I think a 30-60 min assessment should be enough, and maybe you can also list the salary?
Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
271–280 of 794 posts
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…
Seems like a good way to weed out people that are constantly taking time off to deal with kid issues.
Meh, I'll walk happily to the bank with my $400k compensation, while some company pats itself on the back over avoiding someone who spends time with their children LOL.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#273Pay more, and disclose it. Unless there's something that stands out about your company, no one is interested in going through the process to be offered mediocre pay. Or find something else to offer (say $5000 personal equipment + guaranteed attendance at AWS Reinvent or something similar)
Are you paying candidates for the take-home?
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…
> perhaps pay people to complete the assignments. Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax.
I've had companies get around this with gift cards. I did a application-project and got a $300 amazon card (I think). This can come out of someone's general budget and doesn't need accounting to be involved, and can also (plausibly) treated as a "thank you" by the applicant, not income.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#275I'm someone who is likely your target candidate and I just went through the hiring process so here are my thoughts without seeing an example ad post (which you should link to): - There are a ton of job openings right now in DevOps and similar roles. I spent about 2 days applying to as many as I could and that filled my entire next couple weeks with interviews/tasks. I went through interviews, received offers, and cho…
> I started out my career in the .NET world and ended up feeling trapped there and I'm not going back
Can you expound on why you felt that way?
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…
I don't know what exactly OP is assigning to applicants, but in my experience a "four hour" coding assignment can be completed in an hour or two - and they don't have to be consecutive hours, it just means four hours is your limit and you have a few days or a week to complete it in.
Yeah it doesn't matter. The truth is that when you give an assignment like this, you want me to invest up to four hours in it, while you don't want to invest a single minute of company engineer time watching me solve it. Basically, you're expecting more of me than you are willing to give yourself. That's a huge red flag.
That being said, even if it takes an hour, I still have to allocate 4 hours for it.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#277Four hour assignment is instant pass. My Rolodex is huge, I don’t need an exam. In god we trust, all others pay cash.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#278Where are you losing people in your hiring process? Are you getting no initial applications? Do you give the coding exercise but they never do it? Do you give an offer but they turn it down? There is a lot of speculation in this thread but you should have the data.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#279"Take-home technical assignment (~4h)" I've got 20 plus years of tech, I've been out of college since 1997 and you want to give a 4 hour homework assignment. If get you want to get a feel for someone's ability but this is more easily done by stating a problem during one of the interviews and asking the person "How would you approach this?" Listing for how they anticipate problems and tradeoffs.
Exactly. 25+ years in tech here too. When a company says "we're going to give you homework", that is a giant flashing sign that basically reads "we assume your resume is a lie, your references are lying for you (or we just aren't going to bother calling them), so we're going to test you". Hard pass.
Having been on the hiring side of things, I get far more information out of a conversation where I can ask for details about someone's background and experience.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd ha…
> As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. Don't forget to multiply that by however many companies they're interviewing at.
IME, the 4 hour assignment comes at the 'coding interview' stage, and most companies have a full day of interviews right after. Compared to companies with a one hour coding screen... by the time I even would get to the 4 hour assignment I likely already have three or four ful day interviews lined up