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Comment by goostavos | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty much why no one should feel bad if you're rejected after some FANG interview. It all 100% comes down to the people in your loop. You're likely to hit an ass hole or two.

I made it into Amazon, but honestly, after sitting in on a bunch of interviews, I now appreciate the amount of pure dumb luck involved (i.e. I got a loop of people who liked me and had questions I understood) rather than any skill (which is, well, pretty limited in reality).

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Well I appreciate these interview loops because at least they are still far more objective than big company promo processes when whoever lies the most and forces others to do their dirty work gets promoted. I do wish the interview process was even more objective, just administer and extremely difficult IQ Test instead.

IQ tests are rarely objective and they most definitely don't measure the things most important for a large company.

Doesn't have to be a standard IQ test, I would be fine with the test being about algorithms and systems design type questions. Just please remove the biased human component from interviews and use a more standardized metric across a group of people instead of randomly chosen questions for each candidate with subjective evaluation. The current process is not great even for people with good tech skill due to the randomness and subjective evaluation factors.

Also you are wrong about standard IQ tests not being able to measure relevant skills for tech companies. They not perfect but I bet even those would do a better job than the current process. The psychometric research is clear that they are useful for predicting results across a wide variety of domains.

> standard IQ tests not being able to measure relevant skills for tech companies

I am basing this on what the HR department for the company that I work for tells me. They have been administering them for years and they have never been a reliable indicator of company performance. That doesn't mean they're not used - management loves them.

> The psychometric research is clear

Do you have some sourcing for me? Perhaps I can read up and improve my own professional experience with new colleagues.

Nor for a medium or small company. (I say this as someone who tends to take these tests very well, but they’re not that commercially relevant.)

Skills you can learn. Obviously if you have them already, it is a big plus. Otherwise, if you show you have some skills, that’s a good sign that you can learn new ones too. That’s why some interviewers ask questions more relevant to your CV than the job requirements.

It’s more important that you have a professional attitude and can contribute to the culture and values. That’s much harder yo learn. And a wrong character with even all the hard skills can ruin everyone.

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