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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

#241

Post by laksjd »

elchief wrote: post #96
throwaway4job wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a viable approach for much of the hiring pool, as a majority of working engineers have contracts which explicitly forbid work for contract for other employers. As such, if you hire any of those, you're hiring somebody with a proven willingness to ignore their contract, which is a strong anti-pattern.

Or a $200 donation to their fave charity

That's a great idea! Not only does it just 'feel right', it also prevents some of the legal mess people were seeing with effectively moonlighting for the hiring company.

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

#242

Post by blowski »

creatine_lizard wrote: post #230
Udo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This works, but make sure they spend the 2 hours in your office and not 12 hours at home solving a 2 hour problem.. This goes against the core message of the article. The candidate is supposed to think about a problem on their own, and propose a well-reflected solution on Monday. That's pretty much the opposite of "sit down in this noisy corner in an unknown environment and give us something in two hours". > The ot…

There can be legal issues from the candidate's side too -- people on an H-1B visa in the US may not be able to accept payment for work outside of the company they've been hired by.

In the minority of cases where this is true, just handle it differently.

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

#243

Post by blowski »

bjt wrote: post #214
vhab wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If hiring a freelancer to do a little thing tends to generate all sorts of nightmarish legal liabilities, your company is either a government contractor or it has even bigger structural problems than hiring. It might not be an issue for your company, but your candidate might have a non-compete (or other clause) preventing them from accepting compensation or even performing work for another company at all. Things ge…

Any company trying to enforce such a non-compete against someone who just earned $200 would spend a lot more than that in legal fees. This feels like legal paranoia to me.

To me it feels like classic "A-ha! I discovered an edge case so the entire solution is invalid!". Just handle the edge case differently to how you handle everything else.

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

#244

Post by blowski »

jobu wrote: post #231
blazespin wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works, but make sure they spend the 2 hours in your office and not 12 hours at home solving a 2 hour problem.. The other problem is that when you pay them you generate all sorts of nightmaris legal liabilities.

> The other problem is that when you pay them you generate all sorts of nightmarish legal liabilities. I was wondering about the tax and legal implications around paying someone for an interview challenge as well. The overall idea seems fantastic, but paying or receiving money for an interview coding challenge is a little weird.

Tax authorities usually don't care about a one-off small payment.

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

#245

Post by erikbye »

zachd1_618 wrote: post #49

This. 100% this. As many others are saying, I find that this is the most comfortable way for me as an interviewee to demonstrate that I do in fact know what I'm talking about. Put me in front of a room full of people and a whiteboard and throw something at me, and I'll freeze. Freezing in that situation and being a bad engineer are wholly separate things. Anecdotally, when I get one of these problems, I spent 20 minu…

If you can't solve a new problem "on the spot", or at least quickly, then one is at least not suited for SRE work.

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

#246

Post by shandor »

deepGem wrote: post #237
shandor wrote: post #233

This seems like a pretty popular take on the interview process here on HN. However, there's one pretty glaring flaw that I've never seen discussed: if the interviewee can take the problem home, what prevents them setting up a hackathon with their friends at their place, and making the interview problem a team effort? A couple of knowledgeable friends can do wonders, and if you also prep with them a little you can pro…

One view of this behaviour is cheating, another view is hustle. I mean, if you could arrange a hackathon to solve an interview question - you are hired my friend :)

Sure I would, I have the $X/h to divide between them for helping me ;)

Seriously though, I guessed that many companies probably must have this kind of laid-back attitude on the matter, since it would be stupid to presume they are ignorant of my original point. Still, I think it might be a little unfair to the people going by the rules-as-written, which somewhat diminishes the consensus of awesomeness of this approach.

That is, if the interview process is not actively trying to choose for hustle... :)

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

#247

Post by beachy »

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.

> 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 think that would be misusing this approach.

We build recruitment software.

The recruitment process is a funnel. At each stage, the employer tries to weed out the bad candidates. Simple maths says they try and use cheaper tests early on in the process when there are more candidates.

For example, first stage is often eyeballing the resume and a quick search on GitHub/SO. 5 minutes, costs say $10, weeds out say 65% of candidates.

At the next stage, we use a more expensive test, since we have fewer candidates to filter.

This particular test sounds like it would sit after an initial phone screen and before a team interview in terms of cost.

Personally I would only use it after a first interview, or tell the candidate that you will decide immediately after completion of the first interview whether it was successful, and if so send them away to do this project afterwards,i.e. reduce double handling

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

#248

Post by stillworks »

blowski wrote: post #240
stillworks wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about getting paid. I don't care if I am doing it at home or in the interviewer's premises. Don't let me connect to internet. I'll also leave my phone with you just to make sure I don't have access to the internet. I don't mind taking the time away from current employment to go through the process. BUT PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE THOUGH WHILE I AM AT IT. FOR GOD'S SAKE DON"T SIT NEXT TO ME AND TALK TO ME OR EX…

Sounds like I'm completely the opposite of you! I'm fine with someone sitting next to me - I love pair programming. But cutting off internet access means no StackOverflow, no online documentation. The test should be very similar to normal working conditions.

Interesting to note how different people are indeed.

I am fine with white board type situations, don't worry about writing code without IDEs etc (in my very first job vi editor was the only thing we had to write code so I still have instinctive memory to be resourceful without an IDE but I love IntelliJ for most things). Happy to discuss/draw out ideas/solutions on whiteboards.

But find it very seriously annoying talking or being expected to talk while I am writing code !

I think the internet-access requirement depends on the problem. If I am expected to solve a problem by first-principles on a core CS topic then I guess internet is of no use ? Online Java Docs for e.g. may not serve a purpose here.

If the problem requires using many different tools/APIs for the solution then I guess you are right, internet access adds value.

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

#249

Post by shandor »

kybernetikos wrote: post #236
shandor wrote: post #233

This seems like a pretty popular take on the interview process here on HN. However, there's one pretty glaring flaw that I've never seen discussed: if the interviewee can take the problem home, what prevents them setting up a hackathon with their friends at their place, and making the interview problem a team effort? A couple of knowledgeable friends can do wonders, and if you also prep with them a little you can pro…

We have an extension to the take home done paired on site that usually involves significant refactoring. If you don't have a clear understanding of the code you're sunk. Plus the presentation should weed out the most egregious cheats. I also strongly suspect that developers that can't solve the task well will mainly have friends that also can't solve the task well. If someone had skilled developers invested in them d…

> We have an extension to the take home done paired on site that usually involves significant refactoring

That sounds actually brilliant. While some might argue that this comes back to the "whiteboarding under pressure", honestly if you have already written the code from scratch you definitely should be in a much better position than with the usual "implement a red-black tree insert, you have 15 minutes" whiteboarding tasks.

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

#250

Post by TeMPOraL »

stillworks wrote: post #248
blowski wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like I'm completely the opposite of you! I'm fine with someone sitting next to me - I love pair programming. But cutting off internet access means no StackOverflow, no online documentation. The test should be very similar to normal working conditions.

Interesting to note how different people are indeed. I am fine with white board type situations, don't worry about writing code without IDEs etc (in my very first job vi editor was the only thing we had to write code so I still have instinctive memory to be resourceful without an IDE but I love IntelliJ for most things). Happy to discuss/draw out ideas/solutions on whiteboards. But find it very seriously annoying tal…

Indeed interesting how different people are.

Here, I'm like you. But it carries over to normal job - I work best when left alone. Especially when I have a tough problem to solve, just having people sitting close to me makes me frustrated, and if they're talking, then I won't be able to concentrate at all. It takes a lot of energy for me to be able to work in the presence of other people.

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