Most places aren't so much looking to make sure you know things, they're looking to see _how_ you do things.
Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
31–40 of 68 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#32You'd think it would be possible to create some sort of certification system so that we could prove we are clever and can code once rather than having to prove it again and again.
Between having to endure a "stupid test" and have to shelve a wad of cash just to get a very expensive piece of paper, give me the stupid test every single time. At least the people doing the stupid tests are checking for stuff that is relevant to them instead of wasting time with pedantic aspects of a programming language or tech stack.
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Between having to endure a "stupid test" and have to shelve a wad of cash just to get a very expensive piece of paper, give me the stupid test every single time.
Why not go fot the idea that one pays the cost in advance, but as soon as you get hired, the future employer will repay the costs to you?
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#33You'd think it would be possible to create some sort of certification system so that we could prove we are clever and can code once rather than having to prove it again and again.
Between having to endure a "stupid test" and have to shelve a wad of cash just to get a very expensive piece of paper, give me the stupid test every single time. At least the people doing the stupid tests are checking for stuff that is relevant to them instead of wasting time with pedantic aspects of a programming language or tech stack.
> At least the people doing the stupid tests are checking for stuff that is relevant to them instead of wasting time with pedantic aspects of a programming language or tech stack.
I've done a lot of interviews, and many of the questions have been very generic, with nothing whatsoever to do with the job I was interviewing for. I've reversed a lot of linked lists in my time, and I was once asked to solve FizzBuzz.
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#34I think the only interviewing process that really works is to invite the candidate to work for one day, side by side with their future team. This also gives the candidate a glimpse into the culture behind the HR marketing bs.
Agree. We just recently went through a failed employee hire (even though we had a mini project for the candidate) and in the retrospective we came to the conclusion that our whole team was first hired as a contractor and then later converted to an employee. So we’re going to just keep doing that from now on.
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#35[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#36Adults find their way through the world as it is, not how they want it to be. Grow up. When you've earned a bit of freedom from the stupid gatekeepers, you can do it your own way (entrepreneurship, networking, contacting, etc). For now, pay your dues.
Personally I can't stand these tests either. I normally complete them fine. However I've been to job interviews where they force me to code live in front of several people and I couldn't get half a line of code out before one of them will chip in with a "suggestion" breaking my train of thought. The code they want me to write is some algorithm that they have expected you to memorise. I normally leave the interview fr…
However I've been to job interviews where they force me to code live in front of several people and I couldn't get half a line of code out before one of them will chip in with a "suggestion" breaking my train of thought. The code they want me to write is some algorithm that they have expected you to memorise.
This could actually be the test in itself. There seems to be a substantial contigent who believe that this is what a collaborative programming environment looks like, and they might actively want to select against people with a more shut-the-door-and-work-through-the-problem mindset. I'd argue that a pair programming exercise is probably better than whiteboarding-with-interruptions, but setting that up well is more work for the interviewer.
Edit: completely messed up the quoting in original!
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#37There are lots of companies that don't do these kinds of tests.
It's been a while since I've done a job search, but several people I know have done them recently. And they've all found that some companies - mainly big tech companies, along with tech startups of all kinds - use these kinds of tests heavily.
Other companies that hire lots of developers - like banks, insurance companies, and manufacturers - don't seem to use these tests nearly as much. They'll sit down with you, talk about your experience, and the systems you've built.
At this point, if they like you, they'll often give you a small test project to do. And when I say small, I mean small - probably an hour at most. And while these projects can be annoying, these companies seem to give it after they've interviewed you and they're serious about moving forward. I don't mind this approach. There are lots of people out there working as developers who write truly awful code, so I think it's fair of them to want to see something from you before making an offer.
Working as a developer for a non-tech company might sound awful, but some of them are actually really great places to be. From what I've heard from devs I've talked to, many of these old school companies are actually really progressive technically, pay their developers well, and treat them with plenty of respect. And they tend to very sane work hours too. If your manager sees you still in the office at 5:05pm on a Friday, they'll probably tell you to go home. :)
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#38Adults find their way through the world as it is, not how they want it to be. Grow up. When you've earned a bit of freedom from the stupid gatekeepers, you can do it your own way (entrepreneurship, networking, contacting, etc). For now, pay your dues.
Personally I can't stand these tests either. I normally complete them fine. However I've been to job interviews where they force me to code live in front of several people and I couldn't get half a line of code out before one of them will chip in with a "suggestion" breaking my train of thought. The code they want me to write is some algorithm that they have expected you to memorise. I normally leave the interview fr…
Lack of controlling for anxiety is probably the biggest contributor to false negatives... At least you got the offer though.
On the interviewer side of the table, I had a candidate and there was a stretch of silence after they confirmed they understood the problem which I interrupted with "Is there anything I can help clarify?" (I can't observe internal state!) They asked me if I could be quiet for 5 minutes while they thought about the problem. That's fine, I did so. Maybe you can ask the same thing next time if interruptions come too frequently? If they don't respect the request to shut up, that's a useful signal to not work there too.
Lack of interviewer experience can also account for some of it. Unless everyone in a room with more than one interviewer has their turn at questions, I'd expect the silent ones to either be shadowing so they can interviewer, or be overseeing a former shadow take the reigns. I think an interviewer needs to do as little as 10 of them to run the style range of people who need some quiet time to silently think, to people who ask lots of questions, type some, ask more, type, to people who easily vocalize all their thought processes while typing things; the interviewer may also importantly see that despite the style differences the time to get to the same place (if they get there at all) doesn't vary by much...
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#39Unless I have copious free time (and I don't) then I'm not going to browse 130 Github repositories and wouldn't known from Adam if they are forks or not (unless they were all created close together). Thus I cannot trust the metrics from them either LinkedIn, blogs - not exactly reliable sources of information given they are what you are saying about yourself. We've had candidates list the number of Instagram likes th…
Would you say then an online persona doesn’t matter much? I think about this a bit as an undergraduate hoping to land a gig in a few years. I could care less about having a technical blog or a tailored Github/Gitlab account contributing to open source or having an LinkedIn account, I just want to build cool stuff and become a good programmer and not have to worry about showcasing that on the internet like a clown in a circus. But on the other hand, it seems like companies look for that kind of stuff or at least give you the upper hand for it.
Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?
#40They also test conscientiousness.
But, yeah, having just gone through a round of interviews I think there's a big range of quality at work in these, and passed on some companies because of how irrelevant their prompts were or unstandardized their processes were.