At times, I have tried to press a contact from a job lead on what I could have done better in my interview. They will not give you even a single bit of feedback--a seemingly innocuous yes or no question is met with dissembling or equivocation, always.

What bothers me most is that employers don't seem to be showing equal commitment to the interviewing process. They will ask you to do hours worth of homework for them, but then can't be arsed to discuss it with you for five minutes. They will ask for your salary history, but clam up if you ask them what they pay other developers in the same position. They will take your application as a senior developer, then ask if you'd consider being an entry-level tester. They spend hours grilling you to prove your worth, then spend zero minutes trying to sell you on their company.

> They will ask you to do hours worth of homework for them, but then can't be arsed to discuss it with you for five minutes.

This has been my experience with homework assignment interviews (Though I still prefer them to whiteboards).

In no cases, has any interviewer reviewed my homework before the interview. So the homework critique/qa sessions end up being more like a presentation or walkthrough of your solution, like a presentation for a meet-up, even though they are often described as more of a code review/interrogation about your choices.

Which I don't mind honestly. If you know that going in, and are prepared - its an opportunity to impress, if you can be polished.

Talk at them about your solution for the allotted time or until they make you stop :P

It should be obligatory to give some feedback if the interview process is longer than one hour.

To simply give feedback is not a big deal to HR, and since they're making you do hours of homework it should be legally required to answer if you ask for feedback.

And on top of all this, many will then turn around and claim to regulators that there is a labor shortage! When it's obvious their behavior is only sustainable when they have a glut of applicants.

Capital vs Labor.

They don't care. Never have, never will.

It's a one-way street, any "give" that there is, is out of self interest and necessity.

Have had the opposite experience, HR sells the company hard, then you get a piss off email a week later. :-/

> Last twice I've looked for a developer job, I got offered a position and was hired within 2 weeks.

Region matters too. I don't doubt in Silicon Valley it's trivial to pull this off, but in Chicago I've seen most companies have a 2 month+ hiring process, if they ever hire anyone at all. I've even heard from recruiters that this is common for those companies. And then there's a lot, lot less companies out here to choose from, especially if your tech stack experience doesn't match. I've literally had company HR chastise me for not learning their specific language, even though I don't list it on my LinkedIn and the message was unsolicited.

Agreed on most of your points. On recruiters though, I'm on board with finding like 90% of them sleazy, pushy, no knowledge of the industry, don't care about the company or the candidate, just want to complete a placement and make a buck. But I've had mixed at best results trying to find a job without one by applying directly to companies.

For my last job search, I emailed applications to like a dozen companies in my area from the last HN Hiring thread, and heard back from like 2 I think, none of which went anywhere. Maybe they're too slow, didn't like me for some reason, found someone better, etc, I don't know. When I started talking to recruiters, the interviews started coming pretty fast, and I had multiple on-sites and offers in a couple of weeks. It's like, sleazy though they can be, there's a distinct lack of movement in the process without the energy of recruiters.

So I come down more on work with them, but don't trust them too much, know their tricks and watch your back.

And speaking of the author's points - a week-long coding test? A month to complete the "homework project"? Who's doing that? Nope, I'm passing on those companies. A couple of hours is no problem, but pay me if you expect multiple weeks worth of work.

>Last twice I've looked for a developer job, I got offered a position and was hired within 2 weeks.

His resume is the problem. Two immediate things: (1) His most recent job lists junior level work and (2) He is claiming 3 concurrent jobs over the last two years.

> (1) His most recent job lists junior level work

This shouldn't matter, chiefly because he has other work listed, so stopping at the first job post and forming an opinion makes the reader the problem. But also because people can sometimes take an easier job if they have life issues.

Secondly, these are consultancy gigs + 1 full time gig (or maybe it's part time) that could have a low hours/week commitment. He wouldn't be the first dev ever to moonlight.

Even if it were junior level work (trusting auth to be done correctly with junior engineers? LOL), he probably completed it faster than a junior engineer would.

Not sure why the hostility.

His resume doesn't say he did auth. He used an open source library and made unspecified modifications to it. That's definitely something a junior level Dev could do.

"Or maybe it's part time". Exactly. A resume should give answers, not raise questions.

Expecting people to be charitable while reading resumes is unrealistic. A resume has to quickly demonstrate the applicants qualifications other wise it's trashed.

Requiters are lovely. These kind people are looking day and night to send me some leads that I mostly ignore. They are basically doing free work for me.

I am like the flower of lotus - waiting. When there is anything interesting I can jump ships using requiter network to help with the interview. After my first job, I never had the need to search personally.

All my best jobs were found via recruiters. Different strokes, I guess.

I found my current gig by using a recruiter I was referred to by a respected coworker, and it's by far the best job I've ever had (out of 5 or so). Super small sample size I know, but if you can find a recruiter that you can trust/isn't just pimping you out for a payday and nothing else, you can skip a ton of bullshit.

There's a huge variation in recruiter quality and it's pretty easy to tell the good ones from the bad. Just spend a couple of weeks taking calls and emails and following leads and you learn quick.

Yeah, I kind of liked having an advocate on my behalf. The guy who found me my current job was kind to me, didn't lie to companies about my experience, and kept in touch with the companies he sent me to, so I wouldn't have to.

He even gave me interview tips/advice on a per-company basis and helped me rewrite my resumé for each company he wanted me to interview with. Honestly, it was fantastic.