If you apply for a full-time software engineering position at a large company today, you will be run through the all-day series-of-hourlong-interviews, even if you are a referral. It is possible for the hiring manager to work closely with recruiter and recruiting coordinator to craft a more customized interview process, but that's rare (and, impossible at a place like Google, which decentralizes hiring). The value of network is the candidate wasn't subjected to the usual resume review weeding-out, but their info went straight to one or more hiring managers for consideration.

You use the term "apply for a job", which might explain the disconnect. The post you reply to isn't about applying for jobs.

You don't want to "apply" for things. You want your google VP to be having a beer with your ex-boss and worrying that his pet project was going to fail because they just can't find a guy who can really $X.

But your ex boss knows a guy who absoulutely can $X, and just finished $X'ing his company back from the brink of disaster. Lets give him a call to see if he's available.

HR will be told to give that guy an offer and, optionally, collect a resume to keep on file.

That's what we're talking about here, and it's where you want to get yourself if you want to build a career as an individual contributor.

You've essentially described nepotism here - if FAANG would follow this model, they would never hire some of their best contributors because those contributors didn't live in the Valley their whole life to network with bosses. I prefer a process that's at least basically meritocratic to the old boys club type of hiring at any time.

Recommending someone you know who is good at his/her job is not nepotism. Nepotism is when you recommend your family or friends regardless of their qualifications.

You clearly don’t work in the industry.

Edit: I see from your other post you haven’t interviewed since 1999. Sounds about right. The hiring process does not work how you think it should.

Not true. I've interviewed for and landed several nice gigs since then. But as I said in that other post, always skipping the tech screen piece.

From talking with other devs in my peer group, this doesn't seem uncommon.

I think it's "uncommon", but I also think that one shouldn't confuse "uncommon" with "never happens". I've had more than one job land on my doorstep without some sort of crazy tech screen. But I also talk to front-door companies on occasion too.

He's a contractor. He comes in, does a specific task, and then leaves. That's all.

> HR will be told to give that guy an offer and, optionally, collect a resume to keep on file.

No, HR will be told to get that guy into the interview pipeline as soon as possible, so he can go through the same process everybody else does for a similar position.

The sad part is that the generic generalist interview will have nothing to do with X, and if you need someone great at X-ing, might yield painful false negatives or even worse, false positives (since you can’t hire specifically for X).

I would argue that if you’re in a position to be picky you would want to hire experts in X who are also good generalists. One-trick ponies don’t do well after project X is finished and they need to contribute to other efforts.

A PhD isn’t really a one trick pony, but whatever. Even if that’s what you want (specialists who are good generalists), those interviews don’t really check the specialist part, just the generalist one.

Since you mention Google, my understanding is that you still go through the standard hiring process

Again, always?

If they buy the company that you built specifically to get access to you, do you think you'll still end up getting screened out by some junior dev on a whiteboard? All policies have exceptions. Your goal is to be exceptional.

Yes, always. It is company policy. Google takes its standardized interview process more seriously than any other company I've heard of, except maybe Palantir.

So, you're telling me they made Vint Cerf do a whiteboard interview?

I don't know, someone would have to ask Vint. But it is a plain fact that Google interviews the engineers of a potential acquisition. For a small company, they'll pick and choose which ones to keep. For a large company, I don't know. The CEO may or may not go through the full interview process -- I've seen it both ways, seems to depend on whether they're buddies with the VP.

> If they buy the company that you built specifically to get access to you, do you think you'll still end up getting screened out by some junior dev on a whiteboard?

In this case probably not, but you'll have to do several rounds with the VPs. Of course the tenor is very different, more conversational / situtational instead of technical questions. But you're still being sniffed out. Unless you're already pals with the VP.

The problem is that exceptional isn’t a binary quality, exceptional at google is going to be another level than exceptional at some obscure contracting firm.

In my experience it's rare for even this kind of interaction to lead to an interview process-free result. The exception would be if "the guy" is brought in as a contractor (which these days should probably be your goal), but I've worked with a lot of large companies and HR almost always forces at least some portion of standard FTE applicant evaluation even for "the guy" type referrals.

> The exception would be if "the guy" is brought in as a contractor (which these days should probably be your goal)

Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean being a contractor should be your goal as "the guy" or the hirer?

That's completely inapplicable to permanent positions. The current company of a prolific employee is not gonna lay him off and send him to a competing company.

It can make sense for consultants, doing short gigs here and there. People can refer you elsewhere when the current work is completed, they ain't gonna keep you anyway.

We need more stories like this for the New Years eve.

The hero / rockstar / ninja narrative rears its ugly head again.

Some people will be at the top of their field. Most people won't.

> Fundamentally: Why are you having the "Can you code your way out of a wet paper bag" conversation instead of the "How much value can you add to this company" conversation?

Because people lie. It's that simple. Referrals lie, CVs lie, friends lie to get friends in a position. Do understand that there's a fundamentally different set of problem a 40.000 FTE company has to deal with in comparison to a 30 person startup.

Also is doing a full day interview really such a horrible sacrifice for most paid jobs in the world? Professions like laywers and doctors need to go through significantly longer hazing rituals to get to FAANG income... is a month of study to be essentially among the most paid people in the world REALLY such a horrible thing?

Being on the technical interviewer side of the table it was a bit disconcerting to see people get to me who really should have been filtered out at an earlier stage. Still, for the type of lies that are most damaging, I still ask the question "what's the easiest way to uncover the lie?" Hence, FizzBuzz and FizzBuzz style questions work just fine if the lie is "can program". Why stress people out with trivia quizzes on language minutia or implementations of algorithms that CS students usually get at least a week to do (or typically never do)? Why let a too-strong fear of a lying false positive, which isn't that hard to deal with as a big company, become a strong false negative filter negatively selecting for types of experienced candidates you might want who won't put up with your clown nose "everyone is doing it" rituals? It's also easier to grade if you keep things relatively simple.

I have to do a little more to satisfy the process, of course, but I'd be more satisfied if more interviewers didn't just accept the process (as you kind of have to do as an interviewee if you want certain jobs) and continuously asked themselves how they can make things better within their own influence. I could only throw up my hands and sigh when a coworker asked me for interviewer advice, we had a big discussion about interviews, and in the end he just grabbed a random problem off some interview problems site that he hadn't even tested if he could solve himself in the time limit and gave that.

   too-strong fear of a 
   lying false positive

You might be a bit optimistic here: it's not always easy to deal with "lying false positives". Depending on the legislation it may be difficult to fire somebody, and involve going to court, sometimes going on over several years. Vindictive personalities may engage in sabotaging the company, the team, their (former) co-workers, as a retaliation for being fired. (Anecdote: I have witnessed all of the above in my work.)

Summary: the cost of a false positive almost always outweighs the cost of a false negative.

I don't think there's any state in the US where lying on your resume/CV is not legal grounds for immediate termination.

And any company that has thought about their hiring process for more than 30 minutes will have a probationary period of 30 or 60 days or so, after which employment can be terminated if the employee is not able to do the work.

Are you not in the US? I've never ever come across such a thing - probably because US companies can theoretically fire you on the spot for almost any reason except specifically disallowed discrimination, and most definitely for being unable to do the work.

Many people interviewing there are already among the most highly paid people in the world (lots of them are just moving around within that group) so that argument is pretty irrelevant.

I assume Google is looking for people who absolutely want to work at Google. Making the process cumbersome allows them to get candidates who stay at the company even if they have to do work that they don't like.

If that's what they're aiming for, evidence suggests that it isn't working - https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-e...

Many (as in 10-30% at best) perhaps. Not even close to half or majority though, so I fail to understand how the argument could be irrelevant.

At the beginning of 2017, ~12,000 of Google's current ~72,000 employees had previously worked at other big tech companies, and most of them were probably in their R+D headcount of only 27,000. I wouldn't be at all surprised if half of their engineering interviewees came from similar paying jobs, and a the majority of the remainder were college hires.

https://www.alphr.com/business/1005261/silicon-valley-swipin...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/219333/number-of-google-...

> Professions like laywers and doctors need to go through significantly longer hazing rituals

At least for doctors this isn't universally true. There's continuing education/certification, (which you have to do every $period) there's public reputation, there's lots of networking. From what I've seen the interviews take few hours in one day and people usually already know each other.

The hazing the doctors go through is during residency, where they spend years, working like horses, for no money.

I'd much rather deal with whiteboard interview bullshit a few times in my life, then go through residency in the medical field.

I'd honestly rather have the "bulletproof tenure" that doctors then acquire after they get through the hazing. Getting laid off every time a spreadsheet jockey in accounting makes a bad projection, is pretty disruptive. (as are the times when a competitor buys your employer just to shut them down, and etc: plenty of scenarios where you lose a job due to no fault of your own are rather the rule than the exception) - Most competent engineers can always get another job. But in that process, you end up with a different commute, or even having to relocate, deal with setbacks in financial plans, and etc. The instability some of us experience is kind of not worth the other perks. And after 20+ years, it's kind of annoying to have to apply as if I'm fresh out of school when I have a solid work record on my resume, verifiable by contacting my former co-workers and managers I've provide as references.

> Getting laid off every time a spreadsheet jockey in accounting makes a bad projection, is pretty disruptive.

This has nothing to do with how programmers are hired, and everything to do with the business cases that building software serves. Even if programmers were hired like doctors, they'd still be cyclically losing their jobs, because their jobs are closely tied to the willingness of the economy to spend large amounts of money on custom software.

If you want a job for life, then you want to be in a profession that does something unconditionally useful. Healthcare, garbage pickup, teaching, farming, being a janitor. We're going to need people doing all that long after <insert Silicon Valley fad of the month> is dead and buried.

Yes, but before that you need years of low-paid jobs and networking to come close to well paid positions. Applying at FAANG requires significantly less.

You still have to go through a standard interview loop at Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc... even if you get in via a recommendation. The recommendation (and your cv) helps you in getting a serious phone screen and in getting a good choice of the team you want to join, but isn’t considered very much during the interview itself.

Well said. It occurs to me that my last job interview that involved convincing the other party that I was a good developer was back in 1999 when I had just a few years of experience.

Since then every gig has come via an introduction by a former boss or co-worker, or by introducing myself to somebody with hiring authority and using a pile of impressive artifacts to skip the "can this guy do the work" questions.

The first several years of your career should be getting yourself into a position where nobody would ever dare ask you to sort things on a whiteboard.

Back in 2004, I interviewed for a FTE position in finance - was my first interview for a full time role post college. I was a referral from a close friend and classmate. They sent me through the ringer. Had to take brainbench tests for C++ and C# (position was for C++, but I'd been working in C# and JS for the prior 2-3 years). IIRC, only got like a 65 percentile in C++, but over 95 in C#. Also had to go through an hour plus phone screen, then a day and a half on site. Got the job, but damned if it wasn't a long process. Lots of whiteboard and verbal questions, was never put in front of a computer except for the brainbench tests ar home.

Congratulations, you've never wanted to work for a large company. Perhaps your advice isn't relevant to those who do.

You should also be young, healthy and happy - noone wants the opposite, right?

You shouldn't have to only be able to go through your network to get a job. We should judge based upon the same criteria every other damned job judges ...how well they did their last job.

> "how well they did their last job"

Right.... so if you have a mismatched role, that's it, you're done for, huh? Please.