What's the rationale behind sending 22yos to do tech screen for Senior roles?
*** Pr!cks that can't read, swipe Left :) and move on *** I understand the teams are small in a lot of start-ups, but it's absolutely a waste of time & opportunity sending your 22-24yos with less than two years of real world work experience to screen candidates applying for Senior roles. Might as well partner with Hacker-rank or someone to do your tech screen. Hiring managers and recruiters, what are y'all thinking?
Sounds like someone got a rejection...
Nope - not the case at all.
What made you think age can be a factor in a person's competency to conduct interviews?
A best intentions interpretation is they’re questioning the practice of less experienced engineers interviewing subject matter experts
So here's the thing, it depends on what type of experience you have, if you are not up-to-date date with the industry standards you don't matter, in my experience younger people are better are adapting than so called experienced seniors, startups need adaptability not dinosaurs.
So basically you couldn’t pass a junior candidate’s screen and you’re upset about it? Are you one of those senior engineers who tell me it’s insulting when I *gasp* ask them to code in an interview?
You must be one of those juniors who's butt hurt because you didn't get a promotion even if you know all answers eh? If you have such great skills why don't you become a principal engineer in your own company?
Uh... so first, its very very likely I’m more senior than both you and the OP. The difference is I’ve kept my technical ability because I understand it’s the foundation to what makes me valuable. If a junior candidate interviews me they should leave the interview thinking “Wow. That dude has a lot he could teach me. I want him on my team.” You don’t make that impression if you don’t know how to do things anymore or are a jerk about it. Also, I’m fucking over interviewing candidates who are senior but dumb or don’t want to do any work anymore. I want someone that can do the job and if they have 20 yoe and can’t think their way out of a paper bag they are no more good to me than you are. It’s a waste of my time and as Al Pacino yelled in Heat..”Don’t waste my fucking time!”. Finally...you work at a phone company. Stfu. I’d be a VP or whatever over there if I wanted to, but I don’t because you don’t have any interesting challenges and your TC sucks. So, keep asking me if I can hear you now fun oh, because I don’t give a shit if I can.
Cuz no one else wants to do it? They’ve gotten so lazy they just use LC
To those rookies that ahem commented like rookies, 1) No. I haven't had the interview yet. 2) If you dumbos could read as well as you could type, you would notice that I gave a better alternative of partnering with companies like Hacker-rank to do the coding part of tech screening. Those would be a better judge of a coding exercise than someone with less than a year of experience. 3) The phone screen is also a chance for the candidate to get a perspective on the company. The chances of your immature ass doing a good job at it is way less than a mid to senior level IC or a manager. 4) Unless your company is the next unicorn, you have to impress the candidates as much they have to impress you, especially when you got recruiters cold calling them. Don't worry. Y'all will be a Mid or Senior level IC sometime (hopefully 🤞 😂) & then get this perspective.
LMAO I’m L7. You just seem like a shitty candidate.
The fact that you have to drop your L7 Tag speaks a lot about you as a Senior IC and an adult.
Senior developers have to lead and mentor their junior counterparts. That's one of the most important facets of the job--so sending a junior to interview a senior candidate makes sense on that level. If there are signal/calibration issues with the interviewer's approach, these should be sorted out in the debrief. There should probably be more than one screening round in this case. That said: very, very few startups are worth working for as a senior SWE anyhow.
You have offered some valid points. But you seem to have missed the point about this being done for phone interviews or tech screens. I wasn't talking about on-site interviews where the interviewer pool is a mix.
Nah, I saw it. That's why I suggested multiple screening rounds. Chances are they don't have the staff, either. Like I said: senior SWEs tend to avoid startups for good reason (if you're going to go in with experience, go in for a much higher role/title then SWE).
Amazon does that all the time tho
Really?! The company is too huge to draw conclusions. Almost every org I had been in has HM or a Mid-Senior conduct phone screens. L4s and even some L5s start off their interviews by shadowing a Senior engineer during the on-site
Yeah, almost all big companies do this. Companies are too big and they expect you to at least know how to solve LC easy/medium. So experience level of interviewer doesn't really matter imo
Because a surprising number of “senior” candidates can’t write a for loop. Also the senior candidates that can code typically don’t want to waste their time with hacker rank.
The screen is basically to weed out idiots who can’t write a for loop, or who behave like asses. Why not give it to a junior engineer? You do seem like you will fail. Hint: when everyone thinks you’re being an ass, you’re probably being an ass.
The only downside could be junior engineers are inexperienced interviewers. And no one asks simple for loops anymore, atleast in FAANG. If that were the case, we wouldn't see leetcode with mock interviews for phone screens.
Mah company mah rulez