Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Fair enough. Keep in mind, the appeal of San Francisco before all of this happened wasn't that it is vibrant. Different cities can appeal for different reasons. San Francisco, when people spoke of it affectionately, was the cool grey city of love. It wasn't only that, or always as good as that, but that was the appeal. The appeal of San Francisco is that it was an urban place with a notably less frenetic vibe. I'd also say that San Francisco is actually considerably more urban than almost every other city outside NY in the United States, even though, somewhat paradoxically, it has less of the urban vibrancy you describe. Here's a link to some urban density maps from a discussion forum. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=204523 The first thing you'll see is that in the US, it's New York and everywhere else. But of everywhere else, San Francisco has notably more widespread high urban density than the other US cities you mentioned. It's enough that you actually can live that life in SF, even if it is somewhat limited. This appealed to a lot of people. It actually still does - or would, if people could afford it. Something odd happened to San Francisco. I grew up here in the 70s and 80s, and San Francisco wasn't ever really known as an alpha city for a career. Living here was a softer version of living in, say, New Orleans. Nobody says "I hate living in New Orleans, but I have to be here because of the amazing career options in finance/tech/entertainment."…

Your frustration is justified. However, there is no flawless interview process. You could try and read this for more context: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2015/6/10/developer-interviews-are-broken-an… Having been on the other side for quite a long time, I can assure you that despite best efforts by some very well meaning and smart people, this is the only process that has stuck around (and is still growing). That's because it's the most convenient method to interview at scale. When a company is very small and/or only hiring one or two engineers a quarter, choice of interviewing method doesn't really matter a whole lot. You will have enough time to interview people and any method you follow will give you a decent candidate. But when you are a coveted company with a strong candidate pipeline and are tasked with hiring 25 engineers a quarter (which was the case with the leadership team I was a part of), or thousand at Google scale, you need a process that is fast, efficient and convenient. You don't necessarily need a process that's best for candidates; as long as the process filters in enough candidates, and doesn't waste much of your team's time, you're good. There are some other reasons this process has stuck around, but that's one main reason. I don't see it going away any time soon.

Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-join-a-start… Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often being critical of big tech, when describing their past experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to ‘name drop’ the brand-name companies they’ve worked for. Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my resume in the trash was because they couldn’t recognize the no-name startups I’ve worked at… Luckily I’m at a household name company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I work at.

1. https://www.gayle.com/career-advice 2. Book - "The tech resume inside out" 3. Youtube - "Create Your Resume for Google: Tips and Advice" 4. Science of job search (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/20200513195903/https://talent.works/

Gayle Laakmann has offered coaching for acquisition interviews for a few years now. So apparently it is a thing. http://www.gayle.com/blog/2014/02/05/now-offering-acquisition-consulti…

There's a few perspectives here, not specifically for internships: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-candidates-hom… I think the company should be very clear about the maximum amount of time you are expected to spend on tasks as part of the application process. There are some cases where companies do this kind of thing to get candidates to do unpaid work. From your perspective, perhaps the most useful and actionable thing you can do might be to get more offers for internships / work from a range of other companies (easier said than done, of course). Ideally offers not just from startups -- larger orgs, despite their other faults, can have a more professional approach to hiring people.

About that Amanda Blum article: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-the-surface-that-…

If you read just that, okay fine. But if you're going to the front page of the website, you'd also see PROGRAMMER there. (Way to, by the way, cherry pick examples. Why not use this page? http://www.gayle.com/projects/ Oh, right, because it doesn't prove the straw man you'd built.) But that wasn't the example referenced. The example referenced about doing a talk on coding topics (data structures, algorithms, code) for an hour and having some ask about my "prior" role as a recruiter.

Ok, something about this story seems a bit amiss. Gayle Laakmann is complaining about people thinking she is a recruiter, supposedly because she's a woman. Hmm, I'm curious - who is this person? How does she portray herself? Are there any other possible reasons people might view her as someone working in the general HR space? http://www.gayle.com/consulting/ I can't imagine why a consultant who helps with "Technical Interview/Recruiting Consulting" (as well as "Acquisition/Acqui-hire interview prep") would be perceived as a recruiter. Definitely due to gender.