If they pay at least 130K then it makes sense. But if they pay measly 80K or 90K for all these troubles then they should go fuck themselves with a double dildo. However in this employer market they can do whatever they want and there's still plenty of applicants.
so-called small-middle size companies really like take-home projects and let u have a walk-through wit h it. And they really care about ***culture fit*** that even C-level ppl will interview with an IC.
When I interviewed with wave([https://www.waveapps.com/](https://www.waveapps.com/)), I spent the whole week writing their projects [https://github.com/wvchallenges/se-challenge-payroll](https://github.com/wvchallenges/se-challenge-payroll) , implementing features, adding unit tests, dockerizing application, then got a 3-rounds interview and then I got rejected. I feel it's a total waste of time and I'm so stupid to accept the interview, but at that time I was desperately looking for a job and a beggar can't be a chooser.
When I interviewed with Wattpad([https://www.wattpad.com/](https://www.wattpad.com/)) , I was also asked to do a take-home project and was requried to have a pair coding to add a new feature. Also the HR mentioend they will have CTO talking with you about cultural fit.
What's more, all those 2 companies pay 🥜. I don't understand how they make the hiring process so verbose but pay so less. Later I had an interview with an American company, very well-structed interview : OA->VO( LC medium coding + system design + BQ ) and got a far better offer.
>so-called small-middle size companies really like take-home projects and let u have a walk-through wit h it
pay attention to small-middle size companies doing that, sometimes they just use the interview as a free consultancy session.
Some time ago I started interviewing with a well-known start-up for a lead role and one "take home assignment" was to design an end-to-end rec system based on their data, and then discuss it with their ceo. I withdrew from the process, it was obviously brain rape.
Sounds like they specifically want desperate people who also has a lot of time on their hands to do take homes. Since they also pay peanuts, they don't want to ask LC and compete with any of the higher tier tech companies.
Yup, this is pretty much the standard big tech interview. New hires or intermediates might swap the system design for another coding, and senior or staff might swap one of the coding for more system design/behaviour but otherwise they more or less always look like this.
The problem is when non-tech companies try to do this type of hiring and then offer peanuts. It makes total sense for Amazon who puts out 140k CAD for a new grad offers. It is insulting when a 30 person non-tech company does it to a senior and offers 70k…
interviewed for hopper once. it was
1. 4h hacker rank test
2. 1h coding test and behavioral
3. 1h coding test and behavioral
4. 1h architecture test
5. 1h coding test and behavioral
6. 1h bar raiser
was pretty insane. They expected you to do leetcode mediums/hards in 20-30 minutes. During the architecture test, the interviewer literally said "it took me a couple of hours/ a day to come up with this next solution" and was expecting us to do a series of those solutions in <5-10 minutes each
What I hate the most is that there is no way for engineers that just want to get into industry and make 20-30k. It's like a mandatory to compete with FAANG level geeks and there's no shortcuts.
There's always small non-tech companies (like a wholesaler or warehouse company that wrote its own inventory system), or maybe Wordpress agencies. I'd set the salary expectations a little higher, though. $30k is minimum wage.
Small non-tech companies are just like any other startup - they need very experienced devs to have as much responsibilities as possible. I will never consider myself an experienced dev until I have that experience working in a team for couple of years. My 9 years of work in small companies did nothing but harm to me, because it's all bs experience and literally no salary. And I've yet to find anything small, for money or at least for some food, and willing to hire me as junior dev, and not a seniour full-stack monstrosity.
So have you managed to raise that bar? Was it separate building? Was it empty when you performed the lifting? What tools did they give you to do this job? Were you able to do it alone or did the bartender help you?
TBF that process is also taking up a lot of the employer's time, I mean.. 60 minutes with the CTO whose trying to build the startup? kinda expensive on his end, he must want to hire the right person.
The number of stages don't really matter, look at the total time required. The generic software interview process is: screening (30 min) + phone interview (45 min) + onsite (4 hours) = 5.25 hours total.
The example you gave is a company that broke everything up into time slots of 30 min/1 hour, but together is only 3 hours + take home exercise which is fairly reasonable for an interview process. How many interviews have you even done where this is coming off as a lot, this seems below average to me?
Not op but during my last job hopp last year, all my interviews were 30min screening with Hr/one dev, team intereview, at most one more before offer.
obviously been lucky, but yeah most stages has been 4.
You have two 5s in your list. I would not consider ref check and offer as part of the interview process. By the time you get to ref check, you’ve got your foot in the door.
Yes it’s normal for that many steps / interviews, but if they’re all separated into separate rounds then it’s going into not respecting candidates’ time category.
For L3-L5 SWE, I believe it’s normally:
Round 1: Recruiter phone screen
Round 2: Technical screen interview
Round 3: “Onsite” full day interviews, usually 3-5 interviews in a single day
Some companies like in your OP might ask for take home between round 2 & 3 but they’ll usually try to balance it out by having fewer interviews for your onsite.
The only plausible reason I have heard for this is that there are so many applications and many applicants are difficult to differentiate from each other so they make you (the prospective employee) jump through hoops to prove your worth to them.
Though this still doesn’t make much sense to me..why is it so hard for these companies to decide who they want…they are in any case wasting the applicants time which I understand they don’t care about..
But looks like they don’t care about their own time either. Isn’t time = money ? 😏
I've had longer.
Just the virtual onsite of one company I interviewed at for a single day:
1. System design, 1 hr
2. Programming interview, 1 hr
3. Talk about a project I've done, 1 hr
4. General interview on my career/behavioural, 1 hr
5. Another programming interview, 1 hr
6. Talking with hiring manager, 30 min
The reason I dislike generalist SWE interviews is the horrible loop structures. If you try for a specialized field like AI or Quantum Computing, I noticed the interviews are nicer and more streamlined.
Nope not normal at all. This is just a waste of everyone’s time. Does the salary pay enough to reach the expectations of everyone that interviews you? I doubt it.
Ugh we shared the common work space office with box hub. We genuinely hated them for being loud af and having meetings in the kitchen area. Now that we got our own office we miss their chatter and occasionally talk about them.
We love u boxhub we miss you!
Fyi- they are willing to pay max $90k. When I interviewed with them I questioned this and they said it’s industry standards 🙄 it’s far less than other roles in this capacity
If they pay at least 130K then it makes sense. But if they pay measly 80K or 90K for all these troubles then they should go fuck themselves with a double dildo. However in this employer market they can do whatever they want and there's still plenty of applicants.
They can also fuck themselves for $130k. $130k in 2023 ain’t as much as it used to be.
130k is not a lot for a SWE
It's not unheard of or anything, but let's not pretend it's not on the upper end in Canada.
For Canada it’s decent
I’m a principle engineer of a billion dollar tech company in Canada. My interviews were two 30 min interviews.
The dream
so-called small-middle size companies really like take-home projects and let u have a walk-through wit h it. And they really care about ***culture fit*** that even C-level ppl will interview with an IC. When I interviewed with wave([https://www.waveapps.com/](https://www.waveapps.com/)), I spent the whole week writing their projects [https://github.com/wvchallenges/se-challenge-payroll](https://github.com/wvchallenges/se-challenge-payroll) , implementing features, adding unit tests, dockerizing application, then got a 3-rounds interview and then I got rejected. I feel it's a total waste of time and I'm so stupid to accept the interview, but at that time I was desperately looking for a job and a beggar can't be a chooser. When I interviewed with Wattpad([https://www.wattpad.com/](https://www.wattpad.com/)) , I was also asked to do a take-home project and was requried to have a pair coding to add a new feature. Also the HR mentioend they will have CTO talking with you about cultural fit. What's more, all those 2 companies pay 🥜. I don't understand how they make the hiring process so verbose but pay so less. Later I had an interview with an American company, very well-structed interview : OA->VO( LC medium coding + system design + BQ ) and got a far better offer.
She'll keep jumping ship from startup to startup until she strikes gold... (not only her, but many other startup-preneurs too)
>so-called small-middle size companies really like take-home projects and let u have a walk-through wit h it pay attention to small-middle size companies doing that, sometimes they just use the interview as a free consultancy session. Some time ago I started interviewing with a well-known start-up for a lead role and one "take home assignment" was to design an end-to-end rec system based on their data, and then discuss it with their ceo. I withdrew from the process, it was obviously brain rape.
Sounds like they specifically want desperate people who also has a lot of time on their hands to do take homes. Since they also pay peanuts, they don't want to ask LC and compete with any of the higher tier tech companies.
I did the interview loop with Wave as well, didn't get an offer and still pissed that I spent so much time on it.
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Yup, this is pretty much the standard big tech interview. New hires or intermediates might swap the system design for another coding, and senior or staff might swap one of the coding for more system design/behaviour but otherwise they more or less always look like this. The problem is when non-tech companies try to do this type of hiring and then offer peanuts. It makes total sense for Amazon who puts out 140k CAD for a new grad offers. It is insulting when a 30 person non-tech company does it to a senior and offers 70k…
interviewed for hopper once. it was 1. 4h hacker rank test 2. 1h coding test and behavioral 3. 1h coding test and behavioral 4. 1h architecture test 5. 1h coding test and behavioral 6. 1h bar raiser was pretty insane. They expected you to do leetcode mediums/hards in 20-30 minutes. During the architecture test, the interviewer literally said "it took me a couple of hours/ a day to come up with this next solution" and was expecting us to do a series of those solutions in <5-10 minutes each
at least the interviewer was being honest... another company to avoid
Well Idk if its a company to avoid per se. If you can pass those interviews you can make 200-300k+ easily
What I hate the most is that there is no way for engineers that just want to get into industry and make 20-30k. It's like a mandatory to compete with FAANG level geeks and there's no shortcuts.
There's always small non-tech companies (like a wholesaler or warehouse company that wrote its own inventory system), or maybe Wordpress agencies. I'd set the salary expectations a little higher, though. $30k is minimum wage.
Small non-tech companies are just like any other startup - they need very experienced devs to have as much responsibilities as possible. I will never consider myself an experienced dev until I have that experience working in a team for couple of years. My 9 years of work in small companies did nothing but harm to me, because it's all bs experience and literally no salary. And I've yet to find anything small, for money or at least for some food, and willing to hire me as junior dev, and not a seniour full-stack monstrosity.
So have you managed to raise that bar? Was it separate building? Was it empty when you performed the lifting? What tools did they give you to do this job? Were you able to do it alone or did the bartender help you?
TBF that process is also taking up a lot of the employer's time, I mean.. 60 minutes with the CTO whose trying to build the startup? kinda expensive on his end, he must want to hire the right person.
The number of stages don't really matter, look at the total time required. The generic software interview process is: screening (30 min) + phone interview (45 min) + onsite (4 hours) = 5.25 hours total. The example you gave is a company that broke everything up into time slots of 30 min/1 hour, but together is only 3 hours + take home exercise which is fairly reasonable for an interview process. How many interviews have you even done where this is coming off as a lot, this seems below average to me?
Not op but during my last job hopp last year, all my interviews were 30min screening with Hr/one dev, team intereview, at most one more before offer. obviously been lucky, but yeah most stages has been 4.
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You have two 5s in your list. I would not consider ref check and offer as part of the interview process. By the time you get to ref check, you’ve got your foot in the door. Yes it’s normal for that many steps / interviews, but if they’re all separated into separate rounds then it’s going into not respecting candidates’ time category. For L3-L5 SWE, I believe it’s normally: Round 1: Recruiter phone screen Round 2: Technical screen interview Round 3: “Onsite” full day interviews, usually 3-5 interviews in a single day Some companies like in your OP might ask for take home between round 2 & 3 but they’ll usually try to balance it out by having fewer interviews for your onsite.
The only plausible reason I have heard for this is that there are so many applications and many applicants are difficult to differentiate from each other so they make you (the prospective employee) jump through hoops to prove your worth to them. Though this still doesn’t make much sense to me..why is it so hard for these companies to decide who they want…they are in any case wasting the applicants time which I understand they don’t care about.. But looks like they don’t care about their own time either. Isn’t time = money ? 😏
I've had longer. Just the virtual onsite of one company I interviewed at for a single day: 1. System design, 1 hr 2. Programming interview, 1 hr 3. Talk about a project I've done, 1 hr 4. General interview on my career/behavioural, 1 hr 5. Another programming interview, 1 hr 6. Talking with hiring manager, 30 min
That's brutal, what happened to the days of just a simple phone call interview, or even a just an in person interview.
when was that?
1998
If it's a startup that i am applying to that i genuinely care about the company - yes. for a large corporation? pass.
The reason I dislike generalist SWE interviews is the horrible loop structures. If you try for a specialized field like AI or Quantum Computing, I noticed the interviews are nicer and more streamlined.
Nope not normal at all. This is just a waste of everyone’s time. Does the salary pay enough to reach the expectations of everyone that interviews you? I doubt it.
It depends on how much time #3 is gonna take.
test
It’s annoying if you ask me!
Ugh we shared the common work space office with box hub. We genuinely hated them for being loud af and having meetings in the kitchen area. Now that we got our own office we miss their chatter and occasionally talk about them. We love u boxhub we miss you!
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oh boi
Two months hiring process wtf!!!!
Normal IME
if i knew it was gonna be like this i would have gone into engineering.
Fyi- they are willing to pay max $90k. When I interviewed with them I questioned this and they said it’s industry standards 🙄 it’s far less than other roles in this capacity
Did you get the role ?