> I was expecting [...] like doing an interview every six months
Incidentally, I hear advice like that (especially a variation, of "practice" interviews) on HN, but I really wish people wouldn't do that.
Actually, please don't do this resource burning with startups or other SMBs, unless it's clear they want to burn resources.
But feel free to burn the resources of FAANGs, who mostly created the idea that interviews should be a series of performance rituals that you have to practice and refresh on.
(Though the related phenomenon, of techbro frequent job-hopping, wasn't the fault of FAANGs. It seemed to start during the dotcom boom, pre-Google, especially in the Bay Area, AFAICT, where a lot of people were chasing the most promising rapid IPO. At the time, the rumors/grumbling I was hearing from the Bay Area made me want to do a startup in Cambridge/Boston instead, just to avoid that culture. After the dotcom IPO gold rush ended, it seemed that job-hopping for big pay boosts and promotions became a thing, and that job-hopping culture never went away. But I don't think we'll find much team loyalty anywhere anymore, not from companies nor from colleagues, so that's no longer a reason I'd avoid the Bay Area specifically.)
> Startups are fine scheduling candidates for 5-6 rounds of interviews,
Not all startups are like that, and you might not know in advance.
Though, incidentally, I did find one about a month ago, and I will take this moment of inspiration to complain about it, constructively.
I bowed out of an imminent offer, because I thought that the CTO's gauntlet of evaluation steps was a sign of the day-to-day I should expect: that I would only be valued like an untrusted junior commodity worker.
(I have a lot of experience, my detailed resume shows that, and I'd been patient and met more than halfway with the process.)
Meanwhile, the initial pitch about why I might want to work there had worn off, after 5+ calls and a takehome. I wasn't going to invest any more time+energy+soul, submitting to the final grilling/hazing step, of a job I no longer wanted.
ProTip: Unless you are a FAANG, or are paying FAANG-like money, don't act like one towards prospective hires/colleagues. Otherwise, you should expect to hire only people who are moderately good at interviewing (good enough to pass your nonsense, but not the nonsense of the people who pay more). And you should expect them to hop without loyalty, because you do FAANG arrogance and nonsense, without paying for the privilege.
There's probably some happy-ish medium of people toughing it out through a bad situation they don't feel they can change--and jumping at the first instance of itchy feet (which is admittedly harder at the moment).
Not sure when the job-hopping culture--especially on the west coast--really came in. I do associate it with post-dot com but I'd really have to look at the data. Certainly wasn't really true pre dot-com at large tech employers.
Honestly, if companies cared enough about the interviewees time as well, people wouldn’t do this. I was looking for a few months, and companies put you through the wringer of 6-9 interviews these days. Two should tell you whether a candidate is a good fit or not. Then there’s the case interviews where candidates put in dozens of hours prepping decks and what not, and then get rejected without any feedback at all.
And this was exclusively at SMBs and startups. At least, the FAANG companies have structure and you know what to expect.
I don’t think SWEs realize just how many companies out there will look at a resume of a job hopper (even if there is 10 years at FAANG, say 2 at each) and outright reject the candidate on those grounds.
You’re hiring a job hopper because they have skills you need NOW.
They are job hopping because they want high level compensation and maybe a position on an high-impact team, instead of being sidelined and powerless against the disrespect of their manager.
Your company can make those work together.
I’m not saying every job hopper is the right hire. I am offering a reason they get hired anyway (availability!) and leave anyway (respect and $$).
“they have skills you have NOW” is exactly like saying “she/he cute NOW I need to get married” :) Needing something now is a recipe for disaster and I am happy I never needed (nor will need) anyone now
Absolutely. I had a stretch of consulting gigs for a couple years and I recently was denied an interview because they "didn't like the short periods of employment" even though they were specifically indicated as short term contract jobs!
A recruiter gave me the terse feedback about "too long consulting" from one company.
(And it didn't fit any rational objection I could think of, if they'd actually looked at the resume, beyond triggering on a keyword.)
I think a root problem is that many companies are bad at hiring, and many of those get confidently bad at it. In institutional emergent behavior terms, as well as individual actor terms.
> I think a root problem is that many companies are bad at hiring, and many of those get confidently bad at it.
Precisely. And who are we kidding? I know a lot of people that have performance objectives to grow $ or cut $. I don't know anyone who has a comp clawback for making bad hires.
Spending too long (vague) consulting for one company doesn't measure your competencies or value you bring to the team. I bet they just needed a reason to knock you out and shortlist the hiring manager's preferred candidate who they don't know personally, but know via close friend referral.
One of the hiring problems that companies face is they're now flooded with resumes. And the easiest thing to do is have many false-positive declines. That alone can explain lots of random declines.
This can also dovetail with illegal hiring discrimination: when there's an exec/manager who doesn't want to hire women, people with kids, people likely to feel pressure to have kids soon, military veterans, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc... it's really easy for those resumes to be among the ones quickly discarded, with or without pretext. It's plausibly deniable, because of all the random declines of good resumes.
Based on the parent's confirmation, this is the implicit reason.
They're screening job-hoppers as a "rule of thumb" that shrinks the candidate funnel at the cost of losing out on 100x programmers or 1-10x programmers that can commit to 2y.
I don't get the cost-benefit other than time and a lack of need for 100x programmers.
Respectfully, didn't you just reject such reasoning 2 days ago with a valid counterargument by you? [0] Except this time, you didn't provide any rationale.
Scratching someone out for being an alleged job hopper on the surface is pre-mature optimization for hiring talent. What is your concern that you can't mitigate? e.g., call their referrals, backload their comp, etc.
I am building a team to play with for a long haul, not grabbing someone for a pick up game cause we are one player short.
the best analogy I can give is that at work I (and many companies) are looking for a marriage, not a one-night stand. no matter what your technical provess is, it takes a while for you to learn the domain and get gelled with the team. While this is happening, we are all putting a significant effort to make this happen. if you then turn around and leave the entire has wasted a whole bunch time/effort and even if you are some “rock star” SWE we lose
Not trying to be difficult, but you're not really addressing my question.
Why can't you address this with mitigants I mentioned? It sounds like you do some of that with "other non-$ comp" (mandatory PTO, parental leave,...) that's use it or lose it, but those are table stakes these days.
I love the idea of thinking about a long term marriage and contracting accordingly, but at some point it's a leap of faith.
Your bias has a presumably unforced handicap. Losing that 100x programmer may not matter to your business/personal goals to make GOOD wealth accumulation, but it will hurt your changes to go from GOOD to GREAT outcomes.
great question. weeding out people up front that are not team players and job hop goes a loooooong way. once you immediately root that out the rest of it:
The compensation one is the one that most companies get wrong for retention. It seems most companies say they're "competitive" (within some unspecified tier). And they may be at hiring time, but a frequent complaint is that companies don't keep the compensation competitive. (Netflix famously being an exception.)
These AI-focused Twitter threads feel like they’re just recycling the same talking points for likes and retweets. When AI systems make mistakes, it doesn’t make sense to assign blame the way we would with human errors - they’re tools operating within their programming constraints, not autonomous agents making conscious choices.
> When AI systems make mistakes, it doesn’t make sense to assign blame the way we would with human errors - they’re tools operating within their programming constraints, not autonomous agents making conscious choices.
It's not really "assigning blame", it's more like "acknowledging limitations of the tools."
Giving an LLM or "agent" access to your production servers or database is unwise, to say the least.
In this thread the person does literally assign blame, accuses the AI of lying, and makes it write an apology letter to the team as though it's a child that needs to be chastised.
I think at this point it is like rage-baiting. “AI wiped out my database”, “AI leaked my credentials”, “AI spent 2 million dollars on AWS” etc create interaction for these people.
The message reads like "AI did this bad thing" but we should all see it as "Another stupid person believed the AI hype and discovered it isn't trustworth" or whatever. You usually don't see them admit "gee that was dumb. What was I thinking?"
Because that would mean they were wrong and their faith was misplaced. Faith is a good word to use in this case, because people like this are AI evangelists, going beyond selling it as "it is good because objective reasons 1, 2 and 3", into "this will revolutionize the world and how you think". They will overhype it and make excuses or talk around its flaws. Some of them are true believers, but I'm convinced most are just trying to sell a product or themselves.
What new companies? Google is a monopoly, along with most other major tech platforms. When a handful of corporations control entire market sectors and actively acquire or crush potential competitors, that's not free market competition, that's market consolidation that prevents the very disruption you're describing. The "creative destruction" of capitalism requires actual competition to exist, not just the theoretical possibility of it.
I don’t really believe the narrative that this is the C-team running things now. A complete redesign like this would require approval from numerous executive stakeholders. My guess is that it’s connected to the Apple Vision project - possibly they’re working on a new device at a more consumer-friendly price point.
It’s not only about suppression; it’s about cultivating fear around expressing your opinions.
There are groups actively working to have individuals fired for voicing support for Palestine.
For instance, a woman wrote “Freedom for Palestine” in Gaelic on LinkedIn, prompting a group of Israelis in a WhatsApp chat to actively coordinate efforts to get her fired.
The General Manager of Wix, Batsheva (Levine) Moshe, responded in a WhatsApp chat saying:
“Hi yes we know. Being taken care of since it was published. I believe there will be an announcement soon regarding our reaction.”
I was expecting something more practical, like doing an interview every six months or something along those lines.
Supervisors and HR just smile and nod.
Maybe if he had a better relationship with his manager, he would’ve realised sooner that he was just wasting his time.
Documentation is like an untested disaster recovery plan.
When a major issue happens, you’ll be the one called.
You should delegate or automate the task and remove it from your workload, especially if it carries high risk.
I’d actually love to read the dark arts equivalent of this article.