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Comment by meowzero | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a company, not a FANG, but had interviews like a FANG. We had a solid team. But some of us believed we wouldn't be able to pass our own interviews.

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isn't this what's happening at FANG companies: the gatekeepers (i.e. people giving interviews) have an incentive to not let people in too easily? This limits the pool of employees, and since what's rare is expensive, makes insiders more valuable?

Also at FANG companies, interviewing feels (to me) like hazing that is unrelated to what the day-to-day job will be like. Some interviewers I had obviously had a very high opinion of themselves..

Our incentive is not (as you imply) a selfish desire to enrich ourselves though artificial scarcity, but rather the knowledge that a weak team member hurts everyone and is hard to get rid of. At my firm we have the explicit goal of hiring people who are better than half the developers at similar level. A little math will show you that if you do not do this, your average talent level goes down over time.

Oh I wasn't thinking of selfishness in this situation (I didn't use that word, but i was thinking of how purely rational economic actors would act), merely that there is a subconscious incentive to act one way. Of course you are right, interviews serve as a filter, one wants the newcomer to increase the output of the team, not decrease it ;-)

Another issue is that hiring is expensive and FANG companies have a ton of applicants. Raising the bar on algorithmic interview performance is a straightforward way to filter applicants that is relevant to job performance. After the initial screen it's still hard to make the case to hire a smart engineer if one or two of the interviewers have concerns about their interview performance.

I think there's a natural desire to want to hire people who are better than you are. Sprinkle in a little dunning kruger effect and I can see how a good team can end up feeling like that.

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