, tech, logistics/shipping, government agencies, big box stores, and all of the major groups hiring software / database / etc. hiring engineers.

>Why would a more restrictive hiring process that has a lower false-positive rate cost my company "millions" in the long term?

1. because you're not thinking in opportunity cost. Companies are concerned with not losing a few months of productivity in a hire. Meanwhile, true best fits don't even get to talk to a human and get hired and make other companies millions.

2. even if we don't take that into account: a longer hiring process costs productivity internally. Your current overworked employees realize help isn't coming and leave. So you not only lose whatever a new hire would have cost, but existing tribal knowledge. Self-furfilling prophecy.

3. Lastly, social/cultural fit is way more important than hard skills 95% of the time. The absolute worst case isn't losing employee productivity, but getting a potential lawsuit over a culturally misaligned hire. These days those are usually weeded out quickly, but it wasn't as obvious if we're talking 10+ years ago.

Even in sales, there's ramp-up time and then you probably need to miss your numbers for a couple of quarters before you're going to be pushed out. There are probably environments where timeframes will be shorter but a year is probably a pretty rule of thumb for how long it takes to ease out a new hire who isn't working out unless maybe they obviously just lied about their qualifications. And someone who just isn't a good fit any longer for some reason probably has an even longer runway.

Your comments are based on a handful of FAANG companies. PIP didn't exist and doesn't exist in most places now. The three months probation allows an employer to let someone go without notice. If they are let go within a year 2 weeks are owed.

I'm not worried about big Faangs spending millions on bad hires so logically they have to spend tens of millions on a hiring process that bleeds money and produces not great results. They play this game where they push back stock grants to the last years of a 4 year vest and offer a low base rate. That first year isn't costing them much and with an average of less than 2 years of employment (Amazon) it becomes a profit center.

You would think a faang should be able to find the best people the easiest but they struggle more than a smaller shop.

I remember I once applied for a job that was entry level mortgage customer service or something like that, paying just $45k/yr, can't remember exactly. I had to go through 5 interviews over the course of 4 weeks, with the final interview being with the VP of Marketing. Got the job offer, was waiting for the paperwork, and was called the next day that they are actually going on a hiring freeze and cannot hire me.

It was absolute buffoonery to me. Why on God's green earth is the Vice President of Marketing interviewing the candidate for an entry level customer service position? Especially after I already interviewed with an HR rep, the Head of HR, and the Team Manager before them. Do they not trust their team?

It makes me feel like these interviews are just to make management feel important again since it was a WFH role.

Tech companies inflate roles, especially in sales teams, so that enterprises think they're talking to someone important, when in reality it's just a dude with his second job out of college. Same with Investment Banking Vice Presidents (although IB VPs will definitely have the experience to back it up, if not the authority in a deal).

The job titles in the different industries are pretty interesting, also, that inflate/confuse things.

At financials (and sometimes sales departments), you have, from most junior to senior: 1. Associate 2. Analyst 3. Vice Presidents 4. Directors (MD - Managing Director)

Whereas in software/tech, it's usually Directors that are subordinate to Vice Presidents.

I heard a major US back had something like 9k VPs. Reason is the same as GP. Everyone felt special when they had a VP personally handling their account.

I have seen Product Management go this route. Seen Senior Directors with 5 or less, sometimes 0, direct reports.

I contracted at AT&T for a couple years. Everyone hired there into an office job is technically hired as a manager, regardless of their actual role, because then you can't unionize.

Sometimes companies do weird things to avoid rules or laws, having 9k VPs sounds like they would be doing something similar.

I'm not an expert, but I was once told that in many jurisdictions banks etc. have so many "Vice Presidents" because it's essentially part of legal requirements for some of the tasks the VPs do - sometimes you literally need someone who is, at least on paper (and thus Responsible) appropriately high in management structure.

Personally I once needed[1] to have private, personal bank account opening, vetted officially "by board of the bank", but probably through similar council of seemingly overinflated job titles, but whose job titles included appropriate legal responsibility for the action taken.

[1] Run of the mill personnel could not even get answer why, ultimately it turned out due to various legal requirements someone with high job title had to sign off on "We know this customer and verified they are so and so"

I get your point. But to me it sounds like you dodged a bullet.

> I think the expectations for interviews became really distorted during the period a few years ago when some companies were hiring anyone willing to do a short interview.

I find this whole thread really enlightening. As someone who has been trying to move around in tech in the Bay Area, outside of Amazon who hired en masse, most companies have had 6-8 interviews as a standard hiring process for almost the last entire decade. What's really happening is that most of the people who were on the other side, being very selective in who they hire, are now really coming to terms with how bad the process is because they are the ones now trying to find jobs.

The problem always existed for someone else, now it exists for you.

I also find this thread interesting from the opposite direction as someone not in the Bay Area. In the past ten years, the longest job interview I had was two hours long. Honestly, most of the interviews I've been in (on both sides of the table) have been closer to half an hour.

> it adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

That's fine if you can get a job after a few interviews, but when a talented job searcher has to go through that dozens of times to get a job offer, and much of the interview is "leetcode" questions that don't evaluate the skills you'll actually use, is it surprising people are frustrated by the hiring process?

I got fed up this about 8 years ago when it felt like this approach started.

I would go in for a front-end role and people would start asking me about .Net and show me .Net code and ask me see I could figure out why the code didn't work or troubleshoot some Python snippet.

I thought I would never walk out of an interview. When I walked out of three of them because of stuff like this, I kept asking myself if I was being unreasonable. I came to find out talking to other dev friends, this was becoming fairly common and I have no idea why.

All of the big corporations I worked at always focused on specialization. You a DB gyy? Then that's all you do and you're an expert. Front-end guy? Sure, know some design, but client side stuff you should be an expert. Now? Feels like, "How many roles can I hire one person for?" is the standard bearer.

> this was becoming fairly common and I have no idea why.

Too many chiefs, not enough braves. The length of the interview process has grown with the proliferation of scrum masters, project managers, project leads, business analysts and seemingly endless other roles.

I miss the simple days of direct lines of management and shorter, simpler interviews.

> when they describe the process it adds up to around 4-5 hours total

4-5 hours is pretty excessive for an interview process actually.

A candidate cannot be doing 4-5 hours for an interview process just to hear a no at the end. Successful job hunts need to have many irons in the fire at once and if each one is taking 4-5 hours there's only so much you can realistically take on

I know that interview processes generally aren't designed to make things easier on candidates but they probably should be if you want good candidates

> 4-5 hours is pretty excessive for an interview process actually.

That's preposterous. You're going to spend hundreds of hours working together. 4-5 hours is extremely reasonable to make sure it's a good mutual fit.

Of course, it shouldn't be 4-5 hours for all candidates. The last hour spent should have a pretty high conversion rate to offer.

But 4-5 hours for hired candidates is completely standard.

> A candidate cannot be doing 4-5 hours for an interview process just to hear a no at the end. Successful job hunts need to have many irons in the fire at once and if each one is taking 4-5 hours there's only so much you can realistically take on

This is a toxic attitude. If you "spray and pray" then refuse any actual interview processes then you're never going to get a great job.

Every job I've gotten came from identifying a dozen or so opportunities up front and going deep on them.

>You're going to spend hundreds of hours working together. 4-5 hours is extremely reasonable to make sure it's a good mutual fit.

GP specified that these were for entry level candidate. How many people need to give a thumbs up to 'culture fit' (culture fit implies that 1-2 people's opinions should mesh with the rest of the culture, no)? I sure hope you aren't just grilling a college student with 4 hours of quizzes.

> If you "spray and pray" then refuse any actual interview processes then you're never going to get a great job.

most people out of college don't get (nor in my opinion, need) "great jobs". At least not by what the internet considers a "great job".

They should get plenty of training/growth, a liveable salary, and be willing to ask a lot of questions. Interview processes don't seem to promote 2/3 of these, and some industries 3/3.

>Every job I've gotten came from identifying a dozen or so opportunities up front and going deep on them.

It was a mix. Sometimes spraying worked, sometimes I just got a referral or even blindly approached. I definitely do not recommend going deep for a first job unless that is your dream job and you're staying connected for years with a contact. Even then, layoffs happen, or you simply are passed up. You always need fallbacks and IMO it's not that healthy to put so much emotional investment into one conglomerate like that that will only see you as a number. Take pride in accomplishments, not brands.

> I sure hope you aren't just grilling a college student with 4 hours of quizzes.

You misunderstood. 4-5 hours was for the entire interview across all steps, not a single 4-5 quiz session.

At minimum, you need to have some time for the candidate to ask about the company and learn about the team, too. Suggesting everything gets crammed into a single 1 hour conversation where both parties make a huge decision is not going to work for most.

Most candidates won’t even like that these days. They want to talk to the company, not get quizzed for 60 minutes and then asked to quit their current job and join this new company

I think we are still a bit misaligned. I'll explain my process for my last role as an example. Maybe one too many interviews for my taste, but it was for a senior role, so I'd say it's fine:

- 1 recruiter call to align (I personally don't count this, but some do)

- 1 call with the technical director focused on language and tool specific questions

- 1 call with 3 different team leads (since I was being considered for multiple roles). These were mostly soft questions with some light prodding of concepts.

- 1 call with 2 producers for some more soft questions and culture fit

- 1 more call with the overall director (basicslly 1 level below founder/c class) for, well, more soft questions and culture fit.

- lastly, an offer call with HR (I don't count this, but some do)

So I consider it 4 stages, some consider it 6. The times for all of them were around or a little over an hour so there's no issue IMO with call length. Usually 30 minutes of questions, 10 minutes of intro, and then 15 minutes of my own questions.

The number of stages felt a tiny bit too obsessive (did I really have to meet a director 3 levels above the chain? I don't think so), but not worth complaining about for a senior role. But still, these were separated 1-1.5 weeks apart, so this process ended up taking 7 weeks from recruiter call to offer letter. That's just so much dead air and it feels like this could have been condensed or abridged somehow.

For a new grad this just seems to be madness. Not just the time span but the number of people involved for a single hire at a moderately large company. (And I have gone through that many stages just to get rejected in my junior days). There's not as much to ask a new grad (again, unless you just want to quizz them for hours), not as many people will interface with them on day to day tasks, they will likely negotiate less than a senior unless it's some top student will multiple pending offers.

>Most candidates won’t even like that these days. They want to talk to the company, not get quizzed for 60 minutes and then asked to quit their current job and join this new company

That'd be preferable for me. But Im not a new grad. I did my time doing 20 hour take homes and grinding Leet code. I was sure hoping there'd be less of that as I have 8 YOE and more direct experience to speak about on my behalf, but it seems that even 10+ years can't escape Leetcode hell.

But I digress. Most of the conversation revolved around new grad stuff after all. I understand the need to make sure people with no experience (and an industry with no licensing) have the technical know how. I'd just wish project times were more realistic.

> So I consider it 4 stages, some consider it 6. The times for all of them were around or a little over an hour so there's no issue IMO with call length. Usually 30 minutes of questions, 10 minutes of intro, and then 15 minutes of my own questions.

Which adds up to the 4-5 hours I mentioned.

> Maybe one too many interviews for my taste, but it was for a senior role, so I'd say it's fine:

I think we're forgetting that the focus here was on new grad roles. I don't really think it's fair to use my new grad experience of doing a 20 take home project that wasn't even in the tech stack the role asked for.

My typical interview process after grad school which may have been a follow-up to an on-campus interview (or not) was to be flown to a company site and have interviews with maybe 5 people or so, usually a lunch, maybe a dinner. So it was basically a couple of days when all was said and done.

Even my last job at a medium-large company which started out as a chat with the president who I knew, and then came in again for a chat with one of his reports, still ended up with an HR-arranged set of interviews with about 4 people. It was local to me so not a big deal but it was still a full set of interviews.

And who pays the candidates for the hours wasted in these interviews again? Comparing that to the hundreds of hours working together is what is preposterous. If interviews were paid for, then the entire conversation would shift dramatically.

Let's remember that 4-5 hours is on the low end for most places IME. I've had places that had a single day with 5 hours of interviews. I had to take a day off from work to make a single interview. Can't we all agree that's absurd?

This is extremely unfair on every candidate since they're doing this for multiple companies, all for free, only to then get rejected multiple times for absolutely stupid reasons.

The entire system is broken.

4-5 hrs is historically typical.

Having to interview at hundreds of places to find a job is not.

That part? Correct.

But I take it you didn’t live through ‘01/dot-com-crash?

It was the same, but smaller scale back then. I remember looking for a job and folks were requiring a CS PhD for literal ‘help run a school computer lab’ jobs.

Home Depot wouldn’t even consider your resume if you had been in Tech either. One person I talked to (not HD) said that they considered techies ‘overly entitled brats’ and didn’t want to have anything to do with them. This was in the PNW.

Previously it was super high pay, no formal education required - as long as you could code.

This was before AI or automated applications or the like, so I was doing 15 something manual applications a week.

I ended up moving something like 8 states away to take a middle of nowhere software dev job - after applying for over a year - at 1/4 the salary that I had been previously paid. It worked out.

Frankly, employers are being pretty mellow considering the market conditions. So far anyway.

The biggest issue right now IMO is general confusion and overwhelm + widespread fraud and lying (in both sides of the market) resulting in the market nearly locking up.

Which is putting a lot of people in very awkward positions. But things aren’t desperate enough yet to cut through the BS.

No one is sure what they really want to do, what is reasonable, or what will work to produce an outcome they want, and that is causing everything to be a giant tarpit.

This is what people mean when they say ‘life isn’t fair’. Well, a very mellow version of it.

During dot-bomb it seemed as if people weren't even getting nibbles.

Based on anecdata from someone experienced who described the current situation as "weird," it seems as if there are a ton of people being put through a full interview cycle only to be told "Oops, the budget's been pulled" or "We decided to hold off for now."

I can confirm on the 'weird' side, though those are a subset of the current situation.

IMO that is due to the general uncertainty caused by the current socio/political quagmire, and resulting confusion at the executive level.

Is this going to be a 'pro-Business' dictatorship with low interest rates even with rampant inflation?

Is it going to be a socialist utopia taxing the hell out of billionaires, and with high interest rates and moderate inflation?

Is the real economy going to crash? Or go up like crazy?

Is the country going to turn into a third world kleptocracy, or get it's act together and be a shining beacon of capitalism?

Who the fuck knows.

Both of those look VERY different from the investor, financial, and hiring side.

I agree with you and my friend said something similar.

During dot-bomb we knew. It was nuclear winter for tech. I was very lucky to get a quick offer from the owner I knew at a small company that was still doing OK (and was probably overconfident that was going to continue) when I was laid off.

Today, as you say, who the hell knows? So companies are somewhat randomly zigging and zagging all over the place. Oh, and toss AI into the mix.

> It was the same, but smaller scale back then...The biggest issue right now IMO is general confusion and overwhelm + widespread fraud and lying (in both sides of the market) resulting in the market nearly locking up.

That's the worst part for me. I didn't live through it so feel free to correct me but: It seems everyone at the time all agreed that there was a crash and times were hard for that sector.

Meanwhile, the US really doesn't want to acknowledge a recession in 2024 and keep pretending "unemployment is down! Jobs are up!". Lies, damns lies, and statistics rights?

Times are always bumpy in my domain so I'm not surprised; I knew what I was signing up for. But the gaslighting about the ecconomy and lack of respect in more than a few responses I do get is the worst part of it all. I'd be surprised if the dotcom bubble had any people doing 4-5 stages of interviews and were then just ghosted. Not even a "we decided to go with another candidate".

It did happen. I had it happen once to me.

It didn’t happen at this scale though. It’s basically turned into online dating for most candidates.

And yeah, the economic gaslighting is terrible, and it’s going to backfire terribly on the current administration.

Yeah those were times that probably compare the most to what we see today.

I agree with you it's definitely not the worse version of this (yet) but regardless, I don't think what GP said should be acceptable as reasonable.

Saying people should just accept that they have to humiliate themselves for hours on end, for free, to get the possibility of slaving away to earn a paycheck is disingenuous.

I say humiliating because even with 15 years of experience I still have to prove to a bunch of random people that I can code to move forward in these processes, many times to hear a no without any reasoning or get a ridiculously low offer.

Should == 'I wish'.

For folks with Capital, now is a much better time to go found a startup, for instance.

For folks without, now is a great time to get into the trades.

For folks with a retirement nest egg and plans, why not retire?

Look at the market conditions, and make the best bet you can. That's the realist approach, anyway. It's hard not to feel the ego hit from changes like this, but it can easily lead to serious negative personal consequences if someone is not in a position to deal with the fallout.

Not being an adult about situations like this can have very severe and lifelong negative consequences.

> For folks without, now is a great time to get into the trades.

I'll save my rant on this response so I'll keep it short: It's going to be a while, but I have experience in tech and I'm pretty sure by the time I do the 2-3 years of appreticeships for trades the market will at least be not shit. Not necessarily bounce back, but people will actually be hiring.

Trades is a long term "tech is over" doomism retort. And if you really feel like that that's fine. But I think people right now would appreciate some short/mid term solutions more.

Eh, during the dot-com crash days I knew two people personally that left tech and became farmers. One started a big kale farm off highway 1, and was still doing it last I checked. He was a lot happier.

I learned how to skydive and rock climb while I waited to finally land something.

Downturns, techies have often turned to random different things.

Office Space had the dudes end up doing construction for a reason.

If you can afford to wait 2-3 years, then do. I already laid out what I did to get by.

Otherwise, work your network, or try to start your own thing, or any number of different things. Anything I tell you here is going to get noticed and will have a lot of competition. The harder (and often more likely to work) choices are ones you’ll need to find yourself.

Personally, I’ve been this close to starting HVAC and pest control companies, but have something outside the country I’m pursuing instead.

I’m not your mom.

I'm not living comfortablly, but treading water. So don't worry about me. This definitely taught me that my end goal is to be my own boss, but that's at least 5 years out as I prepare.

I have some freelance work right now, and have savings and backup plans if/when things really screw up.

I just think the trades argument is one thrown around so freely without talking about the underlying details to get into trades. It's not as easy as turning up and getting paid minimum wage to start training.

>Downturns, techies have often turned to random different things.

That's the oddest part for me. The last time I just needed money (so, while applying for my first job), I went to a staffing agency and got temp work the next week. This time I visited 6 in my area and they all pretty much admitted that hiring was slow. Nary a follow up either. And even dumbing down my resume I get "overqualified" for retail.

That at least tells me that this current atmosphere isn't limited to tech. So it's strange how much the powers that be want to pretend everything is fine.

Good info thanks! And yeah, sounds like you have a solid head on your shoulders. I’m sure you’ll do fine.

The ‘overqualified’ bit sucks, and that was the classic line during the dot-com days they’d use for tech folks in other fields. I had friends just completely excise tech from their resume to get something landed.

We’ll see where this all goes.

Re: economic news - my take is that the left is being delusional in the ‘there are no problems’ direction, while the right is being delusional in the ‘everything is broken’ direction. Both are doing their damnest to manipulate everyone into believing their flavor of delusion.

Which makes sense, because traditionally incumbents get destroyed if there are economic issues, and both are in existential crisis mode right now.

Folks are starting to have to ‘look down’ though, and the timing is going to be pretty shitty.

Re: trades - yeah, any change is going to require ramp up time, investment of effort and learning, etc.

I’ve got some contractors (plumbers) and welders in the family, and used to be a certified welder - and it’s not like there aren’t tradeoffs there too vs tech. Especially if someone doesn’t have the habit of using PPE properly. That said, some areas are in very high demand - and can’t be outsourced - and pay very well. Especially for someone who can supervise or run a shop, and isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

They’ll do very well as boomers age too, as will nurses and Dr’s.

It sure would be nice to live in a world where programming qualifications meant something, so I didn't have to spend 2.5 of those 5 hours demonstrating that I can do the programming equivalent of tying my shoe laces.

I sure wish it was just tying my shoe. More like "can you tie in a windsor knot?" Then later they say "sorry we wanted someone who can do a Gordian knot".

Oh, that’s a great analogy. Everyone can tie a windsor knot, but nearly the same amount of people will have forgotten how to do it every time they actually need to.

> It sure would be nice to live in a world where programming qualifications meant something, so I didn't have to spend 2.5 of those 5 hours demonstrating that I can do the programming equivalent of tying my shoe laces.

I’ve read so many resumes from candidates who appeared highly qualified and experienced, only to get them in an interview and discover that they can’t even write a for loop in the language they said they were an expert in.

It’s surprising the first time it happens. The 100th time you see it, you embrace the coding interview.

Unfortunate, but it’s how we have arrived at the status quo. A nontrivial number of applicants will charismatically lie through their teeth if they think they can get away with it.

Yes, it would be nice to live in a world where fizzbuzz wasn't necessary to filter for evidence of claimed qualifications (although, if fizzbuzz is taking half of a multi-hour experience, it's not being used correctly).

My point being, "programming qualifications" are just words anyone can put on a page.

There's already a way to validate claimed qualifications - ask to see their certificate and (if you're being particularly diligent) contact the school to verify it.

Nobody in the tech industry does this though. Maybe it's possible to graduate from college with a CS degree without being able to solve fizzbuzz? So you need to check they can program despite their qualifications? IDK though.

> ask to see their certificate and (if you're being particularly diligent) contact the school to verify it.

Certificates are ~useless in tech. I've encountered way too many candidates who have a bunch of certificates but don't actually understand anything they're supposedly certified in. They just memorized enough to pass the exam.

> Maybe it's possible to graduate from college with a CS degree without being able to solve fizzbuzz? So you need to check they can program despite their qualifications? IDK though.

Yes. It's astonishing how many CS grads simply don't understand programming.

> They just memorized enough to pass the exam.

sounds like the exams suck then, to be frank. No one wants to train and despite popular sentiment university is not a training center. So why isn't there some collective effort to make good exams and certifricates? Maybe ones with an active component to start (even my AP Comp Sci test required some Object Oriented coding). The big tech sort of settled on Leetcode, but clearly that doesn't required needed knowledge even within those big tech.

Honestly I think the real issue is non-technical recruiting/hr have gotten way too involved in filtering and selecting candidates, so dipshits or liars end up getting interviewed at all. When technical eng management are actively involved in looking at a candidate, I rarely see these terrible ones show up and waste time.

What is the marginal value of the fourth or fifth deep hour that you wouldn't grok by hour 3.5?

30 mins chat with a recruiter who'll try to suss out whether they can afford you, make sure you're actually interested, and check you've got the right to work in the country.

1 hour hiring manager interview the first person who actually understands those acronyms on your CV

1.5 hour technical/coding interview, to check you know how to program

1 hour behavioural interview to check if you've ever gotten into a fistfight about database schema design

1 hour chat with your boss's boss's boss, who feels he ought to have a conversation with someone before approving a six-figure paycheck.

This lengthy and bureaucratic process is vital to ensuring prospective hires have the patience needed to get through all the other lengthy and bureaucratic processes their job will entail.

I appreciate your comment as its intended defense and understand why a committee approach is a CYA risk-assessment measure (which ultimately turns job placement into a popularity contest as technical ability and team desiredata take a back seat/lower weight to fisticuffs assessments by HR).

However, parent commentator mentioned wanting to _go deep_, and needed 4-5 hours to do it, indicating that the typical committee pattern is out of alignment with what they were advocating.

Further, your time assessments are too long. You can assess fisticuffs in 10 minutes along with a background check. Technical doesn't have to be 1.5 hours. Also, 90 day probation policies exist to address as well.

I wondered that myself, when I had my 12th interview for a position in Nvidia's DevTech team.

(Didn't get an offer, in case you're curious:)

N.B.: Despite the peculiar number of interviews, I was left with a lot of respect for the team members and their work.

If anyone sees an interesting posting for that team, I'd definitely suggest applying.

And their 2 take-home coding projects reminded me why I love performance optimization.

Jeez. Should they not expect each interview stage to at least whittle down 1 applicant for every 2 that reach that stage? That's 4096 people who got to interview.

Or I guess they decided on a "mixture of experts" and put everyone through to multiple "final round" from different domain experts? All of whom are somehow adding value?

I don't think I've ever said this before, but that sounds like a job for a management consultancy.

IIRC, they were scheduled in something like 3 total batches.

Wow, and I thought the 8 interviews (each around 45 minutes iirc) I did for Apple was excessive.

You can get them to meet a more sizeable chunk of the team which helps keep individual bias down and ensures people are fine with the new hire.

I mentioned this in another reply -- while this is true and common, it's not what the grandparent commentator mentioned. They wanted 4-5 hours to "go deep" which is really unreal from an interviewing perspective.

It's a date, not an interrogation!

> That's preposterous. You're going to spend hundreds of hours working together. 4-5 hours is extremely reasonable to make sure it's a good mutual fit.

The point is that you know whether it’s a good fit after 1 hour, so anything after that is just posturing.

Not always so. Generally during the first call with a candidate I can filter out the people who clearly aren't going to be a good fit.

But I've had people I was really excited to hire totally fail on the technical interview. And in some cases, turn belligerent when pushed on their solutions.

There are plenty of engineers who are friendly and really good at talking tech, but missing some underlying qualifications.

> 4-5 hours is extremely reasonable to make sure it's a good mutual fit.

If it takes 4-5 hours to ensure a good fit, then that says more about you and/or the company than it does about the applicant.

Let me be charitable and say that some large orgs do the 4-5 hours to benefit the company via CYA and letting everyone get their chance to do interviews, but that’s just sloppy org-side waste.

As another commenter said, what actionable info do you gain in hours 4 and 5 than you already have at 3.5. I would to further and say what do you gain in hours 2 and 3 that you don’t already have at 1.5, and why are you so horribly inefficient in the event that you come up with a non-BS answer?

So much of the hiring process is corporate theater rather than optimal selection processes. I think most of the participants would do well to realize that.

> Of course, it shouldn't be 4-5 hours for all candidates. The last hour spent should have a pretty high conversion rate to offer.

I have been in multiple 'late round' interview stages where I learned I was one of 3 candidates (reasonable) through one of 8 candidates. (Come on. I'm involved in hiring too. If you're not whittling down harder than that, you're making a mess. The university that my partner works at hired a new President with 4 candidates at the final round.)

Here's a solution.

Candidates should be paid for their time in the interview process.

Tried that. Word got out that people could get paid for interviews. Got a lot of people using us for paid interview practice with no intention of joining.

Stopped doing that.

I'd give it a balance if you ever wanted to try it again

- 2 calls with recruiting and whatever technical screen you want.

- Take home that is paid X amount

- follow up take home review to verify they did it

- offer.

Big issue I have with take homes is that they love to be the first step, not the middle one. you can probably weed out a lot of candidates and pay only the ones you seriously consider with this approach.

Also solves a lot of spec work issues in other industries.

What would happen if it was mandated by law that all prospective employers do this?

So one could just go to a different interview every day and get paid for not working?

It sounds like interviewers would have to change their interview process to account for this.

Can you think of some ways that they could innovate the interview process if spurred on my this new constraint?

Most likely find some loophole that lets them keep more or less the same process but doesn't quite reach the legal criteria that require it to be paid.

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I bet you could think of a few ways to craft the law to eliminate or mitigate this.

Let's hear them.

Yeah, right, because real life is full of examples of laws with no loopholes...

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Can you think of any laws that have loopholes but we're still better off for their existence?

You don't seriously expect me to argue your position for you, do you? If you want to convince someone that such a law would be beneficial, feel free to stop sealioning and start making actual arguments.

Can you think of any instances where there are laws that have very little or no loopholes?

What separates those laws from the kind of law we're talking about? How are they different? How are they the same?

> 4-5 hours for an interview process just to hear a no

I once did a full-day interview and was asked back to do _another_ full-day interview... to be turned down after that.

No one does 4-5 hours in one go for me it would be impossible to interview 3-5 candidates that way.

It is more like 1 hour a week in 2-3 weeks and then 1-2 hours for take home.

After each step you can get a no - but you definitely get yes/no answer in those 3 weeks from me and I try to say no as soon as possible not to waste people time.

I can figure out in 5 minutes how someone is going to do. Just based on the resume alone in most cases.

What do you do with the remaining 4 hours and 55 minutes?

The take home test tells me little. I don't know who did the work, how long it took. I know they must really need the work because they gave away 2 hours of free work, that might be a red flag. If they guessed the coding standards we use then we pass them?

If you care about seeing their code ask them for a sample. Some people people github profiles with code on their resume. Use some of the time you have: the 4 hours 55 minutes and check yourself. It will be more representative of their work.

> I can figure out in 5 minutes how someone is going to do. Just based on the resume alone in most cases.

Just on resume? Are you aware how easy and common it is for candidates to lie on the resume?

> If you care about seeing their code ask them for a sample.

Same as above. Most candidates can't share code sample from their current/previous employer. For open source projects, it is again very easy to fake authorship.

> Are you aware how easy and common it is for candidates to lie on the resume?

Ask them a few probing questions about some of the technology and experiences listed. It's not too hard to pierce a veneer of bullshit.

And does anyone check references anymore?

> Just on resume? Are you aware how easy and common it is for candidates to lie on the resume?

If you can't figure out a candidate lied on their resume in a half hour conversation, you aren't going to figure it out in a four hour conversation either

More data absolutely helps, many people can fake it for an hour but not for 5. Work doesn't end after the first hour, so if they can't keep it up for less than a full day they wouldn't be able to during the real work either.

> I know they must really need the work because they gave away 2 hours of free work, that might be a red flag.

Needing to work might be a red flag? What?

Toxic attitude where you need to be working to find a jib.

I'm not sure I understand. Somebody really needing the work being a red flag during a job application process is nonsensical.

Of course the need the work...that is why they applied for a job...

The truth is that, if a candidate competent enough to work for us, then they can get hired by a firm thirty miles down the road who pays way better than we do. Thus, one line of questioning during the interview process is figuring out why the candidate wants to work for US instead. Usually it's because they want more exciting work or are interested in the work we are specifically doing. If someone just wants ANY job, it's a red flag that they've applied to the wrong place.

Remaining 4 hours and 55 minutes - is for getting person to talk to different people on the team. Management, QA other devs to get the feel of what kind of people we are, presenting company and having time for this person to present his\hers personality.

First 1 hour with management - the important part is to clarify persons requirements and getting to clarify what company requires to make sure he is not going to quit in 1 month - even if it is not entirely preventable and happens.

Then after 1st get to know we send out take home (for applicant to spend up to 2hr not more of his time, but usually we give task that for experienced person is max 30-45 mins) - if we like the person - the same if we send out take home and person doesn't like us or we don't match expectations, he doesn't have send it back or spend time on it.

Then during second interview (1 hour) technical part with devs (if solution is of course good enough but doesn't have to be perfect) is scheduled so person changes his own code so I can see how person uses the tools. If someone claims he is a senior and struggles changing his own code or doesn't use tooling in a proficient way that is what I check. Other part is that I ask for changes and see if person has any improvements or I propose improvements and see how person reacts - is person defensive, is person not having any ideas how to improve code, is it a person that thinks his code is "perfect" in all ways and everyone else is stupid.

Last (1 hour) one is confirmation that we are still on the same page with requirements on both sides then meet&greet to get to know one of business analysts someone from QA to get a feel and second opinion on the person personality - if we don't have red flags anyone rising we make an offer and that is take it or leave it, because all expectations should be already ironed out, we can of course wait so no pressure but if someone is not responding for a week we go for other candidate.

Thinking you can figure out someone in 5 minutes makes you a no hire from me ;)

I would be the one hiring, replacing you in this made up scenario. Regardless of the position you are hiring for you would hire me under your process because I can talk your ear off for hours and can outsource the take home. My point is I shouldn't have to have such unrelated skills.

You know that I use take home to ask for modifications on the spot during technical interview. First hour is soft talk to see if there is any communication issue, then you go home do take home, if you don’t like us you don’t have to do the take home.

If someone is reluctant to do changes in his own code it is a no go for me.

Main point of take home I give is so that candidate has his own code to modify while we are on the second round, not to waste time and stress people with something they didn’t wrote/know.

> you would hire me under your process because I can talk your ear off for hours and can outsource the take home

Which is why all of the biggest tech companies does on site technical tests.

For the biggest tech companies you spend time practicing leetcode. I don't know if that's any better.

I think "figuring someone out" and "figuring out if someone can do a job that needs to be filled" are very different topics.

> 4-5 hours is pretty excessive for an interview process actually.

You misunderstood. 4-5 hours is for the entire process inclusive of all steps.

Not a single 4-5 hour session.

Companies generally don’t allocate a lot of time up front to every candidate. They have stages starting with a screen and moving up from there.

That's a time investment for a serious consideration, and I don't think it's unreasonable at all. Nobody is making you spend that time, but if you choose not to, understand that plenty of qualified people will happily do so and get the job.

Exactly, and you can also look at the interview as time for you to vibe check the company.

Even in a purely coding interview, I find there’s a noticeable difference in demeanour between interviewers who will probably be empathetic and good people to work with, and people who won’t. And if most of the interviewers fail that vibe check, the job probably wasn’t right for you.

I can see how lengthy interview processes are annoying if you’re applying for loads of jobs, but honestly 4-5 hours doesn’t seem unreasonable and I’d actually be a bit concerned about any company that was willing to hire me with substantially less time to see if I was a good fit.

If there are plenty of qualified candidates there must be an over supply of candidates in the market. Too many developers but not enough roles.

Honestly, I will happily do a 4-5 hours interview but I will only do it once it's clear there's a 90% chance of a fit. In which case, I often actually enjoy it because it's a chance to get to know future coworkers and the working environment and just make sure I'm not jumping from a frying pan into a fire, etc.

But I also on the whole refuse interviews that are "leetcode" type situations and my nightmare would be 4-5 hours of some arrogant person 15 years younger than me trying to trip me up on "skill testing" trickery.

But sitting and talking for a few hours and meeting a bunch of people or analyzing a codebase together, or talking about a CS paper they've given me in advance to read? I think that's normal. But, again, that's only if we've done the first round or two and it's clear there's likely going to be some movement, and we're just doing our final due diligence to make sure both parties think it's a fit.

"4-5 hours is pretty excessive for an interview process actually."

I have been asked for basically two weeks of work. I don't think it is unreasonable. You just have to ask "10k okay?"

> unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process.

"We don't want you to spend more than 3-4 hours on this", where "this" was:

Build a log parser for streaming Apache CLF. The parser should:

Keep a rolling monitor of the top 10 requests, displaying their velocity in req/sec as a rolling average.

Display aggregates of visitor counts over the last hour and day.

Have high watermark alerts when ingress traffic as a whole, or to hotspot URLs hit thresholds, and then be able to de-alert when traffic dropped.

Scaffolding to deploy same.

Unit tests and documentation for same.

Ability to ensure URLs were safe, stripped of any GET parameters.

> Often we’ll get people complaining about excessive interview loops, but when they describe the process it adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

One non-FAANG (not even close) well-known on HN's interview loop:

- recruiter screen - 30m

- hiring manager screen - 60m

- networking meeting - 30m

- resume deep dive - 60m

- peer interview - 45m

- cross-functional team collaboration interview - 60m

- leadership interview - 45m

- values interview - 30m

- department specific interview (picking on 'product') - 60m

- discuss take home writing project - 60m

- engineering collaboration - 30m

Things like that? Ridiculous. Oh, fun fact, they ask you to tell your references to expect a 30 minute call from them.

There is a YC company that wanted a 4 hour recorded session of me coding up a problem they had given, with me explaining what I am doing for the entire 4 hours.

I’m pretty sure I did that exact take home project. It was interesting and I felt I did a good job, but it was excessive. I really wanted the job though (rejected due to getting vetoed on the last interview I think).

Was it for a company starting with D?

It was indeed. My interview process took like 6-7 weeks or something by the end. Was quite the disappointment at the time.

For over 10 years we've had people do a paid ~4 hr take-home which is very similar to the work they'll actually be doing (here's a dummy codebase, add a few features fix a few bugs).

If they're not interested in getting paid to do that work now, it's a good signal for us that they won't be happy doing it when they're working with us. It's helped us find really wonderful people to work with.

Do they get to pair with your team on the take-home or are they doing it solo?

I'm not happy working by myself on features/bugs in a codebase that no one will ever. It's meaningless work. If that's the job you're offering, then you're right, great signal.

But I imagine at your company that you work together on a codebase that people are using. That the requirements and bug reports are coming from actual users if not customers. If so, then you may be discarding some good talent who might be better for your company. The ones who will push back on bullshit work because they can see it's not doing anything for anyone.

Paid take homes are probably the least worst way to suss out signal in today's hiring market. The only time I had better was when I just set up a nights/weekends arrangement with a company and just started ripping through real tickets. Ended up getting hired on full time and they cut me a check for a few thousand dollars up front. It was very nice.

I think that's very fair. Problem is when they expect those 4+ hours of work for free.

> adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

> a few years ago when some companies were hiring anyone willing to do a short interview. Many younger engineers entered the workforce when that was normal and now any amount of interviewing feels unreasonable.

When I interviewed in the 90s "short interviews" were the norm.

4-5 hours are excessive. Especially if people are interviewing for 10 or more jobs. That's 40-50 hours interviewing. Even if you're single and young, that's onerous. Doubly so if you're senior with a family.

I'm not sure many other industries ask people to do tasks like this in their own time as part of the recruitment process. Certainly not one of my friends that's an engineer. He's never been asked to machine something on his lathe or milling machine. Nor one of my friends that is an architect. I can't imagine surgeons get many 'take home' tests either.

>but when they describe the process it adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

4-5 hours for an entry level role does seem excessive yes (if you're not a top tier tech company). How much do you really need to gleam from a new grad? Why does a new grad need to talk to the CTO to show their eagerness?

I've gone through longer hurdles (one interview I did for a potential 2nd job with 2YOE at the time was HR call, 2 stages, and an all day interview with 3 technical stages and 2 "culture fits". So evaluate the stages as you will there), but that doesn't mean I saw it as reasonable. I don't hold the cards in these processes though.

>I frequently have to convince people to do simple take-home problems

everyone's experience will vary, but I've never had a "simple take home problem". Ironically enough my shortest problems were timed 90 minute leetcode medium-hard questions. most other takehomes are just 4-12+ hour miniprojects or quizzes spanning coding, math, language domain questions, and system design. I did it for my first few jobs, but I really can't these days unless I am already far along. Especially when you get a few from last year that ghost you after you turn it in.

> 4-5 hours for an entry level role does seem excessive yes (if you're not a top tier tech company).

Not really? Between a half hour with the recruiter, an hour with the manager, an hour or 90 minutes with the broader team, a little time with HR, you’re bumping right up there on 4 hours. I agree with the parent, people’s expectations have been warped recently.

I don't really count the recruiter call. This is basically just "tell me about yourself" and "can we align on compensation/localtion"? Not much to study for outside of remembering your resume. I don't count the offer stage with HR for similar reasons (though these days, even the offer stage doesn't guarantee an offer, even if you don't negotiate).

So maybe it's a misalignment. that's a 2-3 hour interview gauntlet in my eyes.

>I agree with the parent, people’s expectations have been warped recently.

I've done much much worse in my experience. Doesn't mean I think it's okay, productive, nor respectful. Recruiter -> manager -> Team is a fine 3 step process process (with a potential take home test. so 4 stages) I agree with responses questining the marginal value of the 5th stage with another team member, the 6th stage with some C class you'll never directly talk to, and beyond. Very few people are are applying for director roles, which is the only place I can see such stages needed.

> I sure hope you aren't just grilling a college student with 4 hours of quizzes.

My 4-5 hours above was including all calls, from start to finish.

I was not saying a 4-5 hour sit down interview as stage 1 of the process was a good idea.

4-5 hours... per job. Do you think most people apply to a single job and just get it?

That's the whole process if you get hired. In the hiring process at my company we'll maybe give take-home assignments to three candidates for one role. So by the time you're doing our 4-hour assignment, you have about a 1/3 chance of getting the job. Not a bad deal in my opinion.

Hah. I have had multiple instances lately where I submit an application on LI/Indeed, and minutes later:

"[Company] has invited you to work on this take-home assignment."

Those just get circular filed. I'm not doing an assignment to get the privilege of a first round interview.

If, given you are at the beginning of the "do onsite interview loop" stage, you have a 30% chance of getting an offer, you will need to do NINE of those to have a 95% chance of having gotten >= 1 offer.

So yeah that is kind of a bad deal assuming you already have a full-time job and/or family/kids. I guess if you're single and unemployed then it's not so bad, aside from the fact that being unemployed greatly cuts your bargaining power?

As a whole unemployed cuts your bargaining power, it's natural to say "why should I leave my job" as a counterpoint. The flipside game is if you can arrange multiple offers at once (i.e. a high value candidate) while unemployed, it's a fantastic feeling. Then it's more like an auction, and auctions can get irrational. Turnabout is fair play and all that

You are probably more likely to get hired if you are already employed (at least that’s been my experience)

For what developers get paid and how cushy the job is? A few hours per application is easily worth it.

It's not unusual anymore for Software Engineers to be paid like mechanics... At least in some countries of Europe.

Then for those jobs it is not reasonable to have 5 hour interviews, and I doubt they do since they care about costs. But the companies that started this trend pays extremely well, developers gladly jump through those hoops for those massive salaries.

"cushy" is how you describe it, huh? Well I chose to work in games so I knew I'd get the worst of all worlds working there, but I'd still keepo in mind

1. some workers are still doing full time jobs, some with families to care for. "a few hours" per app adds up quickly

2. SWE's are explicitly exempt from overtime in the US. And it's not unusual even outside of games to hear 50-60 hour work weeks. Or on-call roles. Probably even more in these times since company's "solution" to the economic changes is to lay off 75% of the workforce and triple the remaining 25%'s responsibilities.

3. it's not just top companies doing these hoops. Everyone copied the top tech companies without the top tech pay. 4-5 hours for Google is more than fine, 4-5 hours for some Law Firm that barely pays 60k in a high CoL area makes no sense.

Are you paying me for that 4-5 hours of my time? If not, you'd better be a damn sight better in terms of what you offer as an employer, versus the rest of the market.

I get that it's different for the unemployed, but we shouldn't let people do this to us if we are in a position to help it.

I personally have only ever dropped a potential employer mid interview pipeline once, and it was when they sprung one of these on me. Even worse was, I was told it should only take 3-4 hours to do. Just eyeballing it, it seemed like 8 hours of work at least, which made dropping out of my candidacy an even easier decision.

4-5 hours was for the whole process, recruiter call, screening call, time for questions from the candidate, negotiation, and others.

I was not suggesting every candidate gets a 4-5 screen at the start.

> Often we’ll get people complaining about excessive interview loops, but when they describe the process it adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

I’ve researched and negotiated the terms of buying small businesses in less time.

4-5 hours is excessive for most jobs imho. You might be able to justify up to three or so for a C-suite position, 1-1.5 should be enough for most lower level positions, and anything beyond that is just institutional masturbation.

Collect a work sample, talk to them about work to see if they are like-minded in terms of working norms and habits. At that point, if it’s a hell yeah, then go with it. Otherwise it’s a pass. If a new hire significantly underperforms, just help them find a better place inside or outside of your org during the probationary period. If they are just leeches, then fire them mercilessly during the probationary period and revisit your hiring process.

4-5 hours?

No assessment should be over 1 hour and 3-4 hours of interviews for most jobs is excessive. I’ve trudged through long assessments. I can’t think of a single one where a better thought out 30 minute one wouldn’t better.

No.

I’ll tell you EXACTLY what is going on. The long interview and assessments are because jobs don’t train anymore and these unpaid or underpaid hours are the initial training. 3 hours of assessment means 3 hours getting used to their systems and workflows. You’re just reinforcing wage theft and gaslighting, that’s all.

I've been on both sides of plenty of multi hour assessments. Unpaid training is absolutely not the reason. As an employer, I don't want to spend time training anyone unless they're actually going to be hired.

It's really hard to figure out if someone is going to be a good fit for a job, so the idea is to get as many different perspectives as possible. Hence why you often interview with different people on different roles as part of the process

I think fu pay me applies here.

If you're going to "assess" me for 5 hours, I'm going to send you an invoice for 4 hours with 1 hour special discount for special fwend.

I mean, that's fine if you discuss it up front with the company before heading on site. You severely limit your options, but I know a few companies that have agreed to payment.

Though, it's worth noting that the company is already spending a lot of money interviewing you. Especially if they're paying for flights, lodging, and meals for an on site.

It's worth figuring out what your goals in demanding compensation for being interviewed are. If it's making sure the company isn't "taking advantage" if your time, then I think that's already covered (interviews are super expensive expensive for companies) so long as 4 of those 5 hours are with actual humans. If it's due to financial hardship, most companies will be sympathetic and work with you. If it's to satisfy a sense of moral righteousness, then I think there are better options than sending and invoice after the fact (which comes across as passive aggressive and would ding you on your communication skills assessment)

The main question is how long will this thing continue....Are we going to get back in normal state?

Companies don't train because people don't stay. It's a lose-lose situation.

People don't stay, because companies don't give raises or promotions.

I love long takehomes. They're like pet projects, but with clearly defined goals and with people that might even give you a review if you're lucky. I always use them to try a new library or a framework, and often continue improving on them even after they're submitted and evaluated.

I had a take-home assignment to build a Dropbox competitor around 10 years ago, it was a pretty big project but I actually still use it for sharing files with friends because it's legitimately much easier to use than Dropbox.

> I had a take-home assignment to build a Dropbox competitor around 10 years ago, it was a pretty big project

I'm genuinely amused you thought (think?) it acceptable to do such work without payment. Here, any potential employer submitting such a request would be laughed at.

Well, technically if he isn't getting paid, it's his copyright, allowing him to use the code and even create a business around it, and the company has no rights to it- so in this case it worked out well for him.

But yes, its a pretty crappy idea that people should do 'real' work for free to get hired.

Sure, but at best that's unrelated to their value as an interview process. At worst, it's actually making things worse for you, because you're distracted and not doing more interviews.

Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are the same ones that don't make you go through Leetcode/trivia gauntlets.

My biggest advice is if they say to use 4 hours but you need 8 to do an amazingly thorough job then use 8. It's basically cheating but I've always found that it doesn't end up causing any actual problems in terms of being able to deliver at a velocity they needed in actual product work post-hire.

Every takehome I've ever "passed" has just been an invitation to 3 rounds of Leetcode and a systems design interview, followed by a rejection.

And being on the other side of the interview, I know many times the takehomes don't even get looked at.

My biggest advice is to assume the reviewer is a bored junior running down a checklist that tests only what was in the spec. They have like five minutes budgeted for getting your project running and a pile of applications to go.

> Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews.

This means a decent amount of that time spent on documentation, imho.

I do as you do, but there is a very real risk that nobody will ever look at it. Or it gets assigned to a dev (who has a lot of other real work to do) to look at and the give it a cursory once over and a thumbs up or down.

I had one where after weeks of work, tweaking, it received zero time on their eyeballs. And I know because they never went to the link i sent. So ghosting a project is a very huge reality...

>If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are the same ones that don't make you go through Leetcode/trivia gauntlets.

First job me believed that. Current job me has done 2 take homes that only lead to ghosts. then 1 more that lead to failing a leetcode style interview. Never again.

and I have plenty of personal projects outside of work, I don't need more pet projects like the one comment up stream.

The fallacy of believing putting in 10 hours on that 2 hour test will push your candidacy over the top. We've all been there.

If they give that "challenge" to 4 other people there is only a 25% chance that you will get the job.

> I love long takehomes.

I am happy that you are full of life and joy with programming. I genuinely want you to keep that, it is precious. However, they are getting free labour from you, so just keep that in mind.

For me, I can't do that anymore. I just can't muster up the energy to work on problems for something thats not going to be taken seriously by the "client"

How often have you done such tasks?

Troll!

>Some days I’m pulling my hair out because someone who has been unemployed for months has valiantly refused yet another take home problem that could have moved their application forward with a minimal time investment.

How would you/candidate know in advance that the current take home problem will lead to a hire, if completed ?

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