> I think many companies through the hiring process completely lose sight of what they are actually looking for.
Absolutely. There was a topic here about a week ago where one commenter in particular personified this line of thought (sorry I don't have a link to the comment).
Paraphrasing, they said that if they very to interview someone they're already working with and know to be a very strong contributor, they'd still subject that person to the technical monkey dance, as you put it, and if they "fail" then they wouldn't be hired.
It blew my mind that anyone can think that way. Clearly the interview hazing culture has become so entrenched that the game of the interview has grown to be an entity to itself. We seem to have forgotten the actual goal is to hire good people.
Personally if I'm hiring someone I've already worked with, I don't do any interview. What would be the point? There is nothing I can learn in 45 minutes that I don't already know from months/years working together. If I called them up from my contact list is because I already know they're capable. All I need to do is describe the role and job and ask if it is a fit for their career goals at the moment.
> they'd still subject that person to the technical monkey dance,
Someone here said that about John Carmack, which just blows my mind. Exactly how bad would his 8-Queens solution have to be to change your opinion of him?
> There was a topic here about a week ago where one commenter in particular personified this line of thought (sorry I don't have a link to the comment).
> Paraphrasing, they said that if they very to interview someone they're already working with and know to be a very strong contributor, they'd still subject that person to the technical monkey dance, as you put it, and if they "fail" then they wouldn't be hired.
I think I might have been one of commenters you guys are talking about here: [1]. I took my downvotes without complaint, even though I think people failed to apply the "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" HN guideline.
I'm not for hazing or monkey dancing. In fact I also hate these kinds of interviews and think they should stop. I'm against special treatment for celebrities. Why should someone who is an expert at growing their personal brand get to bypass the queue with a "quick chat" interview? What does their superior SEO on their blog, or association with some name-brand popular company have to do with their development skill? Does constantly speaking at meetups and conferences actually make you a better employee? Normal no-name developers always have to go through the standard interview process, even no-names with clear, provable track records. Companies have standard processes because we want to measure candidates fairly. Many go even further to try to remove prejudices and unconscious biases from the process. All to get some kind of objective picture of the candidate's suitability.
Why should someone get special treatment to bypass all that just because their names are well-known? I say fix the "standard process" to make it better, but still send everyone through it so you are giving everyone the same chance and comparing candidates fairly.
Interviews are meant to gather information so that you can make an informed decision about hiring the candidate (and vice versa). If you already have some information, it's silly, wasteful, and a bit rude to ask for it over and over again. Suppose you got Carmack in for an interview and he flubs the programming test (maybe he's exhausted or sick or his dog died that morning). Are you really going to pass on him because he missed an edge case, or didn't see the O(1) solution? Frankly, I don't believe it.
I'm also not entirely convinced that you can have a totally "fair" standardized interview. The trade-off for being unbiased[0] is that you will instead have incredibly high variance. That imposes real and mental costs on applicants too: interviews are stressful, take vacation days, etc.
Instead, I think it's better to tailor the interview to what you need to make your decision. For a new grad, you probably do want to see some evidence that they can code. Assuming you can even get a well-established person to jump through your hoops, I'm still not sure you should. Your 45 minutes with Carmack, for example, is probably better spent figuring out if/how he will fit into the role for which you are hiring.
[0] And even...there's a lot of bias in how people prepare. I had no idea I'd be redoing a DS&A class at my first interview; I think Stanford has a whole interview prep class.
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> Personally if I'm hiring someone I've already worked with, I don't do any interview.
Whenever one of my former coworkers would come in for an interview, I would recuse myself from the loop. I figured it would be a waste of time for everyone and I would have an undue influence on the process, especially since they already knew I approved. I would ask to be put at the very end of the loop and then just ask the person if they had any questions about the people they talked to or anything the learned about the company that day that concerned them.
If they were just a friend who I had never actually worked with, I would interview them like normal but would still ask to be near the end so they could ask me better questions during the Q&A.
Absolutely. There was a topic here about a week ago where one commenter in particular personified this line of thought (sorry I don't have a link to the comment).
Paraphrasing, they said that if they very to interview someone they're already working with and know to be a very strong contributor, they'd still subject that person to the technical monkey dance, as you put it, and if they "fail" then they wouldn't be hired.
It blew my mind that anyone can think that way. Clearly the interview hazing culture has become so entrenched that the game of the interview has grown to be an entity to itself. We seem to have forgotten the actual goal is to hire good people.
Personally if I'm hiring someone I've already worked with, I don't do any interview. What would be the point? There is nothing I can learn in 45 minutes that I don't already know from months/years working together. If I called them up from my contact list is because I already know they're capable. All I need to do is describe the role and job and ask if it is a fit for their career goals at the moment.