Thread by @GergelyOrosz

One thing I heard very little talk is interviewer burnout at high-growth companies (both startups and big tech).

When Uber in Amsterdam doubled in six months, me and others were doing 4-5, sometimes 6 interviews per week.

It was hell. Several ppl developed "interview burnout."

An hour-long interview means:
- Preparation (ideally, 15 minutes. In practices, with so many: 5 minutes)
- The interview + potential overrun
- Writing up the scorecard, usually EOD (15-30 mins)
- Debrief (30-45 mins)

Doing 5 a week means ~12-15hrs/week & 15 context switches...

Needless to say, this certainly resulted in a worse candidate experience.

I remember someone joining Uber and coming up to me, saying hello. I was surprised.

"Have we met?" - I asked.

"You did my hour-long systems design interview." Oh, right.

I could not recall the memory..

To my manager's credit, he started to track interviews/week for everyone, and I took over this good habit for later.

We later set a maximum of 3 interviews/week, reducing it to 2/week later. We either said no to interviews or onboarded more people when we hit this limit.

A side-effect of so many interviews is I learned to interpret + touch type while listening to someone talk.

I now use this skill when interviewing people - by the end of a I have an outline of an article ready 😅

The skills you pick up when under pressure…!