When returning to Google, the speaker found a peculiar rule: returning at the same senior level (L7) required no interview, but returning at a lower level (L6) might. The logic is that higher-level ICs write less code, so their skills could have atrophied, a counterintuitive hurdle for someone seeking a more hands-on role.
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An IC7 engineer found the senior staff role was mostly meetings and docs. He preferred coding, debugging, and mentoring, which aligned better with an E5/E6 level. He actively requested a demotion to improve his job satisfaction, challenging the conventional "up-or-out" career mentality in tech.
To avoid the trap of hiring 'good enough' people, make the interview panel explicitly state which current employee the candidate surpasses. This forces a concrete comparison and ensures every new hire actively raises the company's overall talent level, preventing a slow, imperceptible decline in quality.
With LLMs making remote coding tests unreliable, the new standard is face-to-face interviews focused on practical problems. Instead of abstract algorithms, candidates are asked to fix failing tests or debug code, assessing their real-world problem-solving skills which are much harder to fake.
Both Meta and Google lacked a formal process for an employee to voluntarily take a lower-level role. The speaker's request was a challenge for recruiters and HR because systems are designed for upward mobility. It required special exceptions and created suspicion, as it's an unconventional career move.
Experience alone no longer determines engineering productivity. An engineer's value is now a function of their experience plus their fluency with AI tools. Experienced coders who haven't adapted are now less valuable than AI-native recent graduates, who are in high demand.
Companies now expect "entry-level" candidates to have proven capabilities to build and develop complete systems from day one. They've stopped hiring for potential, effectively raising the new entry-level bar to what was previously considered a mid-level standard.
Since AI assistants make it easy for candidates to complete take-home coding exercises, simply evaluating the final product is no longer an effective screening method. The new best practice is to require candidates to build with AI and then explain their thought process, revealing their true engineering and problem-solving skills.
During PostRank's acquisition by Google, the entire team, including the founder, had to go through the full, standard interview panel. This wasn't a formality; it was Google's core process for vetting talent quality and determining individual leveling, separate from the negotiation for the company's IP and assets.
In a paradigm shift like AI, an experienced hire's knowledge can become obsolete. It's often better to hire a hungry junior employee. Their lack of preconceived notions, combined with a high learning velocity powered by AI tools, allows them to surpass seasoned professionals who must unlearn outdated workflows.
Senior executives are, by definition, excellent at interviewing, making the process unreliable for signal. Instead of relying on a polished performance, ask to see the 360-degree performance reviews from their previous company. This provides a more honest, ground-truth assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.
