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A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

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Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#121

Post by nsxwolf »

snoman wrote: post #109
GrinningFool wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoting you to help prevent your comment from reaching oblivion - I don't agree with you, but I think what you said is a common belief. The thing is, it's a vastly different kind of pressure. When I am coding as part of a job - by myself or with others - there is no inner monologue in the corner of my brain doing something like this: "Could do that or... no damn, that's O(n^2), damn I'm taking too long that one look…

Have you done pair programming before? Especially as you become more senior, the pressure to not look like an idiot in front of junior devs adds up fast. You have to learn, quickly, how to get over that kind of inner monologue, and just get to work. That kind of scenario happens to me daily.

I've never felt that pressure. Keep an air of confidence. Let them assume you know way more than they do about almost anything else. They'll feel like they're really shining in this moment, and impressing you, and growing in their role. Win win.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#122

Post by rnovak »

verbify wrote: post #87
mahyarm wrote: post #54

This is the coding exercise/homework interview. A bunch of place do this in some form or another, usually without paying the person, and as part of a series of interviews on an interview day. I myself don't like homework questions, mostly because I still have to do an onsite, and I only have so much time to do these things. They are usually much longer than 2 hours too. If you communicate upfront that it should only…

I agree, maybe I'm a poor programmer, but 2 hours seems incredibly unrealistic for: a) Creating a frontend form to submit movies b) Creating the database to store movies c) The 'search to find the movies' feature Maybe I could do it in two hours, but it'd be pretty bad, and there's no point showcasing poor quality code. My favourite was when they asked me to produce examples of things I had coded. Like any other crea…

Do you not use frameworks or anything?

CoC (Convention Over Configuration) solves most of the problem for you, since it's basically CRUD, and that is boilerplate stuff in pretty much any language.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#123

Post by JustSomeNobody »

nolite wrote: post #104
pauljaworski wrote: post #21

This is literally the only way I've gotten job offers. I'm a very competent programmer, but when I'm asked to solve some silly puzzle with someone staring over my shoulder, I freeze under pressure and can not think at all. Luckily not everyone thinks solving leetcode problems is a good way to hire.

I've been in situations together with clients deploying a product, them presenting it for their managers, orpreparing for a big demonstration, and something goes wrong due to some unforeseen environmental factor you couldn't have imagined or predicted, and breaks in a way you don't expect, despite the weeks of testing you've done. You've got your main client staring over your shoulder, arms crossed saying fix it, and…

This isn't the same kind of pressure, though. In this case you are familiar with the people, problem, code, etc.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#124

Post by Noseshine »

taneq wrote: post #111
usloth_wandows wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code monkeys may be able to get away with low pressure, minimally impactful projects.

You're getting hammered for this, but for some jobs you're absolutely right. If you can't handle being put on the spot for a simple interview question, how are you going to go when a production line is down and it's costing your client $100k/hr, and the foreman's standing looking over your shoulder wanting to know when it'll be working? Not all jobs give you all the time in the world on a test server without interrup…

See my longer comment above. Last paragraph:

An interview situation is much more adversarial: They are looking out for reasons not to hire you, you are competing with others for the job and only one can get it! No such consideration on the job, unless the work environment is completely and ridiculously broken. When are you ever in a work situation where several people work on competing solutions and everybody else but the person who made the winning one is fired? At work you are working together, and to solve a problem, not to week you out of the pool.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#125

Post by arielweisberg »

redwards510 wrote: post #14
lacampbell wrote: post #11

I wish more companies would give example problems to solve in your own time. I did one for a fairly large Australian company, and they rejected it. By the time they got round to letting me know (very long turn around time) I had already found other employment. But still, their reasons for rejecting my solution - the output was not formatted to their liking, and they didn't seem to know what an anonymous function was…

I don't mind homework, but companies need to start specifying their salary range up front. I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by getting through Tech Interview #1 or Homework #1, only to find out their max salary is laughable for San Francisco. "You should just find that out upfront" I hear you saying. Well that is not always possible. Recruiters either don't know the range, or lie about not knowing, or you…

100% This. I just wasted a bunch of time extracting an offer from one of AmaGooFaceFlix. Supposedly a top SV company with good compensation.

Got an awful offer to relocate to an area where 1/4 to 1/2 the house costs twice as much and I would no longer be able to work from home. I would also lose a significant portion of my life commuting. The offer was comparable to what I made working remote from Boston.

I don't mean comparable in the sense that they tacked on a CA bump to handle the cost. Comparable as in same money, but I would have to live in CA.

Ended up working remote for more somewhere else. Everyone's time wasted. I don't get it at all. It's not like they didn't know it was low.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#126

Post by closeparen »

paxy wrote: post #38

This is one of those "aha" solutions that people keep mentioning, but completely ignore how it would work in a non-ideal world. • What 2 hour project can you assign that would let the candidate go into enough depth for you to judge their code, design decisions, architecture skills? • If you give them more time (e.g. a weekend like in the article), is it still financially viable to the company, especially at $100/hr??…

• What 2 hour project can you assign that would let the candidate go into enough depth for you to judge their code, design decisions, architecture skills?

What whiteboard interview would?

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#127

Post by daxfohl »

donretag wrote: post #23

I very much like the paid aspect to this approach. Not that I need the extra money, I am already financially compensated enough by my current employment, but it reduces the chances for the interviewing company to flake out after such a programming assignment. By offering some form of compensation, they are investing in the candidate and will probably not ignore the candidate after this stage of the interview. My assu…

Excellent insight. I just finished a weekend project for a company (and really the onus was more on my wife who had to take the kids by herself all weekend), and all I got back was "nope".

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#128

Post by kguthrie »

peteretep wrote: post #71
redwards510 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind homework, but companies need to start specifying their salary range up front. I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by getting through Tech Interview #1 or Homework #1, only to find out their max salary is laughable for San Francisco. "You should just find that out upfront" I hear you saying. Well that is not always possible. Recruiters either don't know the range, or lie about not knowing, or you…

Recruiter here with a history of working as a developer > but companies need to start specifying their salary > range up front The costs outweigh the benefits for employers (encouraging existing employees to ask for more money, losing candidates who will accept significantly less but wouldn't apply at a lower range, etc) -- so don't hold your breath. > I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by > getting through…

> The costs outweigh the benefits for employers (encouraging existing employees to ask for more money, losing candidates who will accept significantly less but wouldn't apply at a lower range, etc) -- so don't hold your breath.

> State it upfront when you submit your application, rather than "find that out"

As an employee, I would say the costs of specifying my expected salary range upfront outweigh the benefits.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#129

Post by thinkmassive »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #98
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to not pay them. Most candidates will do this for free, as it's far better than traditional ineffective hiring practices. The thing is, there are always reasons why this method isn't viable. It's not till you try it that you notice huge gains.

That only makes sense if you're talking about people who are unemployed. As someone who is already employed full-time, I simply don't have the time to solve your problems for free just to see if you'd like to invite me over for an interview. I avoid these problems like the plague and very much prefer to whiteboard. If you pay me consultant rates, I can more easily justify the effort.

Even when I was between jobs a couple months ago I neglected to complete a take-home interview exercise, because the opportunity cost still exists. The advantage to interviewing in person is that the conversation goes both ways. I was interviewing daily, so I still valued my spare time for personal activities.

Edit: I most likely would have completed it if I were offered some type of compensation, even below market. They claimed it was an exercise and they wouldn't use it, but this was a startup with about 10 employees, and the deliverable was definitely something they could have used. That alone rubbed me the wrong way.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#130

Post by peteretep »

MAGZine wrote: post #103
peteretep wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiter here with a history of working as a developer > but companies need to start specifying their salary > range up front The costs outweigh the benefits for employers (encouraging existing employees to ask for more money, losing candidates who will accept significantly less but wouldn't apply at a lower range, etc) -- so don't hold your breath. > I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by > getting through…

> "I am interested in roles paying above my current salary of $xxx,xxx only, and am looking for an improvement on that to reflect my increased experience and the risk of moving roles" Are you really advocating that people disclose their salary to a recruiter, voluntarily? What terrible advice. "How to immediately throw away your best bargaining chip 101".

    > Are you really advocating that people disclose their
    > salary to a recruiter
Yes

    > What terrible advice
No

    > "How to immediately throw away your best bargaining
    > chip 101"
If they're an internal recruiter, they have a banding you can be paid in, and they don't really care where you fall in it. Decisions above that salary banding will need to be referred to the person whose budget you are.

If they're an external recruiter, they have no control at all and are incentivized to get you paid as much as they can, as they're paid on commission.

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