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Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#51

Post by lyricalpanda »

derekp7 wrote: post #27

This sounds like a good startup idea: A certification agency where they put you through the works, measuring your ability to write code, solve various challenges, complete complex projects, etc. Then they can issue a certificate to those that pass their examinations. Maybe in addition, they can offer training in various topics, include periodic assignments during those training periods, then have several days of mons…

This is essentially what TripleByte is doing. It doesn't have a certification, but they put you through a general software engineering interview (with multiple parts). If you pass it, then they work with their partner companies to by-pass the initial screens and straight to the on-site.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#52

Post by lyricalpanda »

derekp7 wrote: post #27

This sounds like a good startup idea: A certification agency where they put you through the works, measuring your ability to write code, solve various challenges, complete complex projects, etc. Then they can issue a certificate to those that pass their examinations. Maybe in addition, they can offer training in various topics, include periodic assignments during those training periods, then have several days of mons…

This is essentially what TripleByte is doing. It doesn't have a certification, but they put you through a general software engineering interview (with multiple parts). If you pass it, then they work with their partner companies to by-pass the initial screens and straight to the on-site.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#53

Post by WorldMaker »

posixplz wrote: post #29
vorpalhex wrote: post #15

I'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…

What if it's a coding challenge that is purposely timeboxed to 4-6 hours? At my previous job, we asked applicants to write a piece of software that would model the org chart for any given employee, enumerating their hierarchical relationships as well as their peer relationships. We may have thrown in an additional complexity or two, but we also removed a lot of requirements (no i/o or database, no user interface; we…

4-6 hours is still half to two-thirds of a business day. If I'm actively employed, I have to schedule a vacation day for that or lose precious work/life balance time. Even if I'm not actively employed at the time, I know the ancient wisdom is to spend your job search as if it were a full time job, but that isn't advice meant to mandate individual candidate employers independently force you into an unpaid, overworked internship of an endless stream of variations of building useless applications.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#54

Post by WorldMaker »

rhizome wrote: post #50
posixplz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's a coding challenge that is purposely timeboxed to 4-6 hours? At my previous job, we asked applicants to write a piece of software that would model the org chart for any given employee, enumerating their hierarchical relationships as well as their peer relationships. We may have thrown in an additional complexity or two, but we also removed a lot of requirements (no i/o or database, no user interface; we…

I recently had a 4hr test app to model a particular set of scheduling requirements over a calendar year. I could not finish it satisfactorily in time, which told me that either I was a crap programmer (possible) or that there was some common algo for this purpose that I didn't know. Of course these two reasons may be the same one: crap programmer.

Similarly, I've had a couple of these where my response is a detailed discussion of why the problem given was at least NP-Hard, and here's a good academic paper on the trade-offs of the most popular algorithm, which would take me a good several days to implement correctly (or even better here's this trusted open source implementation of it). To me, that feels like that research was a better use of my 4 hour block of time, but yet I've gotten feedback that I must be a crap programmer if I'm not going to waste 4 hours brute forcing my way to an unsatisfactory answer.

I don't know how some of those companies work, but I'd much rather work smarter than harder and step 1 in the real world, to my judgment, is often "research the problem and see how other people solved it", whether that's via academic algorithm research papers or StackOverflow depends on the type of problem.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#55

Post by yladiz »

turc1656 wrote: post #44
yladiz wrote: post #30

As some other commenters mention, and I feel the same way: if a company asks you to do this, they're asking for too much and I think it's fair to tell them that that is an unacceptable amount of work for an interview. I can kind of see this as fair only if you are going in as a more experienced dev but with no work examples, but in that case, it's simple enough to contact references to verify previous work and positi…

I understand what you're getting at here - the request/requirement to jump through hoops. But I don't think it's unreasonable for a potential employer to want to gauge technical ability, especially given the amount of people who graduate from degree factories without any ability to actually code or do any sort of technical work. Usually these positions, and this field in general, pay well so I would think that people…

If I'm asked to do more than a few hours of work for an interview, I expect to be paid for my time. It's unfair and disrespectful that an employer would ask for a large amount of time (like the requirements in the post) without paying for that time. Of course there are ways to be tactful about it, without directly stating it, but it's not unreasonable to get paid for a large amount of work.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#56

Post by WorldMaker »

majormajor wrote: post #22

There's a big caveat to this story in that I already had another offer I was considering, but I walked out of an onsite where they wanted me to do something similar, but on top of a skeleton project in an IDE running on their own laptop that they provided. But then, after sitting there for a full hour watching their dev try to figure out why the environment wasn't reset properly after the last candidate, and not bein…

I have a long story of an interview I regretted where they talked me into spending far too much time building a skeleton application onsite, and in retrospect I know I should have just walked away as soon they tried setting up an IDE environment. I'm more likely to consider that a red flag in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#57

Post by lj3 »

kcorbitt wrote: post #47

My frustration with this type of interview is that their costs are entirely asymmetric. The company puts together a set of requirements once, and then forces every applicant to spend 5-10 generally unpaid hours completing it. If that were the bulk of the interview and the only further step was coming into the office for a couple of softball "culture fit" interviews it would be acceptable, but from what I've been told…

> then forces every applicant to spend 5-10 generally unpaid hours completing it.

Multiply that by 4.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#58

Post by uffjedn »

rhizome wrote: post #50
posixplz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's a coding challenge that is purposely timeboxed to 4-6 hours? At my previous job, we asked applicants to write a piece of software that would model the org chart for any given employee, enumerating their hierarchical relationships as well as their peer relationships. We may have thrown in an additional complexity or two, but we also removed a lot of requirements (no i/o or database, no user interface; we…

I recently had a 4hr test app to model a particular set of scheduling requirements over a calendar year. I could not finish it satisfactorily in time, which told me that either I was a crap programmer (possible) or that there was some common algo for this purpose that I didn't know. Of course these two reasons may be the same one: crap programmer.

There is a third one where the deadline is knowingly set too low to see how you deal with time trouble.

Re: Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

#59

Post by mnm1 »

Is it more common? Probably. But you know what's also more common? Companies asking for such work and then turning around and saying "sorry, we don't have time to even look at your work."

Fuck these companies that ask for shit like that. Since we can't even hold them to the most basic standards of decency, fuck them and fuck their interview process. Seriously, there's no nice way to put this. Either pay for such work or fuck off. So in other words, pay or only fools will apply. (Yes, I have been a fool myself in the past.)

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