A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by GrinningFool » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:51 AM UTC

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 do pair fairly regularly -- for whatever reason, the concerns don't manifest the same way as in interviews. I can't think of anything in my experience (professional or personal) that's comparable.

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

#182

Post by stutsmansoft » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:52 AM UTC

I'm a huge fan of the "demo project" interview. It really allows me to shine where whiteboard gameshows don't.

I don't need or expect payment, either. If I'm legitimately interested in the company, I am happy to spend a couple of hours showing them my stuff. Hell I'm proud to do it. I do enjoy programming, after all.

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

#183

Post by RandallBrown » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:53 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #170

This interviewing method suffers from the tragedy of the commons. It works great when almost nobody is doing it because if most of your interviews are traditional it's easy to squeeze in 1-2 homework assignments a week. However, it would be totally unworkable if most companies were to adopt it. Try finishing a dozen homework programs during a typical job search.

If it's supposed to be 2 hours of work, then it wouldn't be too big of an issue.

Even a simple phone screen is going to eat up 2 hours of my day, much less the full day interviews that most big tech companies do.

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

#184

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:56 AM UTC

eranation wrote: post #33

This is great, except the over the weekend part. I have a wife and kids, I rather be with them than solve (even paid) challenges. I rather take half a day off, solve it right there in the environment and team that will potential work with you. I would encourage candidates to also reach out with questions during the challenge and see how they communicate ideas and react to suggestions. Other than that, completely agre…

Are you imaging an employer too dumb to allow you to suggest an alternative format that fits your schedule? If they say "no", you've learned enough to not want to work for them.

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

#185

Post by morgante » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:56 AM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #183

morgante wrote: post #170

This interviewing method suffers from the tragedy of the commons. It works great when almost nobody is doing it because if most of your interviews are traditional it's easy to squeeze in 1-2 homework assignments a week. However, it would be totally unworkable if most companies were to adopt it. Try finishing a dozen homework programs during a typical job search.

If it's supposed to be 2 hours of work, then it wouldn't be too big of an issue. Even a simple phone screen is going to eat up 2 hours of my day, much less the full day interviews that most big tech companies do.

In practice, I rarely see assignments that are actually 2 hours. Even this article suggests giving candidates the weekend.

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

#186

Post by majormajor » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #180

majormajor wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the paid part at all. If I'm working full time, $200 isn't going to swing me one way or the other on deciding if I want to do your homework assignment. And if you come up with a ten-hour problem, then we're talking more of a chunk of cash, but you're also asking me to burn a lot of free time. I'd much rather travel and meet you in person and do stuff there, but if you don't have the budget for it,…

>I don't understand the paid part at all. There's a concept around a lot of preliminary engagements between two entities called "skin in the game." The idea is that when something is completely free the other party will take advantage of it without any real serious intent to follow through on anything. Mostly this seems a reaction to the homework-type assignments where candidates are expected to spend a lot of time o…

I get this in theory, but the numbers sound too low for that to make a difference still.

I could run 50 candidates through a $200 problem for 10K. That's still a pretty large mismatch between "amount of work done by the candidate" and "amount of work done by the interviewer," and is cost-of-doing-business money for recruiting for a lot of companies currently.

Compare that to the cost of me flying people out (which is still done in this approach), or even the cost of spending an hour of mine or someone good on my team's time on the phone with them.

I guess it's just down to the difference between trying to hire fresh-out-of-college (or still in) free-time-to-spare junior devs and experienced people. That's actually a topic I should write a blog about somewhere myself, one day - I pushed pretty hard at my current company for moving towards a different process for industry candidates, and are extremely pleased with some of the people it's helped us hire.

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

#187

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 5:00 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #179

greglindahl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

External recruiters get paid more for getting more candidates hired with the least effort per candidate -- they are not interested in spending a lot of time getting 10% more salary for a candidate, instead of getting another hire done.

Most external recruiters don't make much more than a couple of placements a month, so they are absolutely incentivized to amp their commission up as much as possible without losing the sale. Was this not the case when you were working as a recruiter?

As a hiring manager and candidate dealing with external recruiters, that's not what I saw happen.

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

#188

Post by moconnor » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 5:00 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #170

This interviewing method suffers from the tragedy of the commons. It works great when almost nobody is doing it because if most of your interviews are traditional it's easy to squeeze in 1-2 homework assignments a week. However, it would be totally unworkable if most companies were to adopt it. Try finishing a dozen homework programs during a typical job search.

If they're all paying $100/hr you don't need an actual job, you can just perform a dozen interview questions a week and down the offers.

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

#189

Post by ethbro » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 5:02 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #175

photogrammetry wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind not using multiline code block quotes that split sentences in half? Not only is it obnoxious to read on mobile, as horizontal scrolling is necessary, but it also fundamentally doesn't make sense as you should be able to copy/paste whole sentences. One might expect that as a recruiter/(ex-?)developer you'd realize how painful it is when you use this formatting.

Looks much better to me, including on mobile, and is the first complaint in the 2,020 days my account has been active here, whatever "one might expect". Additionally, it will look entirely natural to any of us who used email before it was mostly HTML.

Which mobile client and do you browse in landscape?

I agree with photogrammetry in that it's essentially unreadable on mobile portrait as you have to horizontally scroll each quote you want to read (then scroll back and again if it's multi-line).

Shorter >'s with italics are my preference.

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

#190

Post by morgante » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 5:06 AM UTC

moconnor wrote: post #188

morgante wrote: post #170

This interviewing method suffers from the tragedy of the commons. It works great when almost nobody is doing it because if most of your interviews are traditional it's easy to squeeze in 1-2 homework assignments a week. However, it would be totally unworkable if most companies were to adopt it. Try finishing a dozen homework programs during a typical job search.

If they're all paying $100/hr you don't need an actual job, you can just perform a dozen interview questions a week and down the offers.

If you want to be a freelancer, you can do a lot better than $100/hr and spending 2+ hours to source each (small) gig.