[ITriedThis]

Anonymous review:

I tried this process because it sounded pretty fun and unique.

One warning I have for anyone interested is that there are some big waiting times involved. I'll share my timeline. Some of the lags were on my end, but I was assured I had as much time as I needed.

  - Day 0-6 - First contact
  - Day 7 - Assigned work sample
  - Day 21 - Submitted work sample
  - Day 62 - Work sample results returned
  - Day 72 - Paid work day
  - Day 79 - Work day report completed
  - Day 85 - Final decision

Overall there were 21 days where they were waiting on me and 47 days where I was waiting on them. This seemed to me like a lot of waiting but maybe it is normal.

I probably worked 15 hours on the work sample, 8 hours on the work day, and 8 more hours putting together the report after the work day.

[grayfox]

Oof, bummer. Your experience is slower than average. We ran into a grading crunch when we launched our Enterprise product. When you submit your work to us, your submission is anonymous. Three engineers grade each submission.

Platform Engineers will experience the greatest wait periods. The other roles tend to be quicker.

Expected time-frame:

* Proceed from application to work sample: 24 hours.

* Complete work sample: Up to the candidate. We build them to take 2-6 hours.

* Grade work sample: 1-4 weeks.

* Schedule work day: 1 week.

* Receive decision: 2-5 days.

Thanks for taking our time to try the process out, it is appreciated. The method is constantly under improvement.

[levemi]

It's hard to see how you can have much success with this method. Current recruiting strategies involve getting from recruiter telephone call to final decision within 2 weeks, or 1 if possible. The faster you move on a candidate the more likely they end up working for you. At my current employer initial phone conversation, telephone interview and on site were all within 7 days.

[kasey_junk]

While I'd never argue its a "good" thing to have a slower pipeline, in the past when I had pipelines with timing similar to this companies, it didn't have extreme negative impacts on the success of the pipeline.

I don't know why that was, but my suspicion was that our highest qualified leads were those coming from candidates that were "happy enough" at their current positions to not be frantically searching.

As long as we seemed like a good place to work, and we did a good job of communicating why back logs were happening, we didn't lose many of the candidates we were most excited about.

[freek4iphone]

my experience is that I am mostly happy where I am, and I am not in market when I am Happy, but when I am not happy, I want to get out asap and wait times as high as a month is a real turn off

[tostitos1979]

It seems you truly care about feedback and the quality of your process. FWIW: I'm glad you are making these timelines transparent so people can decide whether the position is a good fit or not for them. As someone who is in the field for over a decade, it strikes me that this timeline is really long and you run the risk of getting people who couldn't get a better offer from another top employer faster. In addition, I personally have stopped engaging any hiring process that has a take home exam. My view is that my degrees and track record are sufficient evidence of my competence. Also, my time is really valuable .. so engaging with companies who are forced to waste their engineer's time as well as mine seems fair. Just one person's opinion :)

[stray]

I understand why you do but I don't really care how long it takes -- because I don't need a new job.

The one I have is just fine.

But I'll probably take a shot at this one because that "blind" process won't care how many trips around the sun I've made.

[35bge57dtjku]

* Grade work sample: 1-4 weeks.

That's heinous.

[bogomipz]

Agreed. That's kind of ridiculous. I don't understand this whole "we are not interested in speaking with you as a real human being but 'here', here is some homework for you to do' Seems really silly.

[kafkaesq]

It has its tradeoffs. The point is, if they're going to go that route the assignment should be short and sweet, and the response should be quick. Especially since we can pretty much tell, like, right away whether we like someone else's code or not, now can't we?

Basic, common-sense considerations which a lot of places don't seem to appreciate, unfortunately.

And to not respond at all is just a gratuitous insult.

[mrkurt]

He's understating what he's done a bit. We're vastly more consistent with candidate feedback than we used to be, largely due to tooling + process changes that grayfox has put in place. It's improving, we'd like to turn evals around in <1 week for everyone.

[samstave]

Apologies,but this process feels really lame. I know that many companies do it, (like atlassian, for example) - but it feels as though one is interviewing for a slavery post. Let me explain:

You hire people. People have lives. But this type of process just illustrates that you're a Corp and not really having the best interest of the people you're hiring. The reason I state this is because corporations don't give a fuck about anyone who under performs and they shall fire anyone at will. You're not a family, you're (the corp) not going to put in nearly as much effort as the candidate did to get the job, in order to keep said candidate.

You make them take many weeks to apply and get the job, but even for trivial reasons (we lost that customer/contract or we don't have the funding) you'll kick said candidate to the curb without a second thought.

It's a one sided position in the favor of the corp, and for that reason I would never choose to work at any company with this method for hiring - and especially a company that has this example of how long that fucking process takes.

The point is, you think you're looking for "the best fit" but you're actually alienating people who would be a good fit.

[spyrosg]

Of course they're a 'corp', and of course they're looking after their own interests over yours. Looking after your interests is your own job, no one else's.

The employer-employee relationship is partly a fight. The best you can hope is that it be a gentleman's one, with no hits under the belt, rather than an all-out brawl or backstabbing.

grayfox is showing you cards that the average employer would hold back and would only release at gunpoint: salary range, internal details of hiring process, how long the process takes... seems this is gentleman's territory for now.

The long process selects for people who are happy with their jobs, which is the situation of most experienced and skilled people. I have seen worse.

Edit: I'm realising this is more aggresive than I like. I'll leave it as is, with the addition that I once thought like you, and this here is the state of mind I've come to have now that I've been on both sides of the recruiting fence.

[samstave]

That's a fair reply - thanks.

I still don't personally like it, but I'd say my bias is mostly that I am older and have kids...

I've been fucked over by so many companies in my 20+ years in Silicon Valley that I do not trust any HR team or "vision of a unicorn family"...

But I will say that this model would look ideal to any millennial person who wants to work at a "progressive" tech company/start-up

But said company shall become as ruthless as any as they mature.

Work is not your family. Either knock it out of the park, or get fucked. Success in our industry is binary.

[cookiecaper]

I sympathize with you and also dislike long evaluation times. I also have kids and a life outside of work. Personally I think 6 hours is too long to design a work sample around but it's not that bad, I've done work samples (early in my career) that took 3 days and that I would've billed out for $3k when I became a consultant later.

In grayfox's timeline, things really seem to hang up around the time it takes to evaluate the sample, asking for 1-4 weeks. This is another point in favor of minimalist work samples (smaller sample = less time required to review). IMO work samples should be a simple problem where the candidate demonstrates his basic awareness of the core skills needed to perform the daily work and the bulk of the hiring process should occur in a discussion between parties.

Anyway, I'd suggest that they tighten up this process by a) minimizing their work samples and b) making it priority to review work samples as they come in, which means adding more resources for this purpose if necessary. It shouldn't take more than a week to hear back at any step of the process.

[sillysaurus3]

Minimalist work sample tests don't work. The work sample test is the test. There is no other criteria involved in whether to hire someone other than their performance on the work sample test. Otherwise it's not a work sample test; it's an intro.

This is a step forward for our industry. For those who don't like it, there are plenty of jobs where you can do the traditional whiteboard hazing.

[mrkurt]

Agreed with (b), we've gotten lots more consistent and turnaround on all the evals has improved substantially (largely because of the person you're all responding to).

[avip]

For balance: I also tried this process because it sounded fun and unique. Got the assignment within 1 day, all inquiries answered within single day.

I still think the process is fun and uniq, so I'll apply again now.