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Comment by sb8244 | Hacker News Reader

Idk. Flaunting how much the process cost and how much income it lost was sort of put off for me.

It's great to see insight into interviews, in general, but that just left a weird bitter note to the article.

Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss. This way of looking at things comes with a pretty heavy dose of narcissism if you ask me. It says "People would be paying me money for what I'm doing for free right now; look how much I'm sacrificing." While there might be quite a few people out there who could get away with billing their time at any given hour of the day, most of us have to establish relationships that facilitate a mutually-beneficial value exchange.

Luis might have very well been looking for work during this time, but by phrasing it as an outright monetary loss, he exaggerates his sacrifice and gives an appeal to the reader to condemn what Apple "did to him."I believe this is the reason also for the "700 Billion". Oh well. Sucks to be rejected. Natural reaction

Yeah I wouldn't quantify how much money I personally lost, but it's absolutely fair to specify how many hours of time were lost. I value my free time. That's time I could be learning a new skill, working on a product, or just having fun. Either way, it's time I gave up for nothing.

I understand wanting to really vet someone first; but it really does seem kind of excessive how long these interview processes are becoming. It's not as if the author were applying for a Japanese salaryman (read: lifetime) employment position. Why not do a normal interview, bring them on as a contractor, see how it goes, and then make your final decision? It'd be a bit of a risk for the candidate if relocation were involved and remote work wasn't possible, but that would be on them.

> but it's absolutely fair to specify how many hours of time were lost

I don't think it is. First of all, the hours aren't "lost", they are "cost of getting a job" - you don't interview without at least considering the possibility of not getting an offer. Anyone who expects to get a job after every interview they do is delusional. It's like the time you spend pitching your services to a client who then decides not to hire you - not "lost" time, but "cost of business".

> Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss.

If you're freelancing, then it's not that imaginary. You're giving up billable time.

As a person who is a freelancer and also employs freelancers, you're right in a way. But in another way, you have to admit it's probably not OK to just say "Hey guys, off for two weeks to write a blog post, oh and if I decide to do a a few hours of time when I feel like it, you better pay for it."

It's just not realistic. Like the guy above you said, it comes down to time and I can sympathize with that. But to imagine you always have someone on hand right there willing to pay for your hours of work is where I am like "ok, wait, hold on."

I wouldn't expect to be paid to interview. But it's still an opportunity cost.

If his time was too valuable, he always had the choice to reject the interview and save that $6000. He chose to bet $6000 for a ~70% chance of getting a $200,000 job (or whatever). Sometimes bets fail. It's frustrating, but life goes on.

I don't understand--I thought we have no ego. There is no self. There is even "egoless" programming.

Same here. S/he sure does come of as very butthurt (is there a better, less "offensive" word for that?). It wasn't a "shallow 'no'", it was just a "no", what else did s/he expect (companies usually don't give usable feedback because of legal reasons)?! S/he seems hurt to get a "no" after 6 hours of in-person interviews, but obviously, if it was a guaranteed "yes", you wouldn't even need an interview!

In other words, just another unsuccessful interview, nothing unusual here, nor anything that Apple did badly or wrong.

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