Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmchuster | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if FAANGs are so deserving of such vitriol. I would probably say that big companies overall just fundamentally have a set of issues, and FAANGs are probably above average in many aspects relative to the rest of the big ones. Now, if you prefer certain small companies, or other humanitarian or mission-focused ones, that's not a FAANG-specific complaint, in my mind.

And just product-wise, it's just way too easy to find counterexamples, like, how worse would the world be off if there was never invented google, gmail, chrome, iphones. Before google, there was no reliable way to search the web. Before gmail, there was no such thing as a dynamic web application. Before chrome, we were stuck with microsoft making up their own standards with IE and an inconsistent web spec. Before iphone, we were stuck with feature phones. The list just goes on and on.

View on HN

> google, gmail, chrome, iphones

There's four excellent examples of things that were better 10 years ago before this practice was instituted. The youngest thing on that list (chrome) is 14 years old.

Both Apple and Google used to not hire in this 3-4 interviews of canned programming question way. Then they did. Those products are now stagnating and deteriorating so much that it's obvious to everyone.

If you think it's exclusively a FAANG practice, you're mistaken. There's tiny firms that do it and really large ones that don't.

Bringing the worst practices of standardized testing into the tech hiring process produces the same kinds of problems that standardized testing does elsewhere. Silicon Valley used to be better than this.

It's a dumb arbitrary ceremony - might as well be a physical challenge from Nickelodeon's Double Dare.

(Also your narrative history is wrong, but that's not the point)

Why are those 4 thing worse no?

Ok, I understand that google search is worse, but it isn't obvious to me that's a result of engineering vs executive choice.

> There's four excellent examples of things that were better 10 years ago before this practice was instituted.

FWIW, I interviewed with Google in 2009 and the interview was 100% pure leetcode (not even design/architecture questions). It was exactly a series of four back-to-back 1-on-1 meetings, which consisted of "Hello" followed by an algorithmic puzzle.

If anything they seem to have broadened the scope of interviews since then.

I’m interviewed in 2006-2009 at all the top tech companies and can confirm the process was essentially the same as today.

Alright. I stand corrected. I also went to San Francisco job interviews around 2005 or so and found that. I was turned off by them back then as well.

I'm not a researcher in the field but I'd love to see some study. Let's say measuring for deadline slippage, budget overshot, and retention rate.

The testing groups will be teams that use these tactics almost exclusively and those that use a variety of other methods.

If my assumption that this is a mostly arbitrary attribute is correct, their averages would be nearly the same.

If they produce statistically better results then I'd literally quit my job and go work for one. I'd be happy to be wrong about this but I don't think I am

I doubt the stagnation is the fault of poor hiring practices.

More likely has to do with monopolization and business models that favor advertising over users.

Can you elaborate? I'd like to hear your thoughts

Monopolies aren't motivated to innovate. (At least not in helpful ways.)

This is why the web is stagnating with near Chrome monopoly, just like during (shudder) the IE years.

Same for Google itself. Bing/DDG are only half-assed competitors. Google seems to be making search worse for all kinds of bad reasons, just because they can.

I'd guess most people who use an alternative to gmail specifically don't want to use Google, not because something else is better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com