I was interested in applying to Oxide a few months back. They ask candidates who reach interviews to provide at least 9 hours of availability, normally arranged as three separate 3-hour blocks. Each block contains three 1-hour interview slots, so the standard schedule is effectively nine one-hour conversations. Not including the follow ups.
I got another great offer after just 1 interview that I took, so I never went through their process, but it looks very exhausting to me. Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
It’s interesting to me that 9 hours of interview time is considered excessive by some people. Over my career I’ve done interviews that required plane flights, hotels, and multiple separate days on site.
I’ve also done interviews that were brief 30-60 minute casual discussions followed by an offer during the hiring craziness that happened in a few years in the past. Anecdotally, coworkers at those companies were a completely random range from smart and kind down to the meanest, most clueless people I ever worked with. They had high turnover both because they were always firing bad hires (hire fast only works if you also fire fast) and people were burning out from the perpetual stream of bad hires being randomly injected into the company after they talked their way through the short interview.
Looking back, the interview processes that took the longest were certainly not perfect, but the companies that had them were much better about maintaining a coherent culture and high bar for the coworkers I would get. Every new hire felt like someone amazing who I was happy to be working with.
Everyone has different priorities, but looking back I think the relatively small amount of time I invested into long interview processes (relative to the 2000 hours I work every year) was time well spent.
On the other hand, in my 20 year career the only real interview I did was for my first job. Every one after that was from people I worked with recruiting me to work with them somewhere, and the interview process was more about pitching me on their company.
Sometimes i wonder if I would have a better career if I was more proactive in my job searches, but I do enjoy the experience of being pursued a lot more enjoyable than pursuing.
for me, at least, one interview process being 9 hours isn't a big deal and i agree with you that a company doing that is likely to have a more coherent culture and make smarter hiring decisions.
the problem is that when the job market isn't too hot, you might be applying to a dozens or even a hundred+ positions. if 5-10 of those all have 9 hour processes, well now you have 1-2 full weeks work of unpaid interviewing to do, which is a lot to organize, prepare for, etc.
This is very well put. There are different ways to 'pre-filter' the candidate pool, from quizzes to purity tests. What a many startups don't seem to understand is that the 'culture' is the people and what they do. So taking care in interviews tends to hire people who take care in their work. And unlike the gp comment I never felt 'bad' after a number of hours of interviews and a decline, I had a better understanding of the company, presumably they had a better understanding of me.
Reading the article though it was interesting that having a positive EBITDA was the real news here. Not a single AI company can claim that. That's a pretty big milestone.
I remember before COVID trying to interview multiple places and time it where offers will land at the same time. I remember flying 3 times in one week (!) to make this happen. We have it easy now :).
> It’s interesting to me that 9 hours of interview time is considered excessive by some people. Over my career I’ve done interviews that required plane flights, hotels, and multiple separate days on site.
I think part of the reason is that interviews have gotten more adversarial as time has gone on. Ie less respect for the interviewee, more of a power dynamic, more careless wasted time in lazy take home assignments, etc.
I wouldn't mind 9 hour interviews to 3 companies if i knew i'd land the job. It's the 1,000 companies that many people experience that gives them pause after so much disrespect through time.
IME those kinds of interviews are a waste for the applicant because you have to do your 5-10 minute elevator pitch and 10-15 minute dive into your experience 9 separate times. It’s terribly exhausting.
On the other hand I like meeting a lot of people that I’d be working with. It’s nice to start day 1 knowing who people are.
In our interviews, the interviewer has read the applicant's detailed written materials, and the candidate has received the interviewer's materials from when they applied. So there is no elevator pitch, no walking through resume, no getting to know you. Just a conversation.
We also advance very few candidates to interviews and hire a surprisingly large proportion of those who interview, so it's not like you're doing all this interviewing for the usual slim chance of being hired. The written materials are the primary filter.
Yep, I had two interview processes that did this... 8 times, at the same time.
Both said no after 8 interviews because of one person in the process who didn't like me, everyone else supposedly were on board.
It genuinely took me another year to even consider applying to another job it was so demoralizing.
You are going to potentially spend a major portion of your life there - so it isn't that weird to set aside a full day to get to know them.
In my experience with this format it isn't like you are coding for 9 hours. It starts with soft HR stuff, ends with a sales pitch to you, and most of the middle is just pleasant conversation with interesting people.
> You are going to potentially spend a major portion of your life there - so it isn't that weird to set aside a full day to get to know them.
Right, but you're not just doing it with them, you're potentially doing it with lots of companies you're applying to. It would be untenable to devote that much time to every prospect. Oxide can only do it because most other companies don't.
There are lots of axes on which to judge a company so I wouldn't write off Oxide for this alone, but it doesn't speak well of their respect for their candidates' time.
A full day is a lot unless you get compensated or something for it I feel. In today's world it is a lot of ask. I could also not be spending any time there, in which case that day is wasted. Imagine if all interviews of all your applications took a full day… probably burn off half your PTO just interviewing…
I personally don't mind the multiple interview slots or 9 hours of conversations. It's fair since it takes their team members an equivalent amount of time (though it's split across team members, each team member is likely interviewing many others as well).
My blocker has been the initial written answers to the questions. I've had the questions half-answered for nearly a year now. I want to do it properly (sans AI) but other things come up and I question the EV of spending the time, especially since I'm not a strong writer in the first place※.
For Oxide, it makes sense to demand a strong writer due to their culture, so even if technically qualified I might not be a good fit, assuming I even get an interview.
※ - I write unambiguously, but use point form whenever possible and am not great at naturally writing concisely.
Sans AI is definitely the way to go if you plan to submit!
As for the materials, they play a part in the conversation stage, and even if you get hired and interview others hoping to join. Every interviewer reads the materials of the candidate, and we send the interviewer's original materials to the candidate. It's not nearly as tedious as some of these comments are making it out to be (and believe me, I've been through the "ten elevator pitches" gauntlet in my career).
tbh, I really enjoyed filling out my Oxide materials. They got me thinking and taking stock of my wins and motivations, not just the crap we throw on resumes to attract the eye.
> It's fair since it takes their team members an equivalent amount of time
Well, they're being paid to do that. That's part of the unfairness. The other part is the time is bounded on the employer side. On the prospective employee side, it's unbounded - you're interviewing until you get a job somewhere.
Is it not good for exceptionally talented employees who want to work with other employees who are also great at their job and good communication skills?
I agree, 9 of one hour interviews is exhausting just imagining it. In my company, 3-4 steps of 1h each that spans over days were already stressed. Guess I’m too old for that kind of companies
As someone who has dealt with both sides (interviewing and working with those that pass the interview), I really wish a long interview, like this, was standard. 45 minutes is not enough, unless it's easy to fire people.
> Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
I did an interview process that was 6 hours, one hour per week, then flew me in for a 6 hour on-site. They decided not to take me at that point and provided no reason.
I feel like this topic comes up every single time interview processes are discussed. Lots of people complaining "that process is too onerous! How do they expect me to invest that much time! In person coding problems are worthless!" And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I do wonder what a lot of folks then expect a good process would look like while still allowing the employer enough information to make a decision.
Oxide can obviously impose a 9 hour interview process because they're a good enough company that lots of smart, motivated people want to work there and thus good candidates are willing to endure that process. Lesser companies obviously can't impose that process because there aren't enough good candidates willing to endure it.
My main point being, different strokes for different folks. If you think that process is too long, great, find a company with a less time consuming process. But Oxide's process obviously seems to work well for them, so I think it's pointless to complain about it (note I don't really think that's what you are doing, but a bunch of reply comments certainly are).
Joel Spolsky said it 20+ years ago: The primary goal of the hiring process is to avoid bad hires, even if you need to turn away potentially excellent hires. If you want to hire insanely good people, there is no alternative to a very onerous process.
This is the same argument that says YouTube can play 3 unskippable ads, TVs can scan and collect data on all devices in your LAN, because they're a private company and can do what they want, and if you don't like it, just don't buy it. Well in that case, I can also smoke in front of kids, because I am a free agent and there's no laws saying I can't.
I read their "we will respond to every application, even if it has to be a brief non-specific rejection" and thought that sounded like a great policy that I wish more companies would follow. It's been 6 months now and I never heard anything from them, so that's a little disappointing.
I don't know how they possibly read all these in full. They are quite voluminous: 1-3 work samples, 1 analysis sample, 1-3 writing samples, 1 presentation sample, and then 8 open-ended long-form questions. The instructions often say to give as much detail as possible, and they are very clear that this is the main way they filter candidates, so I'm guessing serious applications are quite long.
At some point, there becomes a mathematical impossibility of too many pages of applications for too few evaluators who also have to do the rest of their jobs. Either they don't get quite that many applications, or the initial evaluations must be based on some incomplete reading (looking just at the resume, reading a subsection, skimming, or randomly discarding), or the backlog keeps growing.
Fwiw I also applied and the auto-reply said I should expect to wait 4-6 weeks, which has recently passed without hearing back. The application is a ton of work, and I don't mind doing it with a significant chance of being considered, but I think it's a normal reaction to be devastated if you put all that time and energy into crafting your materials, which manifest all your experience, behavior, and personality, and it turned out nobody read them. I still have a little hope, but I'm sorry you never got a response.
They waste very large amounts of candidate time on an essay like assignment before you get to talk to someone.
Truth be told they already know from your resume if you’d be worth interviewing. That’s enough , and maybe a OA.
The best process I’ve experienced, was a quick conversion with a few technical questions, then I can start as a contractor. If it works out it works, if it doesn’t that’s ok too.
No need for me to write a long paper, when HR probably took one look at my resume and sent out a rejection.
Looks really cool. I like that kind of process. But the gap between my current skills(mostly application and Data engineering) and the hardware and performance engineering guys they want is large.
Sometimes a company comes along that one what's to join even if its outside my wheel house. Do they have an intern/mentorship program for generalists that one can join that could turn into a FTE?
I was interested in applying to Oxide a few months back. They ask candidates who reach interviews to provide at least 9 hours of availability, normally arranged as three separate 3-hour blocks. Each block contains three 1-hour interview slots, so the standard schedule is effectively nine one-hour conversations. Not including the follow ups.
I got another great offer after just 1 interview that I took, so I never went through their process, but it looks very exhausting to me. Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
It’s interesting to me that 9 hours of interview time is considered excessive by some people. Over my career I’ve done interviews that required plane flights, hotels, and multiple separate days on site.
I’ve also done interviews that were brief 30-60 minute casual discussions followed by an offer during the hiring craziness that happened in a few years in the past. Anecdotally, coworkers at those companies were a completely random range from smart and kind down to the meanest, most clueless people I ever worked with. They had high turnover both because they were always firing bad hires (hire fast only works if you also fire fast) and people were burning out from the perpetual stream of bad hires being randomly injected into the company after they talked their way through the short interview.
Looking back, the interview processes that took the longest were certainly not perfect, but the companies that had them were much better about maintaining a coherent culture and high bar for the coworkers I would get. Every new hire felt like someone amazing who I was happy to be working with.
Everyone has different priorities, but looking back I think the relatively small amount of time I invested into long interview processes (relative to the 2000 hours I work every year) was time well spent.
On the other hand, in my 20 year career the only real interview I did was for my first job. Every one after that was from people I worked with recruiting me to work with them somewhere, and the interview process was more about pitching me on their company.
Sometimes i wonder if I would have a better career if I was more proactive in my job searches, but I do enjoy the experience of being pursued a lot more enjoyable than pursuing.
for me, at least, one interview process being 9 hours isn't a big deal and i agree with you that a company doing that is likely to have a more coherent culture and make smarter hiring decisions.
the problem is that when the job market isn't too hot, you might be applying to a dozens or even a hundred+ positions. if 5-10 of those all have 9 hour processes, well now you have 1-2 full weeks work of unpaid interviewing to do, which is a lot to organize, prepare for, etc.
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This is very well put. There are different ways to 'pre-filter' the candidate pool, from quizzes to purity tests. What a many startups don't seem to understand is that the 'culture' is the people and what they do. So taking care in interviews tends to hire people who take care in their work. And unlike the gp comment I never felt 'bad' after a number of hours of interviews and a decline, I had a better understanding of the company, presumably they had a better understanding of me.
Reading the article though it was interesting that having a positive EBITDA was the real news here. Not a single AI company can claim that. That's a pretty big milestone.
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9 hours is certainly excessive considering there's only 8 hours or less in a work day!
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I remember before COVID trying to interview multiple places and time it where offers will land at the same time. I remember flying 3 times in one week (!) to make this happen. We have it easy now :).
> It’s interesting to me that 9 hours of interview time is considered excessive by some people. Over my career I’ve done interviews that required plane flights, hotels, and multiple separate days on site.
I think part of the reason is that interviews have gotten more adversarial as time has gone on. Ie less respect for the interviewee, more of a power dynamic, more careless wasted time in lazy take home assignments, etc.
I wouldn't mind 9 hour interviews to 3 companies if i knew i'd land the job. It's the 1,000 companies that many people experience that gives them pause after so much disrespect through time.
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An 8 hour interviewing day plus an hour on the front end (screen) or back end (confirm/double check some things/really meet manager) can make sense.
3x 3 hours sounds -exhausting-.
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IME those kinds of interviews are a waste for the applicant because you have to do your 5-10 minute elevator pitch and 10-15 minute dive into your experience 9 separate times. It’s terribly exhausting.
On the other hand I like meeting a lot of people that I’d be working with. It’s nice to start day 1 knowing who people are.
In our interviews, the interviewer has read the applicant's detailed written materials, and the candidate has received the interviewer's materials from when they applied. So there is no elevator pitch, no walking through resume, no getting to know you. Just a conversation.
We also advance very few candidates to interviews and hire a surprisingly large proportion of those who interview, so it's not like you're doing all this interviewing for the usual slim chance of being hired. The written materials are the primary filter.
Hiring process RFD: https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0003
Yep, I had two interview processes that did this... 8 times, at the same time. Both said no after 8 interviews because of one person in the process who didn't like me, everyone else supposedly were on board.
It genuinely took me another year to even consider applying to another job it was so demoralizing.
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You are going to potentially spend a major portion of your life there - so it isn't that weird to set aside a full day to get to know them.
In my experience with this format it isn't like you are coding for 9 hours. It starts with soft HR stuff, ends with a sales pitch to you, and most of the middle is just pleasant conversation with interesting people.
> You are going to potentially spend a major portion of your life there - so it isn't that weird to set aside a full day to get to know them.
Right, but you're not just doing it with them, you're potentially doing it with lots of companies you're applying to. It would be untenable to devote that much time to every prospect. Oxide can only do it because most other companies don't.
There are lots of axes on which to judge a company so I wouldn't write off Oxide for this alone, but it doesn't speak well of their respect for their candidates' time.
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A full day is a lot unless you get compensated or something for it I feel. In today's world it is a lot of ask. I could also not be spending any time there, in which case that day is wasted. Imagine if all interviews of all your applications took a full day… probably burn off half your PTO just interviewing…
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[dead]
Dont you want to spend more than 1 hour getting to know the company you might spend the next 5-10 years of your life with?
I personally don't mind the multiple interview slots or 9 hours of conversations. It's fair since it takes their team members an equivalent amount of time (though it's split across team members, each team member is likely interviewing many others as well).
My blocker has been the initial written answers to the questions. I've had the questions half-answered for nearly a year now. I want to do it properly (sans AI) but other things come up and I question the EV of spending the time, especially since I'm not a strong writer in the first place※.
For Oxide, it makes sense to demand a strong writer due to their culture, so even if technically qualified I might not be a good fit, assuming I even get an interview.
※ - I write unambiguously, but use point form whenever possible and am not great at naturally writing concisely.
Sans AI is definitely the way to go if you plan to submit!
As for the materials, they play a part in the conversation stage, and even if you get hired and interview others hoping to join. Every interviewer reads the materials of the candidate, and we send the interviewer's original materials to the candidate. It's not nearly as tedious as some of these comments are making it out to be (and believe me, I've been through the "ten elevator pitches" gauntlet in my career).
tbh, I really enjoyed filling out my Oxide materials. They got me thinking and taking stock of my wins and motivations, not just the crap we throw on resumes to attract the eye.
> It's fair since it takes their team members an equivalent amount of time
Well, they're being paid to do that. That's part of the unfairness. The other part is the time is bounded on the employer side. On the prospective employee side, it's unbounded - you're interviewing until you get a job somewhere.
Right...so best interview process in the game for employers, not so much employees.
Is it not good for exceptionally talented employees who want to work with other employees who are also great at their job and good communication skills?
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I agree, 9 of one hour interviews is exhausting just imagining it. In my company, 3-4 steps of 1h each that spans over days were already stressed. Guess I’m too old for that kind of companies
As someone who has dealt with both sides (interviewing and working with those that pass the interview), I really wish a long interview, like this, was standard. 45 minutes is not enough, unless it's easy to fire people.
> Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
I did an interview process that was 6 hours, one hour per week, then flew me in for a 6 hour on-site. They decided not to take me at that point and provided no reason.
At least you know what the time commitment is up front. Not true of every company.
Nine hours is crazy
You work 2000 hours in a year. You ideally have an employer you like and stay with for many years. That's not worth 9 hours of your time?
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I feel like this topic comes up every single time interview processes are discussed. Lots of people complaining "that process is too onerous! How do they expect me to invest that much time! In person coding problems are worthless!" And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I do wonder what a lot of folks then expect a good process would look like while still allowing the employer enough information to make a decision.
Oxide can obviously impose a 9 hour interview process because they're a good enough company that lots of smart, motivated people want to work there and thus good candidates are willing to endure that process. Lesser companies obviously can't impose that process because there aren't enough good candidates willing to endure it.
My main point being, different strokes for different folks. If you think that process is too long, great, find a company with a less time consuming process. But Oxide's process obviously seems to work well for them, so I think it's pointless to complain about it (note I don't really think that's what you are doing, but a bunch of reply comments certainly are).
Joel Spolsky said it 20+ years ago: The primary goal of the hiring process is to avoid bad hires, even if you need to turn away potentially excellent hires. If you want to hire insanely good people, there is no alternative to a very onerous process.
This is the same argument that says YouTube can play 3 unskippable ads, TVs can scan and collect data on all devices in your LAN, because they're a private company and can do what they want, and if you don't like it, just don't buy it. Well in that case, I can also smoke in front of kids, because I am a free agent and there's no laws saying I can't.
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I read their "we will respond to every application, even if it has to be a brief non-specific rejection" and thought that sounded like a great policy that I wish more companies would follow. It's been 6 months now and I never heard anything from them, so that's a little disappointing.
I don't know how they possibly read all these in full. They are quite voluminous: 1-3 work samples, 1 analysis sample, 1-3 writing samples, 1 presentation sample, and then 8 open-ended long-form questions. The instructions often say to give as much detail as possible, and they are very clear that this is the main way they filter candidates, so I'm guessing serious applications are quite long.
At some point, there becomes a mathematical impossibility of too many pages of applications for too few evaluators who also have to do the rest of their jobs. Either they don't get quite that many applications, or the initial evaluations must be based on some incomplete reading (looking just at the resume, reading a subsection, skimming, or randomly discarding), or the backlog keeps growing.
Fwiw I also applied and the auto-reply said I should expect to wait 4-6 weeks, which has recently passed without hearing back. The application is a ton of work, and I don't mind doing it with a significant chance of being considered, but I think it's a normal reaction to be devastated if you put all that time and energy into crafting your materials, which manifest all your experience, behavior, and personality, and it turned out nobody read them. I still have a little hope, but I'm sorry you never got a response.
No they don’t.
They waste very large amounts of candidate time on an essay like assignment before you get to talk to someone.
Truth be told they already know from your resume if you’d be worth interviewing. That’s enough , and maybe a OA.
The best process I’ve experienced, was a quick conversion with a few technical questions, then I can start as a contractor. If it works out it works, if it doesn’t that’s ok too.
No need for me to write a long paper, when HR probably took one look at my resume and sent out a rejection.
A friend encouraged me to write the paper, even if I didn't submit it, as a means of self-reflecting.
Are we talking about the same thing.
I apply for jobs because I want money. Not to reflect or learn about myself.
It’s just business, even if you do the song and dance to get hired they can still fire you later.
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Looks really cool. I like that kind of process. But the gap between my current skills(mostly application and Data engineering) and the hardware and performance engineering guys they want is large.
Sometimes a company comes along that one what's to join even if its outside my wheel house. Do they have an intern/mentorship program for generalists that one can join that could turn into a FTE?