No its not. Even Google has to change its hiring practices and move away with the current system, as it is creating a lot of noise. (i.e. hiring people that are good at leetcode, while great engineers are being left out just because they don't have time to practice stupid/pointless problems).
The weird thing is that now you even have small dipsh!t start ups that have even harder/longer interview process and questions than some of the large tech cos, which doesn't make sense.
It is a form a cargo cult following that it is detrimental to the whole industry.
1. Google is skiping phone screening for many (more experienced folks, as they found it was low value, and filtering out really good candidates. Yet many startups keep doing them.
2. Google is going towards a team hiring strategy, where specialized skills will be more valued, rather than the current 'generic leetcode' process.
3. I just went through an interview process of an old startup/not yet IPO company, and had to go through 10 stages!!
1. Recruiter screening
2. Phone Screening
3-8. A full round with 6 interviews (6 hrs long).
9. Final manager interview/round
10. Call for references, which a previous manager was a must
It was insane, like I was interviewing for a CEO and not just another IC Engineer role.
At some point, I started refusing companies that had extremely long processes. They almost are never worth it.
I am currently a hiring manager at Google looking for somewhat specialized skill sets, but all the candidates I see are still going through the usual rounds of coding interviews.
By using the process you do you end up with the most money hungry candidates with the specialized skills you require. You end up with more candidates from the bottom half of the resume pile disparate enough to spend hours weekly learning to game these types of interviews.
I went through a google interview process 10 years ago - only made it a couple rounds in and it did not go well. Started getting recruiter emails from them again recently; either they forgot that I suck, or they're getting desperate. In any case, I only do remote work now, so feh.
I dropped out of the process when a company asked me to get a reference from my current manager... for a job I had not yet left. I responded quizically and they amended it to "we'd make a conditional offer". I said I was uncomfortable leaving a job where I had (as I would hope most do) some guilt about putting them in a challenging position, wanting to keep a strong personal relationship and then saying "Hey, can you be a reference for my new (i.e. better) gig?" They couldn't udnerstand this perspective, so no thanks!
Old USA, and this is a famous tech, (YC Seeded, SF Bay Area), company (older, and semi-large, but not public yet).
I have had this 'references', but requiring a former manager was a first. The whole process had way more interviewing rounds than Meta and Google did. At least Google decided to skip the phone screen for me.
