It's Hanlon's razor. Tech interviewing is done poorly, almost everywhere. It's cargo culted to death, with little thought. It's brutal on certain types of personalities. It predominately favors people without families or responsibilities. And it rarely correlates with actual engineering skill.
I personally get bad anxiety from interviews, from some negative experiences. To the point where I actively avoid interviews, even if in my best interest. Not worth the risk, I think. I recognize this is self defeating and self limiting though. And it's something I need to deal with and overcome.
All I can offer is that you try to accept there is the "interview game" and you have to play it. Fortunately once you get that job, you can forget about it for a while.
Not everywhere. Most places I've interviewed for had a recruiter and an actual team member; after the recruiter ticks their checkboxes for "moves Mt.Fuji" and "can tell a RB tree from a hole in the ground", someone who actually works with the code takes over with domain-specific questions. (Yes, I'm aware this wouldn't scale for an organization that hires by the thousands)
Yeah not everywhere. I was being a little dramatic. This is like the 10000th hacker news post on interviews after all.
London contractor job market could be a good case study for what happens when interviews are more reasonable. It's usually a phone call, and an hour face to face and you get a job. Some people hop every 6 months. Others stick around longer (with the spectre of HMRC IR35 hanging over them). Everyone seems to get to know each other in the job market pretty fast. When you need someone, you know who to call because you have worked with a lot of people and know who's good and who's not.
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It's Hanlon's razor. Tech interviewing is done poorly, almost everywhere. It's cargo culted to death, with little thought. It's brutal on certain types of personalities. It predominately favors people without families or responsibilities. And it rarely correlates with actual engineering skill.
I personally get bad anxiety from interviews, from some negative experiences. To the point where I actively avoid interviews, even if in my best interest. Not worth the risk, I think. I recognize this is self defeating and self limiting though. And it's something I need to deal with and overcome.
All I can offer is that you try to accept there is the "interview game" and you have to play it. Fortunately once you get that job, you can forget about it for a while.
Not everywhere. Most places I've interviewed for had a recruiter and an actual team member; after the recruiter ticks their checkboxes for "moves Mt.Fuji" and "can tell a RB tree from a hole in the ground", someone who actually works with the code takes over with domain-specific questions. (Yes, I'm aware this wouldn't scale for an organization that hires by the thousands)
Yeah not everywhere. I was being a little dramatic. This is like the 10000th hacker news post on interviews after all.
London contractor job market could be a good case study for what happens when interviews are more reasonable. It's usually a phone call, and an hour face to face and you get a job. Some people hop every 6 months. Others stick around longer (with the spectre of HMRC IR35 hanging over them). Everyone seems to get to know each other in the job market pretty fast. When you need someone, you know who to call because you have worked with a lot of people and know who's good and who's not.
Thanks for this. I agree that some companies are sane, or even progressive.
I personally have been lucky enough never to have heard the Mt Fuji question.