Bock says the shift is partly as a result of mass layoffs; employers are extra capable of flex their muscle tissue in a tighter labor market. However there’s additionally a broader psychological shift. “After years of tech staff being pampered, of ‘convey your complete selves to work’ and ‘work from anyplace,’ executives are actually overcompensating within the different route,” he says.
The upshot for job-seeking coders is confusion, tradition shock, and hours of labor completed free of charge. Buzz Andersen, who has held engineering roles at Apple, Sq., and Tumblr, just lately hit the job market once more. He famous on Threads final month, “Tech trade job interviews have, of late, reached a brand new stage of absurdity.”
Coding Olympics
Final yr an estimated 260,000 staff have been let go throughout 1,189 tech firms, based on a live-update layoff tracker referred to as Layoffs.fyi. And the layoffs have continued into 2024, forcing a glut of expertise into an already aggressive market. An estimated 41,000 tech staff have been laid off thus far this yr.
In fact, not all the tech staff shedding their jobs are engineers. Engineers are sometimes nonetheless seen as a privileged class inside tech firms and the broader financial system. Sometimes they’re the highest-paying class of staff under the C-suite in tech firms. Aline Lerner, who runs a preferred interviewing observe platform referred to as Interviewing.io, believes that the whole variety of engineering layoffs final yr was nearer to fifteen,000.
Information from Interviewing.io backs up job seekers’ claims that the bar for technical interviewing has gotten quantifiably increased. Interviewing.io connects individuals prepared to pay $225 or extra for interview observe with skilled hiring managers. These managers conduct mock interviews after which present detailed suggestions. Over the previous eight years Lerner’s firm has recorded 1000’s of grades from these encounters. Interview topics are graded not simply on their technical interviews, but in addition behavioral interviews, which deal with problem-solving and communication.
Since 2022, scoring a “thumbs up” on a technical interview has gotten harder by an estimated 22 %, Lerner says. “It’s a really very clear development,” she says. “And it’s not simply interviews at a number of Massive Tech firms. It’s occurring throughout many tech firms.”
Acquired a Tip?
On the app Blind, an nameless gossip app the place the reality may be elastic however trade developments typically emerge, some tech staff say interviews really feel “virtually not possible.” One person wrote in early February that the bar for getting employed at one of many Massive Tech companies is “two LeetCode medium/arduous [tests] inside 40 minutes and most of my mates failed,” referring to an oft-used on-line programming platform.
One other employee complained on Blind that making ready for LeetCode questions requires “lots of of hours” of preparation: “Why are we anticipated to do the coding Olympics for each firm that desires to interview you?” An engineer who turned a supervisor at Dropbox and is now a director within the telecom trade tells WIRED that in his personal previous job searching expertise, he felt compelled to gather and write over 100 pages of coding materials and potential questions earlier than interviews.
