Comment by -warren
18 hours ago
So let me ask this. What is the perfect mix of inerviews and durations?
If you ask my blue collar friends, the answer is one and however long it takes to drink three beers.
If you ask any married person, the onboarding process (courtship) may last YEARS and consist of many interviews (dates).
As an EM, ive always struggled with this one. Im about to invest some serious coin and brainspace for you, so I tended towards a max of 3-6 total hours and a takehome assignment.
As an IC, I preferred short and sweet. Heres my portfolio (github), heres my resume. Lets make this work. Maybe 1-2 hours; its not like we're getting married.
The happy place has to be in there somewhere. Whats your take?
I’ve never worked at big tech but the usual interview process I’ve seen is one initial phone call to check both sides are on the same page and it’s worth scheduling an interview. Then a technical interview, sometimes a take home task, then a non technical interview with management. There’s no reason you need longer than that.
The "usual" process in big tech is a recruiter call, 1-2 technical screening calls (sometimes an EM call), then the main series of 3-6 domain knowledge interviews are done over 1-2 days.
The latter are pretty grueling, especially when conducted on-site. Apple recommends you show up 1-2 hours ahead so you have enough time to get through security, for example.
That might be fine if they are offering incredible pay and conditions at a highly desirable company. But you get so many mid tier companies looking at Apple and Google and replicating their process without the pay or reason to put up with that process.
I just eject from the interview process when I hear it's going to be so many rounds because I know there will be another company that's just as good that will get it done with less.
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What does a pilot or doctor or cop do in terms of interviews, take homes etc.?
Pilot at a major airline here: 1.5 hours of interviews with two people (recruiter and another pilot). Technical and HR-style questions, a personality test, no other homework.
Blood test, background check including all prior training records that are reported to the FAA.
Not a lot of work for the candidate in the interview, but it's easy to fail one too many training events or accumulate a violation and become radioactive.
Thanks!
While I cannot respond as a doctor, I can respond as an EMT. Totally different. But heres the deal.
The person who is the most important to you on the worst day of your life is the emt. The interview was literally "do you have a drivers license, and are you grossed out by stuff?" The rest you learned on the job.
Weird how doctors are vetted but prehospital folk are not.
edit yes there is training, but it happens after hire
The person who makes the ball bearing in the ambulance is also super important. They are paid leas because more people can do it.
The reason why EMT have such hiring practices are because many people can do the job, and there are many willing to do it.
It’s not weird if you think of in market terms.
Pilots and doctors are exhaustively certified for a very narrow set of work. A cop gets a title, to perform a job that's identical in every part of the country.
Software development is neither exhaustively certified, nor narrow, nor perfectly transposable.
Developers want a 15 minutes interview, but also scream "Would you ask a builder if he has experience with blue hammers specifically?" when they get denied an interview because they do not have experience with the exact tech stack of a company.
Because that's how pilots and doctors work. They not only need to have experience with a blue hammer specifically, but it needs to be exact same make and model.
Imagine if a GP claimed to be neurosurgeon because they cured a headache. Developers get to call themselves fullstack the day they modify an API route.
My doctor probably thinks we software developers do a very narrow job. And she is kind of right, we always turn up with those back problems from sitting too much, or RSI or whatever. While doctors have all those medical specializations and different roles and employers.
> doctor
Rigorous formal education, multiple rigorous exams, then years of shadowing and training. I went through this process, and tech interviews are a breeze by comparison.
I think he meant - what's the interview process for a doctor while switching jobs.
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