Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

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I'm glad you found a job you like, truly. It's rough out there right now for everyone. I have people close to me that have been looking for work for years, and it's very demoralizing.

I think that there's a certain deeper truth in what you've posted, which is that hiring is very hard, and different people feel different ways about different things. I also applied to Google once upon a time, and it was spectacularly confusing and bad. Yeah, I could speak to humans, but that wasn't particularly helpful. I regularly received contradictory information, and the stalling and back and forth went on so long I completed several other processes during the wait, and ended up at Cloudflare instead. That doesn't mean that you're wrong that you had a better time than I did, it just is what it is.

I know you're not looking, but to give you my take on the biggest question here, in case anyone else is curious:

> If I reapply, should it be with the same interview packet, or should I rethink it?

In general, resubmitting with the same materials isn't a good idea. If they didn't get you in the first time, they won't the next time, and also in general, time has passed, you've probably done other things since then... naturally, this means the answers will end up differently.

Finding the right person for a role is hard, yes.

Being civil and considerate to people who are in your process spending many hours is not hard. Give them updates. Not a fit? Tell them. Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you? Yell them. Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them? Tell them.

I wrote a very lengthy comment here and deleted it a few times. I agree that these things are good in the abstract, but reality is more complicated.

> Give them updates.

But you have to consider that different processes mean different ability to even give updates. Yes, saying "give me updates" is a good thing, but a side effect of the process that Oxide uses means that there is high latency for taking an initial look at an application. In that time, there's simply nothing to update you on. More traditional hiring practices have more stages, with faster feedback for candidates, and that's one pro of the way that they do things.

> Not a fit? Tell them.

People are told "no", but again, due to the above, it can take a while before this evaluation even happens.

> Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you?

This does not happen at Oxide, roles are very carefully considered, and as a smaller startup, tend to be more general. There isn't the sort of re-org shuffling that happens at large organizations.

> Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them?

This is why Oxide makes it clear that this takes a long time, up front. It is a tremendous amount of work for Oxide to run their process.

If you know up front it may take 6 months (or whatever) to get to a decision (99% of the time), tell people that.

As I said above, I agree that six months seems very excessive.

This contradicts your earlier statement, "we had one opening, but five or even ten excellent final candidates," and ignores the criticism: "is it me or is is it you?"

Although I suppose you're saying that promising candidates are kept on file for later?

I will be honest, I do not understand what you're saying. It's possible I just need more coffee.

> If [the job applicant materials] didn't get you in the first time, they won't the next time

> we had one opening, but five or even ten excellent final candidates

Under my interpretation , these statements contradict each other. The former implies that a candidate's failure is always the result of their shortcomings. The latter implies that a qualified candidate can be edged out through little fault of their own. The parent poster complained of exactly this; they weren't sure whether they were ineligible or simply edged out.

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