Well, I definitely failed the brainstorming stage. Disappointed with the result, but have no hard feelings. Wish they let me do the take-home assignment, but it is what it is.
Rolled the dice. It was not my day. Will roll it again with as many companies as it takes to get a good gig.
Open ended questions like generating ideas was the "Culture Fit" session (and if it wasnt or the company doesnt realise it is then it is an even bigger problem)
Culture fit is a funny thing. I was set up for an interview and one of the things was a take-home tic tac toe.
I asked "uh, what's the point when I can just ask ChatGPT to do this? Is there something else I could be doing?" And I was instantly dinged because I didn't align with their culture. Which I guess is true, since I'm not into time-wasting questions that aren't even fun.
Sure. From the employers perspective, I get the appeal of references.
As a candidate I find them to be a huge overstep and will almost never provide them.
No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to pester my friends and colleagues to “hop on a quick call” or fill out a 2 page survey every time I interview somewhere.
Quite frankly, I really don’t need or want my friends to be intimately involved in my job search.
This poor guy had to have all his references book a call, only for them to all be notified shortly after that they weren’t needed any more, because he flunked the interview.
> Sure. From the employers perspective, I get the appeal of references.
Respectfully, it doesn't seem like you do. References in many cases are actually needed for compliance purposes. An example for Anthropic is if the employee might be exposed to medical data, then reference checks can be used as part of a larger validation of employee identity to satisfy HIPAA requirements.
Amazon and others have the importance of reference checks baked into their agreements for those who work with them.
It's the exact same checks. I know this because I've had to fill out some of these compliance documents and implement similar sorts of procedures with the legal dept. In addition to background checks, candidate reference calls prior to onboarding are becoming a checkbox that must be ticked by various external groups.
And to clarify, it's not something I support or that I find it makes a lot of sense to me -- it's just an unfortunate situation of where things are currently at.
You run legal compliance on everyone interviewing for a job? What a waste of everyone’s time. Very inefficient and expensive. Do it after an offer is extended.
Don’t worry. I found a bug in one of their repos, fixed it, documented it, and submitted a PR—four months later, it’s still not merged.
People love to believe that Company A has top-tier engineers while Company B doesn’t based on mostly nonsense interview practices. The best ideas come from deeply thinking through a problem from the customer’s perspective for days and days not from rushed coding interviews.
Thank you or your support! I am disappointed with the result, but, to be honest, no hard feelings. Wish they let me do the take-home assignment, but it is what it is. Rolled the dice. It was not my day. Will roll it again with as many companies as it takes to get a good gig.
> Meanwhile deepseek is hiring college grads and the like, for way better tech.
If only I knew Chinese...
> I highly doubt that they've got a better ai but are too scared to show it off. Is there any independent verification of that?
I would rather take the "bullet" but it wasn't my day xD
Tbh, I don't think there was anything substantially wrong with the process. They have a ton of CVs from thousands of the smartest people out there. They have to filter somehow.
I'm certainly sad I did not make the cut, but it's not like the guy next in line is any worse then me.
yeah, interviews like that are artifical bullshit interviews whose main purpose is ensure conformity with the way the company thinks rather seek innovation. Be glad you didnt make it thru
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 83.0 ms ] threadNevertheless, based on the process, it sounds like they will end up hiring pretty medicore candidates.
What would you change in order to hire higher quality people?
The process outlined put a stronger emphasis on luck, and catching fire in the 6 minutes you had than skill.
I asked "uh, what's the point when I can just ask ChatGPT to do this? Is there something else I could be doing?" And I was instantly dinged because I didn't align with their culture. Which I guess is true, since I'm not into time-wasting questions that aren't even fun.
As a candidate I find them to be a huge overstep and will almost never provide them.
No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to pester my friends and colleagues to “hop on a quick call” or fill out a 2 page survey every time I interview somewhere.
Quite frankly, I really don’t need or want my friends to be intimately involved in my job search.
This poor guy had to have all his references book a call, only for them to all be notified shortly after that they weren’t needed any more, because he flunked the interview.
> I get the appeal of references.
Referals and word of mouth are 1000x more valuable than the references candidates put on their CV.
Respectfully, it doesn't seem like you do. References in many cases are actually needed for compliance purposes. An example for Anthropic is if the employee might be exposed to medical data, then reference checks can be used as part of a larger validation of employee identity to satisfy HIPAA requirements.
Amazon and others have the importance of reference checks baked into their agreements for those who work with them.
Those aren’t the kind of checks we’re talking about. In any case, those can be performed once an offer is made.
And to clarify, it's not something I support or that I find it makes a lot of sense to me -- it's just an unfortunate situation of where things are currently at.
People love to believe that Company A has top-tier engineers while Company B doesn’t based on mostly nonsense interview practices. The best ideas come from deeply thinking through a problem from the customer’s perspective for days and days not from rushed coding interviews.
I highly doubt that they've got a better ai but are too scared to show it off. Is there any independent verification of that?
> Meanwhile deepseek is hiring college grads and the like, for way better tech.
If only I knew Chinese...
> I highly doubt that they've got a better ai but are too scared to show it off. Is there any independent verification of that?
Nope. Just the rumor
Source: https://darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-and-export-controls