They want free work. Simple as that.
Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#12This is why I oftentimes dislike take home projects for interviews - they're extremely time consuming, or are biased towards those who can cobble things together quickly. I can do that too, but it's not without stress or time spent, and I know I would be competing against others probably willing to sink more time.
Take home challenges without an enforced time limit are awful. You need confidence as a candidate that you're competing on a level playing field.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#13Yup, it's become common enough, sadly.
And the fun part is that it's more than common (i.e. it happens at least 50% of the time) that they significantly botch either (or both!) of the written work scope, or the platform configuration / test data -- or simply don't budget (quite) enough time to get the thing done, given the ambiguities -- such that you, in turn, either: (1) burn significantly more time, energy and adrenaline to slap something halfway reasonable together on their insane timelines (knowing full well that it would never be up the quality standards either of you would prefer for an actual, real business project); or (2) find out at the end that you just can't deliver (because what they wanted was physically or logically impossible to begin with.
And if you happen "fail" because of (1) or (2) well then.. so be it. I mean, you'd think they could have simply dogfooded these assignments on their own people first, before asking strangers to, in effect, dogfood these project descriptions for them (on their presumably worthless time). But if you think about it from their perspective, the second option (using the first few candidates as free dogfooding labor!) is obviously much more attractive.
In theory, these projects can work as intended -- if designed properly. The problem is that (being human beings) the people who come up with these "tests" tend to greatly overestimate their ability to do that. And if they burn out / egregiously annoy a few candidates in the process -- leaving them with a permanently negative view of their company (or at least the hiring manager that sent them on that wild goose chase) -- well "so be it".
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#14There is unfortunately a fairly high probability that a given interview candidate for a coding job can't actually code (at all, not just poorly or slowly). So hiring people try to come up with processes and tests to avoid being the idiot who hired someone who couldn't code.
Obviously requesting that the candidate actually produce new code is a fairly good way to ensure success in this goal.
otoh it is likely to irritate and inconvenience the candidate and probably remove some proportion of the better applications from the pool.
I prefer to ask candidates to talk about a project they found interesting or challenging or noteworthy, and go from there asking questions, specifically what was their individual contribution and so on.
Personal references are also useful.
Ultimately I suppose though if I had no available candidates where I could get a first-hand trusted reference, nor any recent project to discuss, about the only option I'd have left would be to ask them to write code. I don't recall it ever coming to that though.
Faced with this situation you could try suggesting that you prefer not to spend significant time working on an apprentice-piece project and would the interviewer accept your hobby project instead or some recent work project if disclosure restrictions allow you to talk about it and show code.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#15I've stopped interviewing with companies that do this.
Take home interview "challenges" take up a lot of time and resources. Most of the ones I've gotten have been prototypes/MVP type deals.
+ You're asking me to spend almost a week of my time, for free
+ I have similar examples on my Github
+ I'm not usually allowed to share the solution
Sorry, but if you can't look at my significant github profile and figure out if I can code or not, then we probably aren't a good match. I'm not going to work for free because you're bad at interviewing.
To put this another way, flip the question. Would you give me your product for free for a week? (Probably not...)
That being said, I think paying for the interview is probably acceptable.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#16I've never seen this. I would also simply ask if there were an alternative interview process. If not, I'd politely decline to continue. This sort of interview seems like it's better than algorithm bingo on the whiteboard. In reality it's either an attempt to get free (or discounted) work or else contrived and therefore still removed enough from the actual day-to-day of the job as to be less than useful as a measure of fit and ability.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#17It's been a while since I last interviewed, but I've wanted something like this for interviewing applicants at my own workplace. It strikes me as fairer to all parties, especially compared to whiteboard coding exercises. I've heard of some companies doing exactly what you suggest - paying an appropriate amount to cover the few hours spent on the interview project. I get that some will criticise this saying it takes u…
Maybe for recent grads that have never build something worthwhile, but it is not reasonable for experienced people. If you are talking to 10 different places, then having to do all these pointless exercises (which are a waste of time and productivity), for all of them becomes unsustainable.
Most senior devs. (people with 5 years or more of experience), have their own projects or productive lives (either hobbies, or families) going on.
I advise my friends to skip this step, and move on to other companies that don't introduce these useless hoops. Usually 80% of the time the companies come back and decide to skip this "homework" stage and go for a traditional interview.
If this happens after an interview, just refuse to do it and move on to other companies. I have almost never heard good outcomes from it as usually the task is given if the interview didn't go well and they are not convinced of you. If you have a choice, you don't want to join a company that doesn't fully like having you.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#18This trend is a bit over the top, but I can see why it came about. Other industries have a way of evaluating talent. Artists can usually point at their artwork. Some developers have taken to using Github as a public forum for their work. How do we evaluate engineers in a consistent fashion?
In an effort to open a few minds to new possibilities, I wrote a medium piece (picked up by HackerNoon) around my experiences with hiring software engineers in San Francisco (you can find it if you look at my profile here). We tried to rethink the process and use pair programming to help reduce interview stress, properly evaluate candidates and make a generally more enjoyable experience.
At the end of the day, it is hard enough to hire good people in a competitive market. Making candidates jump through hoops seems like it only creates more frustration. Do you really want someone's first opinion of your company to be less than positive?
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#19It's been a while since I last interviewed, but I've wanted something like this for interviewing applicants at my own workplace. It strikes me as fairer to all parties, especially compared to whiteboard coding exercises. I've heard of some companies doing exactly what you suggest - paying an appropriate amount to cover the few hours spent on the interview project. I get that some will criticise this saying it takes u…
> I get that some will criticise this saying it takes up your free time, but I'd argue the common practice of memorising algorithm solutions for interviews is often an equally unproductive use of the interviewee's own time.
At least in the algorithm case once you've got enough (whatever your own definition of that happens to be) you can ramp down the studying and just go off of memory, and they'll apply to multiple different interviews. Here you're putting in a bunch of time for just one opportunity that you're not even sure you want yet - the interview is as much about the candidate interviewing the company as it is the reverse, which is where I'm inclined to say "no thanks" to a process like this as long as there are companies out there not doing it. Especially as one's career progresses and you have people who would trust you to refer you and so on.
Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?
#20It's been my experience - at least when it comes to remote positions and the ones posted on HN's Hiring threads and all the remote boards.