I entered the software industry as a developer about 4 years ago, and I have been running interviews for the past 2 years or so. Interview hell is all I have ever known.
Could you elaborate on how things worked differently in the past? I legitimately have no idea what a developer interview "loop" would look like without 5 to 7 interviews, but I desperately hope it can exist.
From 1983 to 2008 my interviews were basically, talk to some one who's doing the hiring. No testing. Get hired. Most of those companies were relatively small. All but 2 were under 50 people. Only 1 of the 12 or so even asked any technical questions to see if I knew anything.
Also, none of them were specialized. No one asked are you a Front End Programmer? Back End Programmer? UI Programmer? Graphics Programmer? etc... It was just "programmer", do whatever is programmers do.
That part today I really dislike. The teams have gotten giant and you often have to choose some speciality position.
I also noticed this same pattern. Until roughly 2008 - 2010 or so, interviews were a much more informal style. You'd meet the team, get asked some basic technical questions, they'd take you to lunch, etc. If you had some sort of recommendation (inside referral) it was even more informal.
2010-ish is when I first encountered the "code on a whiteboard", and later "code in a shared doc" style of interview. One was basically 5 hours non-stop. Pure hell.
The thing I've noticed is that there's not many group interviews any more. So it's a lot of telling the same story 5 times to 5 different people.
I think 3 interviews is probably reasonable. A leetcode style tech screen, a design one, and then a general work style/culture fit interview.
Also, I don't know why more companies don't record interviews. Probably a legal and/or HR thing. But it'd definitely cut down on the need for repeated questions.
Apple used to do group interviews. If I recall I did two rounds of them in size interviews. One had two people in one then the other was the whole team of about 6 with the manager. There might have been a third group, can't recall. It was fun though.
1st phone call directly with the hiring manager, after the resume has been screened by the hiring manager. 2nd meeting in person, a few questions, maybe a take home task. Decision made in 24-48 hrs.
> Could you elaborate on how things worked differently in the past?
Here's how it worked for me 25 years ago (in France).
Two-three informal interviews to make sure I wasn't too weird, and got offers purely based on my resume. I remember some companies had personality tests but never got any technical questions.
Sure. Usually contacted by internal HR or a recruiting firm (depending on the position, recruiting firms use to be -almost- exclusively c-suite or very, very specific specialty niche positions. Internal HR would just setup the HM call, maybe ask some clarifying questions (education, certs, etc) to make sure it all adds up.
First interview was with the hiring manager, sometimes in person sometimes over the phone. In person was a good sign because if it was a technical position you'd usually have the senior join the meeting. Goes well, job offer within 2 business days.
Second interview was generally exclusively for highly technical OR executive leadership (depending on position). Again, it goes well, job offer within 2 business days.
If there was another stronger candidate and the prospect was side-lined but later reconsidered there might be one last interview if enough time had gone by to put a face to the name again.
I wouldn't say it's a thing of the past in any sense. One of the first things you should ask or be informed of when you make contact is how the interview etc process looks like. When it's bogus, politely decline the position and move on. There are plenty of good companies out there (unless you're in a tight spot in which case any job is better than no job). For context, my latest hiring experience was a call for initial contact, two video meetings and then some emails about the minute details if I remember correctly.
Another Atlassian here... I'll vouch for everything here, but I'll add on one thing.
> It's not always visible from the outside, but Atlassian now has swathes of valuable internal tooling, built with love by developers who were invested in solving their own productivity problems.
The flip side of this is that we have countless nonfunctional tools because the core maintainer has either left the company, switched to another project, or simply does not have the time to adequately adapt to new user/company requirements.
We do a great job encouraging innovation through 20% time, but we don't seem to be great at supporting these projects past the initial "hack it together" stage. The process can still be incredibly rewarding, but it is not without some shortcomings.
I wonder if any other companies implementing 20% time experience similar problems.
Could you elaborate on how things worked differently in the past? I legitimately have no idea what a developer interview "loop" would look like without 5 to 7 interviews, but I desperately hope it can exist.