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Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

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Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#11

Post by pizzaman09 »

jordanpg wrote: post #9
carlmr wrote: post #4

> Exactly on point. Also one gripe I have with hackerrank (I did some of the challenges to brush up on some language knowledge), is that a lot of the questions are poorly designed and from obvious amateurs. I still think that neither whiteboarding nor hackerrank selects for good developers. In the end you get people that studied hard to solve a certain class of problem that you'll never need in the real world. It's w…

Agree, but what is the alternative from the standpoint of the interviewer? These types of challenges are simple to state, self-contained, easy to timebox. For the interviewer for a say intermediate-level enterprise software backend position who needs to quickly sift through 50 applicants, what is the better option by way of code challenges?

Credentialing. Seriously. Have a Bar Association for developers. When anyone can do a few weeks of Googling and claim to be a software developer, you're going to get mostly crap candidates. Offload that process to a formal body, like lawyers, doctors, and engineers do. You can hire unlicensed developers, but you do so at your own risk. Then once you're talking to someone licensed in an interview, you can focus on just getting to know them and talking about their past work.

Edit: wow, I've clearly touched a nerve. Good thing your doctor is licensed to prescribe something for it instead of a rockstar named Chad who read about MongoDB once but can basically build Uber by this point.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#12

Post by fortythirteen »

In my experience, any whiteboard test of generic algorithms is more of a window into how the lead developer thinks about the people he manages, than an actual test of programming ability. It almost always denotes a fixed, "I know best" mindset. It's usually a interview killer for me.

And it's just a poor way to assess skill. Learn about modulus once and you'll pass every other wizbang somebody else thinks they're the first to give you.

You'll always learn more about a candidate's ability by just having a conversation about programming with them. Anyone worth their salt will not only be able to colloquially talk about their skillset, they'll enjoy it.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#13

Post by olympus »

gberger wrote: post #6

These are all good points, but how does the author reach the conclusion that the coding tests are ageist? Ageism was only mentioned in the headline.

When he says the tests favor people that just graduated from school. Those that have been in the workforce for a while (older people) are focused on "real world" problems and not the academic problems seen on HackerRank. Any system that favors young people over old people is ageist.

I'm not saying I agree with the argument (old people have been complaining about young people for a very long time), but the logic is easy to follow.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#14

Post by yorwba »

> When you’ve got a history of having built a high frequency trading system for Citadel, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, you’ll know a lot about latency and order flow – but you might not know how to find a maximal duplicated substring within a palindrome on a HackerRank-type test.

I have only a vague idea of the requirements in financial technology, but aren't streams of financial data central to it? And repeating substrings correspond to pattern repetitions, so they might be important, especially the longest ones.

I think if you can find the longest repeating pattern in a stream of data, you should also be able to find maximal duplicated substrings in palindromes.

Maybe it's more about the way the problem is phrased rather than about the difficulty of coming up with a solution?

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#15

Post by andrewvc »

Majestic121 wrote: post #2

"For experienced programmers like Adler, the new tests aren’t insurmountable – all that’s required is an injection of time to learn the new Hackerrank tricks." Well, yeah. I do that too and I've been out of university for 5 years. You have to prepare for interviews, and to resharpen your skills when you're changing jobs, it's the same whether you're 28 or 48. I understand finding time is harder when you have a family…

If you're a successful working programmer you shouldn't need to study to pass your next interview only to forget it all again after a couple more years on the job.

That is why these tests are bogus. If they measured useful skills they wouldn't require any study.

I've been working with a lot of graph algorithms lately. I've already forgotten several I learned a couple months ago. That is OK.

The more interesting question for interviewees is where they would find the answer rather than whether they can implement algorithm X from memory.

If a candidate says "I'd use A* and maybe compare it to similar algorithms to solve the problem" that's enough. There's no reason they need that permanently committed to memory. Almost no one writes A* twice a year.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#16

Post by wolfgke »

jordanpg wrote: post #9
carlmr wrote: post #4

> Exactly on point. Also one gripe I have with hackerrank (I did some of the challenges to brush up on some language knowledge), is that a lot of the questions are poorly designed and from obvious amateurs. I still think that neither whiteboarding nor hackerrank selects for good developers. In the end you get people that studied hard to solve a certain class of problem that you'll never need in the real world. It's w…

Agree, but what is the alternative from the standpoint of the interviewer? These types of challenges are simple to state, self-contained, easy to timebox. For the interviewer for a say intermediate-level enterprise software backend position who needs to quickly sift through 50 applicants, what is the better option by way of code challenges?

> For the interviewer for a say intermediate-level enterprise software backend position who needs to quickly sift through 50 applicants, what is the better option by way of code challenges?

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) created a lecture about this topic:

> http://businessofsoftware.org/2016/07/hiring-at-scale-patric...

If you are short of time, here is a summary:

> https://42hire.com/hiring-at-scale-c99f0665b893

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#17

Post by djhworld »

pizzaman09 wrote: post #11
jordanpg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but what is the alternative from the standpoint of the interviewer? These types of challenges are simple to state, self-contained, easy to timebox. For the interviewer for a say intermediate-level enterprise software backend position who needs to quickly sift through 50 applicants, what is the better option by way of code challenges?

Credentialing. Seriously. Have a Bar Association for developers. When anyone can do a few weeks of Googling and claim to be a software developer, you're going to get mostly crap candidates. Offload that process to a formal body, like lawyers, doctors, and engineers do. You can hire unlicensed developers, but you do so at your own risk. Then once you're talking to someone licensed in an interview, you can focus on jus…

For the professions this is quite simple as there are standards, Doctors, Accountants etc are all trained to the standard qualifications that are often internationally recognised.

How could you do that for software engineers? There are so many programming languages, frameworks out there that are constantly evolving and companies have different demands.

I think it would be a really hard problem to generalise.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#18

Post by yodsanklai »

Majestic121 wrote: post #2

"For experienced programmers like Adler, the new tests aren’t insurmountable – all that’s required is an injection of time to learn the new Hackerrank tricks." Well, yeah. I do that too and I've been out of university for 5 years. You have to prepare for interviews, and to resharpen your skills when you're changing jobs, it's the same whether you're 28 or 48. I understand finding time is harder when you have a family…

> but it should not take much more than a few hours to get back to a decent skill level

It really depends where you apply. Some companies have interview processes that require a very specific preparation and it can be very time-consuming.

I applied once for a quant position. The interviewer didn't really care about my resume and we started directly with logic and probability puzzles (a few phone interviews). I was about 35 at the time, and this was the type of things I would have been more comfortable doing when I was a 20-years old math undergraduate. On one hand, I like that they put everyone on an equal ground. On the other hand, I think it's a bit of a shame that they dismiss many years of experience.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#19

Post by erikbern »

I interview 20-30 people per week and send most of them Hackerrank tests. I'm a big proponent of vetting that people can write code, but 99% of the questions on HR are waaaay too "algorithmic". Had to go through almost all of them to find a few tests that are not about graph algos or dynamic programming – finally found a question that was based on regular expressions and a few other ones that I think are a bit more representative of real world challenges.

I really wish Hackerrank could add more problems or let employers add their own question. Are there any good alternatives to HR?

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#20

Post by wolfgke »

andrewvc wrote: post #15
Majestic121 wrote: post #2

"For experienced programmers like Adler, the new tests aren’t insurmountable – all that’s required is an injection of time to learn the new Hackerrank tricks." Well, yeah. I do that too and I've been out of university for 5 years. You have to prepare for interviews, and to resharpen your skills when you're changing jobs, it's the same whether you're 28 or 48. I understand finding time is harder when you have a family…

If you're a successful working programmer you shouldn't need to study to pass your next interview only to forget it all again after a couple more years on the job. That is why these tests are bogus. If they measured useful skills they wouldn't require any study. I've been working with a lot of graph algorithms lately. I've already forgotten several I learned a couple months ago. That is OK. The more interesting quest…

> If they measured useful skills they wouldn't require any study.

I would be careful with this kind of statements. It can also show that most programming jobs don't actually require a sophisticated level of knowledge.

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