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Comment by jetru | Hacker News Reader

I always thought getting no response in a few days means you're not hired. This is pretty industry standard. Also, in the interviews they will always assume that you get hired. What kind of interviewer would say "well, you're probably not gonna get hired, but...".

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"This is pretty industry standard."

It shouldn't be, and didn't used to be (I'm 40 so I've been around software dev for a while).

This kind of behavior is unprofessional and an embarrassment for our industry if we just consider it our industry standard.

It doesn't take much effort to draft a form letter rejection (that is generic enough to avoid any potential for lawsuits, if that's their concern) and even less to send it out. With just a minor amount of work they could act like they were adult humans who treated other people like humans... why not do that?

In fact I'd go further and say it's pretty much industry standard for recruiters to go missing/contract ending mid-offer. It might sound aggro, but if you think you have an offer coming, it's not awful to email anyone you might know inside a company to get an answer.

Heck, I don't think I even mind telling people it didn't work out, so if you get in this kind of mess with Google, I'm happy to track down errant Google recruiters for you for them to officially turn you down, or happier still, get you that offer that is waiting in some stalled process.

Big companies can be challeging to interview for. So many moving parts that translate into an offer. pre-interview, interview, referrals, manager and exec review, headcount allocation, comp negotiation, etc. etc...

If anyone considers this to be an acceptable "industry standard", things needs to change dramatically.

FWIW, I've never gone through an interview here where I felt like I should assume I will be hired.

Every single time I've been offered a job, I received the call within 3 days of interviewing -- usually same or next day.

And with one exception, every time I have not been given an offer, it has either been the silent treatment or they wait until the very last day of time that they said they would give an answer (usually a week).

Especially if you have had a bunch of individual interviewers, who are all conducting multiple interviews per week and trying to ship product, the delay may be down to waiting for one or more of them to submit their feedback about you. I've definitely been terrible about that when we had some product fires going on, and got in the habit of trying to write up immediately after the interview, but sometimes with back-to-back meetings all day it fell off the stack. Knowing someone out there is waiting to hear back is a horrible thing though, and usually spurred me to try and be super-fast -- but you only need one overworked, or sick, interviewer to fall behind with feedback and you might be waiting weeks for the full interview report to be ready for hiring review.

I waited for 3 weeks before I received an offer from my current employer. Actually, I emailed my recruiter/HR contact and explain I had an offer from a different company who were pressuring me for a decision, but I would prefer to work there..I guess sometimes things either fall through the cracks or there is a lot of dominoes that have to go.

I've interviewed in SV, and it's not industry standard. Google is pretty notorious for not getting back to you for up to several weeks, even if you did well.

My rule of thumb is give the recruiter 3 days to 1 week before trying to contact them again.

If I don't hear back within 3 days, I just move on. In fact, I move on anyway. Not being a super-star, I need to spread the net pretty wide.

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