Tech hiring doesn't work 

went through 5 interviews for a frontend position - spoke with team lead engineer, went really well. my experience matched, and he was working on the same thing I was working on at my previous job. said I'll be skipping the take-home assessment, and interviewing with a PM, someone from the marketing / graphics, and one other engineers on the team - meet with one other engineer, great conversation, showed me some of their code, asked my opinions , and gave input. was really good, they were super excited - speak with PM and graphics / marketing people, went smoothly. pretty generic how do you work, culture fit type questions. experience with figma etc. went well - 4th interview, speak with the other engineer on team. wasn't really prepared, said himself he didn't know what to ask. asked generic vague questions on workflow and stuff. answered them. the guy was just kinda rambly and really tired. overall felt really good about it. all the conversations were really positive. fast forward a week get a one sentence rejection email from HR. don't know what I did wrong. asked for feedback, and if any future positions to let me know, silence and haven't heard. very disappointing. 5 one hour interviews for a generic "no" and no feedback

Interview process is HR justifying their jobs.

With the amount of glazing Theo gives us for being theo viewers every vid you'd think I'd at least get an interview

7 interviews ..... your not interviewing anymore, your on reality tv and it just took you that long to get voted off the tech island.

I graduated in early 2023 in have not been able to find a job. I have 0 connections and am i first gen American, my parents both worked factory jobs. ive never seen over 50k yearly income. Ive done nothing but apply and work on my side projects, watching videos like this really depresses me. I annoys me that i cant do something i enjoy and make a good living like ive seen everybody else do.

At this point I don't know what to do anymore to become hireable. I have almost 5 years of experience, an extensive resume, a lot of people to recommend me to open positions where they work, but I can't get a single interview.

Tech interviewing at the moment is broken. Period. I don't think companies will pivot into novelty. They will expect you to know syntax, no matter that you will rarely think about it when building architecture.

Strongly agree on the first point. If you have all the time in the world to ask everything to a potential candidate, you will mostly ask useless stuff. You should be able to know in 1-2h interview if it's a good fit because you asked what really matters. Often I hear people asked to do the x round of an interview, they didn't really know what to ask and didn't really prepared anything. Making the decision more on the "feeling" than accurate understanding of their capabilities.

Dislike the title, I thought this would be Your spiciest take on tech hiring. Nope, you're reading a blog post (and probably giving your own opinions) edit: i'd have no problem if a "Theo Reacts" was added to the end.

Theo is an excellent example of someone who exhibits "self-serving bias". You can see it in pretty much everything he posts.

Y'all waste your time actually attending 7 interviews? The fuck? You don't have to dance for these people. I'd rather flip a burger. THE INTERVIEW PROCESS GOES BOTH WAYS

Theo, explain to me how people who don't know how to use React at all get job interviews, but those of us who are confident with React among many other technologies and frameworks, just get overlooked lol.

When developer refuses converting .md to .pdf then I would not hire this guy also. Having such a strong radical belief against common thing is such a red flag.

I think preferring to choose candidates who are more financially secure is a good way to accidentally exclude minorities and people who are new to the industry. It isn't just bad programmers who are financially insecure. I definitely agree with wanting to foster a culture of good interviewing methods though.

Number one question in interviews is "do I want to work with this person" and it's quite intuitive. Rest are the specifics of the role but former is more important.

In Germany, when you say someone call the ambulance, 3 will try to call it at the same time.

In my experience, the vast majority of people who do hiring have never read *ANY* of the scientific literature that's been published on that subject. If they had, they would already know that almost everything they're doing is a complete waste of time. The reason that there is really no "best practice" for hiring, and that so many companies, large and small, have totally different practices, is because the truth is that beyond doing a basic sanity check, job interviews are almost entirely pointless. The results they get and the results you would get from throwing resumes in the air and catching one are virtually the same. Hiring is similar to stock picking, in that billions of dollars are spent on people who claim to be good at it, but the truth is it's so complicated that literally no one understands it, and the fact of the matter is that a gold fish is just as good as picking stocks as a professional stock picker.

My company does a 2 hour technical, and 1 hour non-technical. The technical involves discussing and then pairing on a project, which we provide _1 week in advance_ so there are no surprises. I quite like this system.

4:08 "...we were able to not hire the person."

A 1 because they turn up drunk is one thing, giving it because they have a funny eye is another. Your method gives free rein for nasty people to exercise their biases.

I can understand not bending over backwards for arcane resume formats... But refusing to render your markdown resume as a PDF / doc seems like a really strange line to draw. It's what... 5 minutes? Then fire out that pdf to all of the companies you're applying to. Surely you're not changing jobs so often that the 5 minutes is starting to add up?

Why would you name this video My spiciest take if you are talking about someone else's spiciest take...

There are many companies that I will never work for because their interview process is too long and I am ok with that. By he time some of these companies get to the second round I got an offer by someone paying just as much and not wasting my time.

I understand why people do that in such bad economical situation all over the world, but damn, have a respect for yourself... 7 interviews is crazy

that amazon interview ranking is very cool! insightful.

16:30 - "Please give your candidates feedback" Holy shit, yes, thank you! Having recently gone through basically a 1.5-2 year long process of interview hell, feedback would have been invaluable at pretty much any stage, but literally no one offers it. I want to be told how I can improve, or where I didn't meet the bar, but most companies hardly even have the decency to tell you that you're not being hired, just ghosting you instead until you ask.

The coding interview process mostly selects for people who are new grads, have plenty of time to study, have little real world responsibilities, and great financial support from parents. For example, you wouldn't staff a hospital full of brand new Ivy league medical school graduates who did well on the USMLE and while rejecting actually experienced physicians.

Idea for a new hiring path, is to set up a pull request in advance, and let the candidate review it. This opens up discussion about various topics, which gives you good insight in their thought process and quality for work. It shows you where they put emphasize, what they find important and how thourough they are.

I’ve been a successful SE for years in europe, focusing mainly on frontend. I’ve never had a problem with tech interview. I consider myself a good programmer. I however wouldn’t know how to build a linked list or any other weird technical interview question I hear about. Well, perhaps I would, but don’t see how it relates to web development.

This whole Markdown Resume and "7 steps is too much" mentality might work when you are in high demand as an individual programmer, or during times like 2020-2022 when job offers were thrown at tech people with reckless abandon. In a time of crisis - like, for example, now - you either go with the requirements or will suffer a lot of stress and resentment towards the industry. Especially now, when a lot of companies will scan your document with LLMs and sometimes just straight out ignore you because You missed some important keywords or whatever. So yeah, just make a simple PDF and be done with it. But there is such a thing as a too-long interview process. 3 steps is enough, 4 is too much, 7 is insanity.

It all comes down to referrals and who you know at this point. Competition and the volume of applicants is high

Two of my last interviews this year were absolutely wild. The person interviewing me was someone who clearly had 5+ years experience building client side redux apps. They had all of these horrible patterns drilled into their brains, to the point i couldn’t answer questions because the fundamental assumptions of the questions were so flawed. One of them asked me how I would get updated state in the same function call in which I updated it. I was like… well I woudlnt 😂

Oh man, I’m so pleased to hear what you said in this video. I agree to all (but the stache 😊)

7 interviews is insane. A company I worked for went into administration last year, so I ended up applying for a bunch of jobs. The companies that had more than 2 interviews didn’t get a chance to hire me because I already had several offers on the table from 1 and 2 stage interview processes. I can’t imagine how you’d be able to hire any competent candidates with a 7 stage process… is that even real?

This is one of your best videos in a while. I just recently hired a brilliant new react dev (👋Hi if you see this, I know you watch Theo's videos, too); In this case I took a chance with someone just finishing their education, but his past projects proved to me he could do it. And now he is just crushing it. We did two interviews with them: One with me (technical founder) and one jointly with me my Co-Founder. That's it.

I got an offer after two interviews at one company, but already had another interview lined up for a startup. I did the other interview. As soon as they told me it’s a 7 round interview process, I decided I didn’t want it.

I started my first job this year. I wrote my resume in English (I live in a non-English speaking country) and in Markdown and added a simple CSS when converting it to PDF. I'm sure some places rejected me because their AI couldn't parse the file, but that's OK. My manager did not seem to mind the simple formatting, and the team is great. In the end, I doubt I would have found my job without a referral, but I am glad that companies with ridiculous resume processing tools did not even give me an interview.

It’s the same story when the companies tried to measure the kpi for everyone. When the qualifying process becomes overcomplicated and repetitive, then the attendee become good at the process, not at the qualification. Going through an intimidating 3-5 month long adventure 1 time and you know that? I have 0 sympathy for the hiring side. I don’t even wanna think how they could get better. I see a 7-step 1-month long bullcrap and wave. Everybody uses AI to filter out resumes on the first stage? I will use AI too to pass the filters. It’s a part of the game. If they suffer from their own game: good for them, let it boil. And the last take, they intentionally make the interview process long and desperate, and then reject desperate candidates? They will get these candidates anyway, but preselected by the ability to look like they are not. They require liars, and ppl, what’s a surprise, get good at lying. P.S. why it’s morally correct to fire a worker immediately when the company don’t need them anymore, to not pay the salary by financial reasons. But if the worker suddenly quits for a better compensation , it’s somehow negative?

About 25:11, HOLY SHIT I didn't know it was that bad in the US, i basically have to pay like 150 euros a month + a deductible if i need healthcare and thats IT, thank god for European social safety nets

I hope I'll never have to take a job interview ever again, because I hate this shit so much. But, what you say here in this video resonates with me so much, that I wouldn't mind going through this kind of process. I might even rather enjoy it.

8:35 this is nice when you have the luxury to do so. But many people cannot afford to do this. Also many companies use third party application systems that have those restrictions.

A bunch of companies didn't accept resumes on papyrus. I didn't bother applying because I didn't want to work with other employees who bothered to convert their papyrus to PDF or Word.

Basically, vibe hire is the best

Damn, this video has some really good info - thanks for sharing... I really like your take on the 1-4 point score system.

Your point about having to figure out medical for your employees is something I'm surprised doesn't get used as a selling point from the left to the right, "we support small business and we don't think they should have to do all this themselves - don't you also support small business?!" -- good take, too.

A great look into tech hiring, thank you. A tangential comment: I've been drilling yearly in first aid for 20+ years. Social pressure can be a beautiful tool to get the crowd to work for you. Singling out an individual with a tasking (e.g. call the emergency number) relies on absolute identifiability of the individual on the eyes of the crowd. If there is a chance, touch the tasked person and announce the task in a loud voice (who knows, the person may be hard of hearing), but the end result should be that all in the crowd know who and what is meant.

Europe: There is still lots of jobs, but the salaries are a joke, had 10 years back more than what they are offering now, with all that inflation lol....

Where i am, interviews were 2x1h, plus one final talk. We had an open space so in some form or another, you were being interviewed by the whole company even though you were only talking to 1/2 persons. Made it fairly easy to grasp how in/out/neutral everyone was towards candidates. And yes, it does cement a "culture", for better or for worse, but it goes both ways. Why would you want to work where you don't fit, and why would anyone want to hire someone that doesn't fit... On the "trust" thing, yeah, that's a major plus if you can leverage it. Knowing my course trainers would vouch for me was a major confidence boost when going to course internship interviews. For the people taking you in, it's significant to be able to make a phone call and "We have this guy xyz you sent our way, is he good?". If the company has a (good) working relationship with the people that trained you, it's a shoe in. If there's an "unwritten" agreement that "we don't sent bad people to good places", interview becomes more "don't worry (too much) about what he can do, just figure out if you like him".

I am going to say a thing no one will admit. Race is a very important factor, similar race in interviewer and interviewee result in getting hired more likely.

On my team we do two, 1 hour interviews. The first interview is predominantly a team-fit interview with some technical questions and getting to know the interviewee, the second is entirely technical with explicit callout requirements for the position

Medicare for all! I still have the 2016 bumper sticker, glad to see you agree with the obvious

I have had candidates hire someone to do their interview. But only hired them for the first interview 😅 we almost got scammed.

I think it makes sense to allow an initial interview by HR to screen out people before the more advanced two interviews to allow for people from the actual department to show up to be present at the technical and non technical interview.

Love the bit on how to disagree. I refer to this as conflict resolution, or conflict resolution skills, and it's something we barely talk about as a culture, to say nothing of teaching it to up and coming generations.

I would never work for a company that has more than 3 interviews unless I had no other choice. Even 3 I think is a lot, but it happens. I have 10 years of experience building complex interfaces :)

That's how hiring is supposed to be in the first place. Such a nice article!

Great video, Theo! It gave me a lot to think about regarding my job application approach.

13:14 - When almost half the country is financially underwater, this just reinforces classism.

Chat gpt should be allowed in tech interviews to demonstrate prompting prowess and lego construction via chat gpt output. Its not like im not gonna use it all day on the job after hiring.

We have two, one hour interviews. One with HR as a pre-screen (normally more like 20-30 minutes). Then one technical interview/conversation. I've always said it and I'll stand by it, you know quite quickly whether someone is a yes or no.

HR needs to have some work, otherwise they had nothing to do... honestly, 2 interviews is enough, then evaluate after 3 and 6 months... still possibility to let them go if the person did not work out for you.

Recently had a big discussion with a colleague of mine about companies filtering for higher degrees. I made a strong argument that many SMEs basically survive on the back of a single junior crackhead, and I met a few of those that don't have a higher degree. They're stuck at a low paying job for years because the threshold to switch is too high. The elitist way is just wrong in my opinion, and I fully understand why we do have so many assessments in the recruiting process.

My long term positions in tech were based on branding myself on LinkedIn and proving myself with completing work for clients.

Markets have slowed down and will continue this downward trend for at least another year or so. When the world realizes we are in recession and central banks around the world start stimulating again, only then will things START to improve.

my spicy took is that europennes commision needs to give 10 % off GDP to kde plasma and make it national desktop (bureau) environnement

I work at Amazon, this is true. During the pandemic hiring craze, I was interviewing 3 folks a week. I have a rule that works for me- no google questions I call em. Ask for experiences and dive into them. None of this “explain X protocol”. Find that info out through a real convo man. Most skills are “Just-in-time-learning” anyways, fundamentals and good team fit are key. Think these days we’re down to like 4ish interviews instead of 8. Its still bad, but it gives ya a more fair chance cause unconscious bias n all.

totally agree with Theo here, interviews are a two-way process, when you're being interviewed, "interview" them back - have your own standards

I agree, these days those ATS is so annoying, even though I am a perfect fit for frontend roles I am applying for many companies, I am getting rejected before even its reaching the recruiter. I am pretty confident in my tech skills too and resume which talks about the work I have done. Also I hate I needed to attend too many interviews like 4 to 6 to get a job. In India this is common process in 98% of companies I know. I defer myself from attending such companies.

Great content 👌🏻 Thanks Theo!

Egomania is strong in this one...

Thoughts on "why do you want to work here"?

Super in-depth technical interviews might help you find a better candidate for a senior position but imo as someone who just went through the job competition as a fresh grad, it leads to the "wrong" candidates being chosen for junior roles. When you hire a fresh grad for a junior position, you're looking for someone who is a good personality fit, someone who works well with the team, ideally grow with the company, and capable of learning the technical skills required for the job. You aren't typically hiring someone in a junior position for their years of experience and expertise. The kind of junior candidate who has the expertise to ace technical interviews is probably going to be ambitious and will leave as soon as they get a better offer, and you're going to filter out a ton of excellent candidates who may stick with the team long term, just because they haven't had the opportunity develop those technical skills yet early on in their career.

Once again, another great and highly valuable video from OP. It's almost a skill issue if you don't get the value of this video from both perspectives of candidate and interviewer/hiring manager

Ooof - Amazon interviews. Flashbacks. Worst... well... alright, I've had a number of bad interviews by now. But Amazon is at the very bottom with some others for sure.

damn son, love you healthare thoughts :-*

I think having markdown or pdf or word shouldn’t be an issue when sharing the resume or cover letter. We know devs love mark down but not everyone might be comfortable (the HR or Hiring team) in reading that way.

0:26 Uh oh he forgot the "no more than one hour" part of the quote 😮

I used to be the guy who went after the money but I now prioritize that I don't hate being in the job which is my current job sadly.

This should be paired with a hire fast, and fire fast in a trial period mentality. Interviews give very little genuine signal IMO.

What application are you using to create such good UML diagrams?

Where can I get this stylesheet? Wikipedia is ugly!

My Spiciest Take - pretty much the article's take

Important to be able to disagree well. Yet this was uploaded 1 month ago. Seems weird to me because in my experience, many people's egos are so stunningly big and fragile these days. Feeling the need to talk down to others and when criticized (likely as part of a disagreement), they accuse the other of being rude.

how do i even start to find "cool person making cool things" ?

A spicy take on a spicy take on tech hiring... 😁

Thanks for sharing your interview process

I went through like 5 interviews for my job. I would much prefer the two interview structure.

I've seen startups (~30 people) nowadays doing "30min phone screen + 1hr coding + 1hr sys design + half day onsite" style interviews. smh

Interview process need to change seriously, The company that still do long interviews and interview with other people who is not the people you will be working with is a bad practice. Nothing you can do to change this, its depends on the company. Only thing you can do is to keep interviewing and find better company else where. Working with the best teams of people is we all looking for. It is more important than any fields, roles, position, tech stack, what so ever. "We are humans and we work best when we work with the best people." Period.

woah I didn't know that there could be legal liabilities for sharing feedback with the candidate!

imagine being able to get interviews in 2024 🥲

i think markdown should be the new document standard and the main markdown standard should also standardize all these feature support by all other markdown editors

Hire fast, fire fast. Thoughts?

These hiring takes from Theo are always so elitist. Yes, turn away jobs and starve, because you wouldn't be a good fit for a company anyways... a bit of a hyperbole for sure, but to not realize that some people just don''t have 200 other doors open at any point in their life, the amount of privilege must be astounding. II am sure all of his advice applies to the mythical 10X devs just fine. But what do you do when you're just barely average?

So if I believe that I am a decent engineer, I shouldn’t be desperate?

Letting a PDF filter you, is a bit too tight imho it's *the* standard for document transfers.

If I can only get a cool job doing cool things by knowing cool people, how do I go about meeting and befriending these cool people? 😅

Nothing spicy about that take. All facts.

8:20 Pandoc has the ability to convert markdown to pdf, so this is not a valid argument.

Well Theo, tell us about your interview process