Not exactly a comment for the piece, but for overall comments going around.
I am really shocked with people's understanding of situations. Like one great example of a different interview process which totally seems like working for the interviewer and his/her interviewees is bashed for not being good for their tastes without even getting the rationale. Or expecting people to spend 6 months on preparation for interviews considered normal or totally acceptable.
Either HN crowd are totally out of loop of life, or their self importance is out of bounds that they can't see anything else which is deemed below.
Is life something that you could spend so easily? What kind of affirmation people get from jumping hoops that would never even matter in the big picture?
The newer interview procedures that are described here really made my jaw drop. I am not the most down to earth guy without the last bit ego, but I believe I improved over the years. Still if I would encounter any of these , I would go jerkiest of egocentrics ever and tell them go do themselves.
> expecting people to spend 6 months on preparation for interviews considered normal or totally acceptable
You're expected to be able to solve a certain set of problems. Whether you don't prepare at all, spend 6 months, or spend 6 years is up to you. Oh, and everything you need to prep is available in cheap books and websites.
That's immensely superior to being required to spend 5 years and thousands of dollars in college to get the degree that nobody will hire you without, like some industries do.
Please look around, here you can find hundreds or thousands of people probably never used advanced algorithms for their lifetime except once or twice for their interviews. And you can see some who uses these daily who never implement them out of their heads but with intuition, preparation, effort, books and research. Oh and don't get me started that they all are compansated for.
Which type do you think these interview methods are optimized for?
These methods are waste of money, time, brains for both parties.
I'm not disputing that it's imperfect or wasteful, and I'm happy to see some companies trying different ways of interviewing that may not have these flaws.
I'm disputing that spending a few months to prepare for free and on your own schedule is particularly abnormal or unacceptable. Maybe we could do even less, but it's extremely benign in comparison with many other high-paying jobs.
Some people in this thread call the tech interview process hazing. It's a word that comes back on almost every HN discussion on the topic. Do you agree with that labelling? If you picked a random, non-software engineer person in the street and asked them whether solving algorithmic challenges at home for a few months before being flown all expenses paid to a tech campus to write on whiteboards and eat sushi constitutes hazing, what do you think would they answer? Remember that hazing regularly kills people and is categorized as a crime in California and many other places.
The industry is not interested in people from the street. We are always interested with people with years or decades of experience.
The problem arise from the discrepancy between how the expertise is and what the interview process searchs for. They are not the same thing or even signal each other.
I hate interviews. Just the idea of need for a job search is hurting my bones.
I did this on both sides multiple times in 2 different countries with different work ethics which are not SF or USA. I still not sure what are the good signals are. It is a lottery for both parties.
Also my concern is not about this, it's about peoples perception of the process. Some, like you consider preparation for the exam, but not the work ok. Some don't. And they both can't understand each others views. We have our perception filters tuned only for own.
About hazing, I absolutely totally agree it's hazing and from what I read here is getting worse.
Take a surgeon. for interviewing ask her to do a frog dissection for a take home project, and than ask her for a 10 hours long lead neural surgery, without meeting the patient before and preparing for it before. Oh you won't be paid, you can ask anything while patient is on the table. Oh I forgot you can't use the latest auto surgeon functionalities that we have which would improve or perfect the chances of success.
Now you know we are paying top notch, also have sushie served to your open office. You won't find a better option!
I know this is ridiculous, but why don't you think what we are exercising is not?
I am really shocked with people's understanding of situations. Like one great example of a different interview process which totally seems like working for the interviewer and his/her interviewees is bashed for not being good for their tastes without even getting the rationale. Or expecting people to spend 6 months on preparation for interviews considered normal or totally acceptable.
Either HN crowd are totally out of loop of life, or their self importance is out of bounds that they can't see anything else which is deemed below.
Is life something that you could spend so easily? What kind of affirmation people get from jumping hoops that would never even matter in the big picture?
The newer interview procedures that are described here really made my jaw drop. I am not the most down to earth guy without the last bit ego, but I believe I improved over the years. Still if I would encounter any of these , I would go jerkiest of egocentrics ever and tell them go do themselves.