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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

#371

Post by pgl »

burger_moon wrote: post #362
pgl wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not possible to design and evaluate a weekend project for each one of them Can't you just design and evaluate one project that they can all do?

That will only work briefly because of glassdoor interview posts. However that might only mean tweaking it slightly every week or two.

Glassdoor wouldn't really help someone cheat in this situation. It's not a quick answer, it's a code discussed with the interviewer after finishing it. It would be fairly easy to tell whether someone had copied their code.

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

#372

Post by Lord_Zero »

SonicSoul wrote: post #368
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…

i do love this idea but not sure if doing it remotely is a good idea. We do this in house because I am not sure how to be certain the candidate did not get help. I mean i believe people are generally honest but there will be cases when they are not, and I'd rather not find out 3 months after hiring them. Also there are many indicators along the way, i.e. which parts the candidate got stuck at, did it take them 1 or 3…

> I am not sure how to be certain the candidate did not get help

Pressing them hard for information on Monday will expose this.

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

#373

Post by ceronman »

pgl wrote: post #276
ceronman wrote: post #142

This is a great way of hiring, but unfortunately it doesn't fit in all scenarios. First, this model alone doesn't scale. Big companies interview hundreds of candidates every week. It's not possible to design and evaluate a weekend project for each one of them. This doesn't mean that they can't have projects, but early filters are needed. That leads to the classic phone and F2F interviews to rule out those who can't c…

> It's not possible to design and evaluate a weekend project for each one of them Can't you just design and evaluate one project that they can all do?

Even if you design only one project. You still have to evaluate them, have a discussion, etc. That takes time. It doesn't scale to hundreds of interviews per week.

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

#374

Post by [deleted] »

pgl wrote: post #276
ceronman wrote: post #142

This is a great way of hiring, but unfortunately it doesn't fit in all scenarios. First, this model alone doesn't scale. Big companies interview hundreds of candidates every week. It's not possible to design and evaluate a weekend project for each one of them. This doesn't mean that they can't have projects, but early filters are needed. That leads to the classic phone and F2F interviews to rule out those who can't c…

> It's not possible to design and evaluate a weekend project for each one of them Can't you just design and evaluate one project that they can all do?

[deleted]

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

#375

Post by ar15saveslives »

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.

Pair programming is not the same as writing code on an interview.

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

#376

Post by jkingsbery »

zaroth wrote: post #78
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.

IANAL, but that's not what this is. "Work for contract for other employers" could literally mean I can't help my neighbor mow his lawn in exchange for a beer. In this case what it really means is a non-trivial amount of work done for meaningful profit. If I fix a friends computer in exchange for a nice meal, I am using my relevant skills to perform work, but I'm not actually violating a contract forbidding outside wo…

Certainly you don't want to hire people that are rule stricken. At the same time though, if someone signs a legal contract saying they won't do something and does it anyway, isn't that a red flag?

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

#377

Post by shandor »

matwood wrote: post #370
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…

> 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? Nothing, and that's fine. In fact we encourage candidates to use all resources on our take home interview test. I would probably be impressed if someone setup a hackathon to solve a rather simple take home problem. A take home problem is simply an…

> we encourage candidates to use all resources on our take home interview test

This sounds great. In my response to another comment I was worried if accepting-but-not-encouraging this kind of behavior would put the interviewees on uneven ground. But if you tell them in advance that basically anything goes, it's fair for all parties.

> The real surprising part is how many take home problems we have received that either do not compile, do not pass the test data we give, or look like the instructions were completely ignored.

Sounds horrible. Though I guess that's only a good thing. Seems like the assignment is doing its job in those cases pretty well :)

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

#378

Post by expertentipp »

SamUK96 wrote: post #312
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…

> actually-there-is-a-correct-answer situationals Ugh. The worst step of interview process. Remember that guy who wrote a post about Google's hiring process, where they outsourced the asking of technical questions to untrained call-centre staff. "Standard way to allocate memory in C?" "malloc" "Incorrect. Actually there's this cool library that does it for you with additional checks. Sorry, you have failed the interv…

> Remember that guy who wrote a post about Google's hiring process, where they outsourced the asking of technical questions to untrained call-centre staff.

Hey, I had this experience with Amazon when applying for a software related position based in Europe. For the entry screening I got a call from Indian phone number and a person with Indian accent was clearly going through a list of various quirks an features of a programming language. Wasn't so bad though... the second round with MBA product managers was much worse:)

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

#380

Post by darkstar999 »

jkingsbery wrote: post #379

My weekends are just as busy as my weeks. I have a wife and two daughters that I do stuff with on weekends, and other family members I like to see. This process seems to presume that I somehow have "free-time" on weekends.

If you don't have time to scout out new job opportunities, then you are comfortable enough to not need a new job. A 2 hour project like the article suggests is reasonable.
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