Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher in Montreal, responded to WIRED’s story to say it was “10,000% true!” She added that excessive interviews are a long-standing problem in parts of the industry. During her previous job search, Ms tweeted, a Big Tech company “made me do *12* interviews and homework.” (Luccioni declined to say which company put her through that ordeal.)
Low ball offer
What feels like diligence when hiring managers under pressure can seem unfair to candidates. Interviewing.io, a testing platform where software engineers can hone their skills in test job interviews, published a report this week alleges that Meta has recently used questionable negotiation tactics with candidates who made it past the interview stage.
Aline Lerner, founder and CEO of Interviewing.io, says that of the six Big Tech companies—Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix—Meta had the biggest increase in hiring over the past 12 months , despite laying off many people at the same time. This also gives Meta unique leverage over interview candidates, who are unlikely to receive competitive offers from other giants.
Lerner said she evaluated 20 interview invitations that Interviewing.io customers received from Meta over the past several months and found that the company often “downgraded” technical candidates by offering a position ranked lower than the original interviewee.
She also said Meta offered engineers salaries that were $50,000 less than the average total compensation for similar jobs at other companies. A candidate has a better negotiating chance if he or she has competitive job offers, but those offers can be difficult to come by in a tight tech market.
“This is really a clear pattern,” Lerner told WIRED, referring to the low-ball offers. “I originally intended to send this guide just to my users but then thought the broader technical community would get value from it.”
On a recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has a backlog of positions from last year and that it plans to swap certain job types for new ones. another job this year. Even though it has laid off tens of thousands of workers from the end of 2022The company has indicated that its compensation philosophy and compensation ranges – the pay ranges for different roles – have not changed in recent years.
Meta spokeswoman Stacey Yip said the company strives to be fair and equitable to all candidates. “Our recruiting philosophy allows us to evaluate individuals based on their potential impact across different teams and match each candidate with the right role and skill level,” she said. and their career aspirations”. Yip declined to respond to claims that it would sometimes offer engineering salaries $50,000 less than expected.
Unforeseen consequences
Amanda Richardson, CEO of CoderPad, a platform used by hiring managers to assess coding skills, said tech companies can help the lives of both candidates and managers. Recruitment becomes easier by asking questions about the recent industry-wide shift to more difficult assessments. Asking for more candidates could waste both parties’ time and eliminate potential candidates, she said.
“You have to be mindful of bias that can creep into the interview process,” says Richardson, whose clients at CoderPad include Spotify, LinkedIn and Lyft. “If you set up a process that is a 12-hour take-home test, you will automatically filter out people who have 12 hours to complete the take-home test. As a mother of two children, it was difficult for me.” It can also exclude some very talented programmers. Therefore, CoderPad customers are encouraged to limit take-home tests to between 90 minutes and two hours.
Richardson also encourages hiring and engineering managers to test candidates for collaboration issues during a live coding test, rather than just observing how an engineer works alone. That helps test what it would be like to actually work together if that person joined the company. And instead of asking candidates to build a prototype product or solve a dream problem during the interview, Richardson suggests presenting real problems that the company’s internal team has solved. “That way, when the candidate presents an idea, you can quickly move on to talking about its complexity,” she says.
Richardson says there have been some of her proposals accepted, but mostly by smaller companies or those outside the core software business that are still competing for technical talent—industries such as retail, manufacturing, biotechnology and financial services. Tech interviews are far from “fixed,” but she argues that both job candidates and employers can benefit from better practices — ones that overcome “complicated interview processes.” , difficult and recruiting suitable candidates”.
