It turns out interviewing was broken long before I learned the trade, and despite the many attempts to band-aid it, it’s still broken today. It has managed to survive in spite of that. But it is finally dying on its own. People are a bit unclear on what’s next, so we’ll talk about some of our options.
But it’s not an easy path I bring you, no silver bullet. Remember that, grasshopper, when you get to the end and come back to yell at me.
Two Big Dogs
Back at Amazon, we had this elite group, the Bar Raisers, which I hear is similar to a role at Microsoft they call As-Appropriate (AA). In both cases, a trusted interviewer (the BR/AA) is assigned to every interview loop, and has the power to veto any unqualified people the interviewers try to sneak through. I was a BR, and also part of “Bar Raisers Core”: a small group Bezos and Dalzell tasked with defining the BR role itself, choosing new bar raisers, training them, and reporting on the program’s efficacy.
The BR and AA roles are a tacit acknowledgement that you can’t trust your interview teams to make good hiring decisions. Which even more broadly, suggests that if every single interview loop needs a babysitter, then it is a flawed process. But we were doing our best.