And it shows, barely anyone in my entire career has ever been fired. I only personally have been close to one.
So is the 7 interview gauntlet. But I guess it just shifts the burden on the candidates and externalizes cost.
People who put up with anything are expensive. They keep billing you hours for tasks that could have been reduced to minutes by someone with a lower tolerance for BS.
Where do you people work because I'd like to (a) avoid it and (b) poach people because your world view sucks and I can only assume that's a direct response to a shit environment.
To put it into perspective, my first 1:1 with everyone on the team includes questions like "what have previous managers done to help you be successful?" Managing people can be difficult but managers shouldn't be.
My current company ambushed me with a full interview panel, Gilligan's Island style, when a former coworker invited me to come in for a 3 hour tour. I took it in stride and had fun, and it gave me some additional leverage while negotiating compensation. I remember writing an architecture doc and unit tests when they asked me to code something in an hour and a half. I've been there 6 years and it's been most rewarding for me and my family.
My first job out of school was a solid 8 hours of interviews, and I had a lot of fun during that interview too. I got to work on space ships, and in time made a fortune in equity. I remember preparing a presentation slide deck completely in valid C++ syntax. I also remember taking a red-eye after that interview for another 8 hours of interviews at another company, which I also enjoyed despite having only had 4 hours of sleep.
The 2nd company I worked for decided last minute to interview me for two different roles. That was like 11 hours of interviews. I actually ended up taking the 2nd role because it was a significantly better fit. I brought a large cast iron skillet to that interview, which was a nice ice breaker.
It's true that I put up with a lot of frustrating tasks without complaining, but I personally have zero tolerance for BS. It turns out that the more I push back on BS within an organization, the more I tend to get paid, so in that sense I suppose I am expensive!
It's expensive for the company too. All of the people involved in the interview process are still getting paid while they are interviewing the candidates. They aren't working on their projects that they have to complete. The company probably has a recruiting or talent acquisition team and the people on that team don't work for free. The company might also work with outside agencies or external recruiters. If you hire one a candidate from one of these sources, you have to pay them too.
It's really expensive in terms of time and money to hire people. It's really hard to build a great team.
Picking numbers from a hat say 15 * 7 * 20 = 2,100 unproductive hours to avoid a subpar employee that still actually gets something done in the ~3,000 hours before being fired. That could easily be a net loss depending on how much onboarding time is needed and how unproductive they are on average.
Honestly, I think those numbers may be overly generous to long onboarding processes.
Well maybe thats the actual problem the company should be fixing?
Other than fiat wealth generation, what gains are there to treating each other like this?
So I think I'd rather have a candidate spend 7 hours interviewing if it could save months of pain for multiple people later.
(This does assume, of course, that the 7-person interview panel actually does decrease the incidence of hiring-the-wrong-person enough to be worthwhile. I don't know if that's actually the case.)
Out of all the things I think are wrong with tech jobs -- and with employment in general -- I don't think "I have to interview with 7 people instead of 1 or 2" even cracks the top 50.
Maybe it was always that way though
Granted, I've only ever taken and given interviews, never given (or, fortunately, been under) a PIP or firing. But interviewing is just a few weeks or so of preparation and then a day or two, and the preparation is often fun, and so are some of the interviews. Nobody thinks PIPs and firings are fun.
I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at the company.
PIP politics are absolutely routine in FAANG and if you’re arguing the other side you don’t know. FAANG is actively trying to fire or replace you at all times. I’ve worked at two so I can’t speak for three, but I’ve also worked for the two in that older acronym that you’d think of as the “nicest”. People read that that and probably hear me saying “giant evil entity is out to get you”, but it’s really middle managers cosplaying Kings Landing in the office, mostly unchecked, that does it.
Seriously; people want to work at a FAANG/MAMAA or whatever so they often assume it’s good. I had someone ask me if I noticed how light my calendar was now that the org considered me irrelevant. There’s an idea that FAANG is a bunch of nerds with glasses cooking up cool shit in a Zen commune with ambient drone music but it’s honestly some of the worst office politics I’ve ever seen across what is now two careers, and the PIP process is a big tool in that kit.
I went from long time IC to manager at a faang adjacent company. It was eye opening to see who was on a PIP and go through calibrations.
There were well liked, competent people who others on the team got along with but they just were not delivering at the expected level. Sometimes the problem was lack of motivation or bad role fit.
The point is that there is little, if any, evidence that a given interview process does this.
