alt Hacker NewsI've (unfortunately) been interviewing the last two months and the main pattern that I've noticed is that a) big companies have terrible interview processes while b) small companies and startups are great at interviewing.
Big companies need to hire tons of people and interview even more so they need some sort of scalable process for it. An early stage startup can just ask you about your past projects and pair program with you for an hour.
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What exactly does "scalable" mean here?
If a startup can spend 20 man-hours filling a single position, why can't a big company spend 1000 man-hours filling 50 positions?
> small companies and startups are great at interviewing
Small companies have the benefit of the pressure to fill a role to get work done, the lack of bureaucratic baggage to "protect" the company from bad hires, and generally don't have enough staff to suffer empire-building.
Somewhere along the line the question changes from "can this candidate do the job that other people in this office are already doing?" to "can this candidate do the job of this imaginary archetype I've invented with seemingly impossible qualities".
I hear this all the time, but I have yet to experience it. It may be because the small companies that I interview with are all startups, but I have yet to be able to get a call back from any other kind of small company. And the startups I do interview with have a full FAANG interview loops.
There seems to be a weird selection bias that if you're FAANG or FAANG adjacent these small companies aren't interested.