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The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

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Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#61
post #60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your opinion Gaius, but the recruiters seem to think otherwise. In the last year I've been to seven interviews (by all standards I am considered a senior dev with an appealing pedigree) and this is not something unexpected at all. The worst is that when they ask you to take three or five days off and work with the future team to see how you fit in (not for free though). I'm not too enthusiastic about it, but…

Can I ask which geography you are in? I am in England and that would be excessive here. I think the most I have experienced is 3 phone screens and two full but non-contiguous day’s of on-sites.

Hungary, but I had two non-hungarian interview processes as well, one for Berlin and another for a multinational company (for the Hungarian office though, but six interviews out of seven was held in English), same experience.

The latter one had a fairly complex entry task which took me three full days and I had six interviews after that - during the seventh I gave up and told them we are not looking for each other here.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#62
post #24
post #17

I don't get it. The whole industry is complaining about not being able to hire developers, yet there seems to be some kind of competition who can come up with the most awkward hiring process. Requiring homework is a great way to deter the kind of people companies should be most interested in hiring: those who are not actively looking for a new job. I find this trend especially surprising considering that the U.S. has…

Just that firing someone is legal does not mean it is easy. Especially if you have been working closely with the said person for months. And then there are people who are very nice human beings but their performance just isn't good enough. Firing them is hard and pretty bad for team morale. I'd much rather do that extra work during the hiring process than have to deal with a bad hire later.

Lately most of the companies I had an interview with wanted me to be a contractor (most of the time with all the benefits of being a contractor removed, from a law standpoint this is possible), this is a common practice around here, not just out of caution, but for tax evasion as well.

There's not much I can do, it's so common a practice nowadays (literally all of my team members are in a similar construction and we are working on fixed projects from nine to six) that with my next workplace I will do the same.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#63
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In Germany, we've basically got full employment in the IT sector." I can only confirm this. I used to be a freelancer and I got almost daily offers per email and phone. In order to stop I ask them a very hi price per hour ( 90-100 euros ) and to my very surprise yesterday the guy said, "that's fine, when do we start?". I backed up a bit and after some discussion he told me that they really could not find anyone. The…

> very hi price per hour ( 90-100 euros ) Contrary to what you seem to expect, that price is a steal. A more realistic rate for contractors doing basic IT work (like configuring DB backups) is 400-800 euros per hour.

Please tell me where I can find these jobs that will pay six figures a year for two hours a week of basic IT work. This is more than an order of magnitude higher than anyone I know makes.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#64
post #40

I don't understand this development. In Germany, we've basically got full employment in the IT sector. Why would anyone waste their time with this? Just apply for the Job next door. As an employer, hiring someone new is always a leap of faith. Might work out, might not. If it doesn't, dont feel bad to fire people again.

"In Germany, we've basically got full employment in the IT sector." I can only confirm this. I used to be a freelancer and I got almost daily offers per email and phone. In order to stop I ask them a very hi price per hour ( 90-100 euros ) and to my very surprise yesterday the guy said, "that's fine, when do we start?". I backed up a bit and after some discussion he told me that they really could not find anyone. The…

You have a bit of the opposite problem in America. The market is flooded with applicants. The real issue is that many of them are woefully underqualified (see the fizzbuzz debate). It's a constant struggle to find a system that filters these people out without insulting the people you are trying to hire in the first place.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#65
post #17

I don't get it. The whole industry is complaining about not being able to hire developers, yet there seems to be some kind of competition who can come up with the most awkward hiring process. Requiring homework is a great way to deter the kind of people companies should be most interested in hiring: those who are not actively looking for a new job. I find this trend especially surprising considering that the U.S. has…

Also from Germany. Last time someone told me "we just can't get enought decent devs" was a company with the worst hiring process I have ever seen.

They wanted me to build an app, with backend and frontend, and design (the design had to be "beautiful"), test it, all in under a weekend while I still was working fulltime at some other job, and I told them, they knew.

It was a Deutsch company. The name is GuteFre.The worst take home test ever, of course I didn't do it.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#66
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very hi price per hour ( 90-100 euros ) Contrary to what you seem to expect, that price is a steal. A more realistic rate for contractors doing basic IT work (like configuring DB backups) is 400-800 euros per hour.

Please tell me where I can find these jobs that will pay six figures a year for two hours a week of basic IT work. This is more than an order of magnitude higher than anyone I know makes.

Oh wait, sorry. I misread "per hour" as "per day". The original figure seems okay then.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#67
post #61
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask which geography you are in? I am in England and that would be excessive here. I think the most I have experienced is 3 phone screens and two full but non-contiguous day’s of on-sites.

Hungary, but I had two non-hungarian interview processes as well, one for Berlin and another for a multinational company (for the Hungarian office though, but six interviews out of seven was held in English), same experience. The latter one had a fairly complex entry task which took me three full days and I had six interviews after that - during the seventh I gave up and told them we are not looking for each other he…

I think a company that did that here would have a very hard time getting candidates... at least for now

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#68
I think assignments are a really good way to test people, but they really do have to be short. The second-last job I got took around 4 hours which I think is fine. Helps if the task is a bit fun too.

Also it shouldn't be the first stage of the interview process. That's just taking a piss. For this job it was after a phone interview, and with a scheduled face-to-face interview (where we discussed the code I'd written).

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#69
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the complaining is just a tantrum fit of an emotionally immature industry who, just like a spoiled child has had it very easy so far. "Why aren't there 100x more people than I actually need (because we only hire top 1%, right?) with 100 years of working experience with this technology that I just dreamt last night that want to work for free?"

Developers have a similar attitude, despite currently being one of the most privileged segments of the workforce save perhaps investment bankers. We have a straightforward professional path that does not require massive debt and burning half of our youth doing academic busywork and entry level drudgery - like it happens in almost any other professional field with similar compensation. The industry requirement to prov…

I might assert that what developers have is not a privilege. A privilege is something granted out of generosity or grace by another party, perhaps even undue (and hence the grace).

What developers have is some "game", which makes them a "player". As soon as they lose their game, they cease to be players. Their relation to the game is exactly their value and nothing less. Tech employers are higher level players who know that the economy takes no excuses, and they will trim the fat, so to speak, of anyone who cannot contribute to their gamesmanship.

Generally, in most industries, seniority is respected in and of itself. But in software, you see disgraced older people who didn't play the game right, and you wonder if they are to decline away out of sight. That suggests this is not grace granted by another party. Does that look more like a privilege granted (by whom? charitable businesses?), or a loser in a cold and harsh game?

I see more question marks over the futures of software people than I see in other industries where other peers have gone. In other industries, I feel there has been more of a multi-factored consideration for the generational passing of the torch. In software, I feel everyone is always in a sink or swim test, and I think older people sink a little more.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#70

Despite some of the comments here, I'm actually a fan of the 'homework' format. I'm not always great at hiring, but I know how to gauge the 'homework' interviews, and I've usually been right about the interviewee's abilities afterwards, WAY moreso than whiteboarding or riddles or any of the other alternatives. That being said, I would add some constraints: 1. The 'task' shouldn't take more than 30 min to understand,…

I'm going to disagree with you on a number of reasons.

1. A lot of studies out there show that the most important factor for a hiring success is culture, not skill.

2. Are you even measuring skill with your test? It doesn't matter if it should only take 2h for a candidate to complete your test, if they're nervous or want to impress they're going to spend 12h on it. How can you tell the difference?

3. What about the really good candidate that doesn't want to spend 2h on your test, because he also went to 2 other interviews in the same day where no tests were demanded of him. You're again not testing for skill, but willingness (and against other employer's testing regimes).

4. What is your test about? As a random example implement Web Service X that does Y. Is it important for you that candidates know how to implement X from the ground up? Will they be doing a lot of Y? Why spend 2 hours effectively answering 2 questions, where you could have interviewed him in 2 hours covering his whole history of computing experience, what he loves about it, why, what code he's written, what he's into, what he thinks about X,Y,Z etc.

5. Your job is not to impress him with your knowledge (not that I'm saying this is what you're doing, just a general remark on interviewers out there), but to determine what his is, where he's strong and where not, and how the person will fit into your structure. Making your test the big determining factor is a failure.

6. There's a reason fizzbuzz for example makes a great starter test. It immediately weeds out people that can't complete it, and allows you to see the interviewee reason through it. He goes for example, well, I take this and that, then I have to do this; oh yeah and so so etc. It allows you to see a lot more than just the end answer. After that you can apply more interesting/harder questions, but focus rather on how they do it than if they can complete it in the allotted 5 minutes.

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