After a WIRED story last month described the sometimes ludicrous challenges heaped on tech workers applying for engineering jobs, some readers shared their own experiences with excessive test assignments and interviews.
The responses in social posts and direct messages to WIRED underscore how the tech industry is undergoing a cultural change—and a maturation. The companies of the colloquial Silicon Valley are overcorrecting for pandemic-era hiring, adjusting to high interest rates, and yielding to shareholder pressure to make their businesses more efficient.
The independent job tracker Layoffs.fyi estimates that more than 400,000 tech jobs have been shed since the start of 2022. In the past two weeks alone, Amazon, Cisco, Expedia Group, Rivian, and the dating app Bumble announced more job cuts.
Broadly, the US job market is still strong, with the unemployment rate at a low 3.7 percent. Tech sector employment is tighter still, with industry group CompTIA calculating it as 2.3 percent based on US government data. But the layoffs have rattled an entire industry of people who for years fed the promises of growth and progress. As a former Google executive told WIRED: “The balance of power has shifted back to employers, which has resulted in hiring getting tougher.”
Data from a startup that helps job-seeking coders suggests that one tech company in particular, Meta, has been using its moment of leverage for aggressive salary negotiation tactics—although the company says its practices are fair. And hiring experts warn that companies using laborious assignments and hardball tactics in recruitment could be counterproductive, by deterring strong candidates and adding new biases to the process.
John Moore, a technical curriculum developer and instructional designer, wrote in to say that it’s not just software engineers or programmers who are facing days-long homework assignments for job interviews. “These ‘prompts,’ as they are euphemistically called, are no joke—they are like work projects. It’s like being on American Idol trying to land a job in the tech industry in 2024.”
Demetrios C., a longtime software engineer, wrote to say that he doesn’t believe being asked to cobble together a complete app during the hiring process was too tall of an ask. (This was one of the assignments a coder cited in WIRED’s previous story on hiring.) However, he agrees that companies are taking advantage of the recent waves of layoffs to be extra diligent about who they hire.
Now in a managerial role, C. says he sometimes has to plow through 80 to 100 resumes and interviews to find one really good senior-level candidate. “This is what companies are looking for these days (best keyboard bang for the buck) and I can only imagine the numbers are worse than ever (what with fake and bloated résumés, recruiting waste and abuse, and AI),” he says.
Engineer Marc Love wrote on Threads, “It’s ridiculous. I get that things are competitive and that finding work is going to be difficult, but a lot of companies aren’t even treating candidates with basic common courtesy and respect like timely and clear communication.” Dan Nguyen, a data scientist, Threaded that he is less bothered by the stiff competition for jobs right now than what he sees as rudeness from potential employers. “The table will turn at some point. What is not ok is some people behave badly and are just rude because they think they have more of an upper hand in this brief moment.”
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