It would be nice to collect here the list of companies who is doing interviews in that way.
A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
401–410 of 517 posts
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#402Earlier 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.
Absolutely agree with the sentiment here. I have used this technique for a couple of years now, except that I kept the task to 20 minutes (and didn't pay people, since it's a short amount of time). To save dragging people into an office for that time period, I set up a custom git server that marks the timestamps of their pulls and pushes. The instructions for the task are contained in the README of the repo, so as so…
20 minutes is way too little for a meaningful programming task that's worth presenting to the other devs (and that's the really vital part of this method in my opinion).
I prefer to see what people write in their normal way of working when they're not under extreme time pressure.
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#403This system is interesting but has a crucial flaw: I legally can't take part. I have a job now, which claims ownership over any tech-related IP I create. There are processes for getting exceptions, but a) you won't get them for actual job-related things b) I'm not asking Google for an exception so I can interview somewhere else. This is true for nearly anyone with a standard SV job. So if you're willing to restrict y…
Then people should start crossing that crap out in contracts before they sign up.
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most tech jobs aren't like that. If the job you're hiring for is one of the few that involves high-pressure coding in front of strangers, then by all means test for that.
If you are coding 'in front of customers on the spot' - you at the wrong company :) Coding under pressure is quite different from coding on a white-board in an interview, often on an arcane CS problem.
> If you are coding 'in front of customers on the spot' - you at the wrong company :)
Or a procrastinator ;)
"Hi, one coffee please."
"Sure, just one minute. Ok, first I'll pip install stripe…"
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#405We use a similar system which involves: 1. A phone interview to validate the applicants resume. 2. An in-person interview where the applicant is given an hour to complete level 10 of Blockly Maze ( https://blockly-games.appspot.com/maze?level=10 ) after being briefed on the wall follower rule (if they are unaware). 3. Completion of an outside example project in the applicants strongest language, for which they are no…
I tried the blocky level. Got it in 17 lines of JS in about 10 minutes. :)
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#406This 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?
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Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#407In 2004 I got a job at a company that used basically this method, except I didn't get paid for it. I think I got the assignment on Monday, and had to present the results on Friday, so it wasn't over the weekend. Though I could be wrong on that. I could ask the CTO questions (it was a small company), and on Friday I presented it for the other devs, who asked questions, and later voted by email on whether I should be hired. I was, and it struck me as the best hiring process I'd ever seen.
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#408This 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??…
Exactly. Their example: > "Create a single page app that lets me enter movies in my home movie collection, store them in offline storage and search through them. I want to search by Genre, Title & Actors." Significantly more than 2 hours, unless you are looking for a quick hack and for the candidate to repeatedly explain "I would have done it this other way if I had more time..."
I completely agree. I saw that and thought - um, that's not a 2 hour job unless you want a massively hacked together app. I might be able to do something modestly decent over a weekend, but 2 hours? Nope. You have to have ways of inputting/verifying data, tagging genres, etc. I've done a lot of similar code but that's why I know it's basic, but not quick. It would let me know that the job wasn't going to last because of the lack of knowledge in estimating software development.
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#409This 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? Well, the movie project suggested in the article was a pretty reasonable one.
If you write that in 2 hours, honestly I can't see that being code I'd hire someone for. You'd have to hack together garbage code and you'd look like someone who threw things together without thinking.
Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires
#410This 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.
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