Comment by drewcrawford | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewcrawford | Hacker News Reader

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I'm going to say something potentially very stupid hoping someone will correct me: I don't understand why technical interviews exist in the general case.

I mean, I understand why companies like AirBnB would like them to exist. What I don't understand is why engineers participate in them.

I totally get selling yourself to the potential employer. Spending an hour on the phone talking through a technical problem. Having IRL conversations where you see if you "gel" with the team in a bunch of hard-to-quantify ways.

But why would any engineer in today's market take two days to respond to asinine pet/trick questions that random engineers lob at them in order for a shot to spend additional time for people higher up the food chain to lob hypothetically less-asinine questions in a way that makes them directly comparable with the other 19 people jockeying for the spot?

Do companies like AirBnB believe that there are top-tier people with nothing better to do? Or do they believe they have some perk that is different than the perks of every other startup currently hiring that would motivate top-tier people to create such time?

Maybe my perception of market demand leads me to overestimate it. I get so many "please work for us" emails (from actual founders, even, let alone recruiters) that my inbox is out of control. I've gotten a job offer while writing this comment. I can't even reply at that scale. Perhaps one offer a month is lucky enough to receive an actual e-mailed decline; I never even consider doing a phone interview. Am I a precious snowflake, is my experience non-representative?

I don't write negative comments, but this was impossible to not respond to. Honestly, you sound less like you're precious and more like you're pretentious.

While I'm very happy for you receiving job offers all the time (congratulations!), there are definitely reasons for an engineer to take an interview; in particular, falling in love with what a company stands for. The idea that all engineers are mercenaries ready to work for anyone and sell themselves to the highest bidder is an aged one, and one I had hoped was no longer true. If I fell in love with a company (as has happened in the past), I'd certainly be willing to jump through some hoops to "prove" myself to them - if that means going through an interview process so they can fall in love with me as much as I have with them, so be it.

When I see a woman I like, I don't go up and tell her about all the other women that want to sleep with me. Instead, I flirt, I jump through some hoops, make her jump through some of mine, and ultimately establish a strong connection. Or not; that happens too. Same goes for finding work.

How could you fall in love with a company without working for them? Isn't that synonymous with the high school scenario of falling in love with the girl that you never said hello to?

I love Stripe. I love their product so much, in fact, that if I didn't love my own company more (and significantly more), I'd try to work for them - I'd jump through any hoops. So yes, despite never having worked for Stripe, I can tell given everything I've read about their culture, using their product, etc. that we'd get along swell. It's a very similar culture to our company, in fact.

I love Apple's products, but their culture of secrecy is not a good fit for me at all.

I love Square's product, but the way they write their tests is totally perpendicular to my philosophy, and would totally drive me up the wall.

I love Square Enix's products, but the life of a game developer would suck all of the fun out of it for me.

The whole thing is subjective, of course, but I don't understand why product fit would necessarily imply cultural fit, and particularly for my subjective criteria, the fit seems poor.

In fact, I can think of many products that I at least moderately dislike that by all accounts have really fantastic people that I would get along great with.

Many developers love Apple and their products and they create apps that makes Apple smile to the bank.

Apple does not return the love, hence they commoditize apps and make building a business off apps, a race to the bottom for $1.99 or free as a result, many indie developer are getting broke right now. Very sadly, the same commoditize apps, help make iphone and ipad appealing to consumers, which in turn gives Apple the leverage to sell them for $500 or more because it is a hardware or device company and software or your app is only a complement to the hardware.

Where is the returned love from Apple. Be pragmatic, even while you choose to love an entity like Apple, that lacks capacity to return the love and will always act in self interest. Always search to see if your love is reciprocated by the person or organization you are in love with, because that is your self interest. Self love gives us the capacity to love others. Self love encompasses self interest among other things.

If Apple acts only in self interest, why do developers choose to act out of love aka blind fan boy-ism that is detrimental to their business (indie app development)?

http://andrewchen.co/2012/08/15/mobile-app-startups-are-fail...

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/going-broke...

You can love their product, and what they publicly stand for. Happened to me and didn't feel like high school.

> in particular, falling in love with what a company stands for

People can purport to stand for just about anything, but unless there is a track record there of standing up for [principle] in the face of [adversity], it's just a politically expedient claim. There are wonderful exceptions, but most ordinary people and most ordinary companies don't deduce their day-to-day behavior from first-order principles, and at any rate, companies the age of AirBnB don't have the track record to enable an observer to distinguish principles from marketing claims.

> The idea that all engineers are mercenaries ready to work for anyone and sell themselves to the highest bidder is an aged one, and one I had hoped was no longer true.

This is not my view; nobody is saying take the highest offer, and I have said absolutely nothing about money at all.

My question is: why do engineers participate in technical interviews? Insofar as I understand it, your response explains why an engineer might (I would say improperly) create a post-hoc rationalization and "fall in love" with the company after-the-fact, but under your own logic it doesn't explain why the engineer takes two days off to go in the first place. Assuming that "falling in love" is even something you can do in two days, the candidate hasn't done it at the point this decision is made.

There are 1 or 2 companies I'd be willing to go through a 2 day interview process to work through, because I've already "fallen in love" with them.

SpaceX comes to mind (I was contacted by a SpaceX recruiter after I performed well in Sebastian Thrun's original AI class, but it never went anywhere after that).

However, I completely agree in principle that a 2 day interview is just ridiculous.

Thanks for clarifying.

I suppose my point boils down to the following:

1) If you already love a company pre-interview (which can happen, by the actions of the company), then it makes perfect sense to take an interview. Even in the short lifespan of most startups, there can be enough action and culture shown that you can truly desire to work there / "fall in love."

2) Sometimes it's worth taking an interview to find out more information on both sides - a phone interview is useful, but as you say, IRL conversations are far more useful for the things you can't see on paper or hear over the phone. I'm not saying AirBnB did a great job with this - they clearly didn't - but that doesn't make all interviews useless. Without them, a lot of "bad fit" hires would be made.

It is okay to love a company but note that the company never falls in love with you as an employee. They always do what is in their best interest, interpret as what is in the interest of the major share holders and not employees or minor share holders.

That is why even when you kill your self for a product launch or their overall success, they still don't hesitate to give you the sack if it is required for something like cutting cost not to talk of when major adversity comes.

My point is be pragmatic and not too emotional with loving a company especially if you are not a founder or major share holder. Many people have been burnt by loving someone or an organization that does not have capacity to return that love.

Two days vacation burned is a lot of commitment up front from a candidate. Maybe it's intended to act as a filter.

I'd guess any engineer desperate enough to go through a two day interview process is delusionally obsessed, incompetent, or has no experience worthy of reference. Some filter.

Fair point. Two days is a long time - I've never done more than one.

You didn't read the story and the comment you responded, did you?

Because your example with "woman I like" is not valid. There was no woman _you_ liked. There was woman who liked _you_ (recruiter e-mailed). And that _woman_ expressed desire to sleep with _you_. And after that, _you_ strongly advocated to start flirting and "jumping through some hoops" with that woman. May I ask why?

I read both.

There wasn't a woman who expressed desire to sleep with me. There was a woman who made eyes at me from across the bar. That's it.

His immediate response was him walking over and starting the conversation. I don't know about you, but I'm not lucky enough that every time a woman makes eyes at me from across the room it is, by definition, in the context of "Let's go to my hotel room."

With a LinkedIn profile that has at least three positions with experience in "startup" technologies, I believe your experience is very representative. Economically speaking, we all know there is a surplus of development-related positions (in key startup cities, i.e., sf, la, nyc, etc). What generates this ridiculous level of interview practice is the notion of "hacker-rockstar-ninja-beard" guy or gal and the inane belief in the existence of only two camps of engineering talent, 1.) hacker/rockstar/whatever and 2.) the rest being shit.

Clearly, this isn't the case.

Maybe you just are that awesome. Developers are in higher demand than SRE's, which is one thing. But I think it's highly unusual to get a job offer without an interview process. Hiring is a big commitment and choosing the right people to hire is a tough problem; so is for choosing the right place to work at. I certainly think it's worth at least a couple days to make the right decision.

Maybe his comment comes off as "I'm too cool", but there's something to what he's saying.

After the Nth email from someone at Google, I got curious and said, sure, we can start the process.

The first phone screening was like "Unix Trivia Time". I knew lots of things, but some others just weren't things that matter to me day to day, so while I know they're out there, I don't recall the specifics. Generally, I'd know what man page to go look up, or I might also considering a certain search engine to find information. The interviewer said that I wasn't supposed to do that. This went on for what I recall as an hour or two, and I did pass, and got invited to do some other interview.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I did not want to spend any more time doing stuff like that: they don't have offices anywhere near where I live, nor any offices for technical people in parts of Europe that I consider pleasant places to live, and I don't want to live in California either. And supposedly it's pretty difficult to land a job there anyway, so the odds would be to spend N evenings/hours doing more silly interviews just to get turned down, or even accepted and be faced with the prospect of moving somewhere I don't want to be.

So I politely let them know that it had been decided that Google was not a good fit for my current employment needs, and that I wished them luck in their candidate search.

>But I think it's highly unusual to get a job offer without an interview process.

I don't really think it's the presence of an interview process that the OP is complaining about. Rather it's that the interview process can take 2+ full days.

Do a phone interview, a 2-3 hour relevant work sample test and a 1-2 hour in person interview--then if you're still want more, pay me for a short project (that I can complete nights and weekends).

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