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Comment by avl999 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that these interviews can be a bit much but what's the alternative? If I am a job seeker I feel much more comfortable knowing that they expect me to write code and answer DS+Alg questions and prepare for it as opposed to companies selecting based on the the prestige level of the University you went or based on subjective judgments based on the resume and/or company fit. As someone who went to a University in Canada that no one working at big tech companies in SV would have even heard of I appreciated that I was given a chance to show my skill as opposed to them just hiring out of Ivys/Stanford/MIT or other big name schools (like what happens in Law).

I also hate the new trend of "take home" tests. That just seems disrespectful of the candidate's time.

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>While I agree that these interviews can be a bit much but what's the alternative?

So somehow literally every other industry on earth has figured out ways to interview people that don't involve whiteboard hazing but you think there is absolutely no alternative? Have you actually thought about what you are saying at all?

Might want to check linkedin because I can guarantee most of your bosses are from Ivys/Stanford/MIT/etc

>I also hate the new trend of "take home" tests. That just seems disrespectful of the candidate's time.

But doing leetcode for 2 months is somehow better? Are you high?

> I also hate the new trend of "take home" tests. That just seems disrespectful of the candidate's time.

And there lies the problem: I would prefer a take home test way more than whiteboard interview. With the take-home test I would feel more comfortable.

As a VP of Engineering in a growing startup, I have to deal with interviewing 2 or 3 candidates every week. We have settled for a process which has given us good results. But for me the key has been to avoid taking tests "literally" but use them more as tools to get to know the candidate.

To give you an example: I have had jr people that did too little in our "onsite" (a 3 hour coding challenge of modifying some source-code) but at the end we took a chance and offered 3-month internship with possibility of becoming full time after that. We have had success with that.

I've had people who just flunk the interviews but I see something in them and we take a chance. Similarly, I have seen people that pass the interview pretty well but it so happens that they are just not cut for a startup culture (I had a guy coming from a"big corp" Tata/HCL/Cognizant/AmDocs kind of culture who struggled to strive in the uncertain and dynamic environment of a startup, after several months, we decided to end it (the nice thing in Mexico is that, by law, we paid him for 3 months severance) because both sides were suffering.

A take home test is fine as long as it is expected to take < 2 hours. One company expected me to spend a whole day on their test and it's like I'm sorry, I don't have time for that.

The alternative according to HN is to just recognize my genius based on my resume and what my friends say about me, and throw an offer at me.

People are just salty.

Not at all. You're going to give me a take-home, and you're I've only got a 2% chance of getting hired? Get lost.

That's not "salty". That's refusing to be exploited.

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