Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#71

Post by cholantesh » Tue, May 23, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

posixplz wrote: post #29

vorpalhex wrote: post #15

I've stopped interviewing with companies that do this. Take home interview "challenges" take up a lot of time and resources. Most of the ones I've gotten have been prototypes/MVP type deals. + You're asking me to spend almost a week of my time, for free + I have similar examples on my Github + I'm not usually allowed to share the solution Sorry, but if you can't look at my significant github profile and figure out if…

What if it's a coding challenge that is purposely timeboxed to 4-6 hours? At my previous job, we asked applicants to write a piece of software that would model the org chart for any given employee, enumerating their hierarchical relationships as well as their peer relationships. We may have thrown in an additional complexity or two, but we also removed a lot of requirements (no i/o or database, no user interface; we…

This seems fair; the last time I did a take home I was asked to build a complete application (full stack) in 2-3 hours. At the time I viewed this as a failing on my part. In retrospect, I feel this is unreasonable on its face. Through the grapevine I've heard that the position has not been filled more than a year later, so I can't be the only one.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#72

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 23, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #44

yladiz wrote: post #30

As some other commenters mention, and I feel the same way: if a company asks you to do this, they're asking for too much and I think it's fair to tell them that that is an unacceptable amount of work for an interview. I can kind of see this as fair only if you are going in as a more experienced dev but with no work examples, but in that case, it's simple enough to contact references to verify previous work and positi…

I understand what you're getting at here - the request/requirement to jump through hoops. But I don't think it's unreasonable for a potential employer to want to gauge technical ability, especially given the amount of people who graduate from degree factories without any ability to actually code or do any sort of technical work. Usually these positions, and this field in general, pay well so I would think that people…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#73

Post by geofft » Tue, May 23, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

Tinyforebrain wrote: post #70

geofft wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company thinks that their time is about 20 times more valuable than my time, why would they stop thinking that once I start working there? If a company thinks that the interview process is "soul-crushing", why wouldn't they also think that of code review, mentoring employees, etc.? Isn't it also true that one-on-ones are a bunch of time that the manager is spent with lesser coders, and it's a time-saving measure…

There is usually a few HR hours put into every interview, plus you are adding 1-6 more people at various levels of the company who might be a part of the interview. Most of the people doing the interview don't have any real training in it, and don't do it as part of their job. They may do ten full interviews to hire one person(Or more). So yes, their time is more valuable because more people and more hours are involv…

Isn't the point of interviewing that you gain an entirely new person on your team, who is contributing some 2000 hours per year to your team and hopefully staying for at least a few years?

Even if you measure in hours and assume all hours are equal (i.e., you're hiring people equal to you, not people better / more skilled in certain areas than you), the cost of hiring a person is about three orders of magnitude smaller than the expected benefit. Interviewing (and doing a good job of it) is roughly the most impactful thing you can do at a job.

If your company doesn't believe this, doesn't train people in interviews, and doesn't define interviewing to be part of people's jobs, I really have no idea why I should think you're well-managed. (I'm entirely serious. I don't know where you work, but you should get out before it breaks your brain further. I'm still recovering from the ways my previous employer broke my brain in regards to how software shops should work, and it's been a long while since I worked there.)

If your company doesn't define interviewing to be a part of the job description, do they define code review? Training? Mentorship? Management? Or is everyone expected to just write code?

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#74

Post by rhizome » Tue, May 23, 2017, 11:07 PM UTC

uffjedn wrote: post #58

rhizome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a 4hr test app to model a particular set of scheduling requirements over a calendar year. I could not finish it satisfactorily in time, which told me that either I was a crap programmer (possible) or that there was some common algo for this purpose that I didn't know. Of course these two reasons may be the same one: crap programmer.

There is a third one where the deadline is knowingly set too low to see how you deal with time trouble.

That thought did occur to me, but they denied me anyway, so :shrug:.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#75

Post by tptacek » Wed, May 24, 2017, 2:22 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #61

WorldMaker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4-6 hours is still half to two-thirds of a business day. If I'm actively employed, I have to schedule a vacation day for that or lose precious work/life balance time. Even if I'm not actively employed at the time, I know the ancient wisdom is to spend your job search as if it were a full time job, but that isn't advice meant to mandate individual candidate employers independently force you into an unpaid, overworked…

Such a company is also selecting for the sort of candidates who have 4-6 hours free, either those who have no responsibilities at home and are willing to spend an evening or weekend on it, or those who have enough ability to take a vacation day and tell their boss "I'm going to be at home doing nothing." You basically need to do that for the in-person anyway, and there's a limit on how often you can do that. How many…

This works --- really well! --- when the homework meaningfully offsets both the in-person interview and phone screens. When it doesn't, and is just a ceremony the hiring team performs on most (it's never all in these cases), it's abusive.

The problem is that a lot of the teams assigning these projects don't really believe in the projects and haven't put the effort in to deriving a rubric they can use to reliably condense candidate responses into hiring signals. Without that work, and without a process built in good faith to use that work, this is just cargo cult management.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#76

Post by wglb » Wed, May 24, 2017, 5:23 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #61

WorldMaker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4-6 hours is still half to two-thirds of a business day. If I'm actively employed, I have to schedule a vacation day for that or lose precious work/life balance time. Even if I'm not actively employed at the time, I know the ancient wisdom is to spend your job search as if it were a full time job, but that isn't advice meant to mandate individual candidate employers independently force you into an unpaid, overworked…

Such a company is also selecting for the sort of candidates who have 4-6 hours free, either those who have no responsibilities at home and are willing to spend an evening or weekend on it, or those who have enough ability to take a vacation day and tell their boss "I'm going to be at home doing nothing." You basically need to do that for the in-person anyway, and there's a limit on how often you can do that. How many…

This works very well. We use it throughout the company, more so in some places. I have done this with security engineers, and to my pleasant surprise, with compliance candidates as well. It has exceeded my expectations.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#77

Post by julik » Thu, May 25, 2017, 12:30 PM UTC

It is ubiquitous, but we normally do a slightly different thing:

* The thing you do is a very narrow fix / feature * ...on our open-source library, so you get the credit and visibility * ...with a very defined scope * ...which will usually force you to Google/SO search quite a bit.

Since we are not remote, for way-overseas candidates it's pretty much the only thing we could do. We use it to assess fizzbuzz as well as style and the ability to contribute to an existing project, as well as communication and accepting/giving critique.

It's not very easy to establish - the company needs to have open-source presence in the first place. It's certainly harder than just having someone do a throwaway full-stack app. But for us it did work very well. The best filter was not even people doing something "not well enough" but people just agreeing to take the assignment and then disappearing.