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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

#71
post #14
post #3

Can someone explain why we need: 1. A phone coding interview (Potentially another phone coding interview) 2. A homework 3. An onsite with 5 rounds Seriously, what does that additional tree traversal round prove?

I don't necessarily buy fully into all of these (I am in favor of homeworks, but they should be paid and later staged [this usually means more phone screens. can't win em all]). But since you asked: 1) because meaningfully large swaths of applicants are too stupid to fizzbuzz 2) because passing fizzbuzz is not the same as writing software 3) because teams are comprised of many people in many roles and just because te…

1. If applicants can't pass fizzbuzz then you shouldn't hire them and you can end the interview process right there.

2. Asking them to write fizzbuzz is exactly the same as asking them to write a method that does anything else, unless if they're aware of it and already knew how to do it, but of course you're asking them other questions as well?

3. Agreed, but it's impossible to match a new candidate with everyone in the company. If they're going to be working closely with person X then have that person sit in the interview for 15-30 minutes and see if they can work together on a problem.

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

#72
I spent days almost 10 hours, completing a massive interview project for one company. I submitted a fully working solution, had unit test, was pixel perfect, and they didn't even give me an interview.

Not only that they gave me a vague reason, only after pressing for feedback.

Left a very bad taste in my mouth, don't think I'll be doing code assignments again, what a waste of time.

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

#73

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 r…

Regarding #2, I believe your observations and concerns are correct and valid. However, in these situations where the candidate spills his technical heart out, you really start to see the difference between good candidates and bad candidates. Good candidates just have a deep sense of the problem space, can enumerate issues, document such things, etc.

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

#74
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…

I wonder how much of the shortage is due to there only being a relatively small portion of jobs that developers actually want.

Every time I've worked at a small company that had obvious perks (using a cool language, building a cool product), we had a bunch of applicants to pick from. We could be picky.

But the few times I worked at a company on soul-sucking work like internal legacy tools in VBScript for a non-tech company, they were the ones complaining about the great dev shortage.

They paid well but you also had to jump through hoops to see what it was which is too typical in our work culture. So if the job description doesn't compel someone to apply, GG.

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

#75
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money where your mouth is; are you willing to pay for it? Would you pay the candidate a reasonable sum, certainly over a hundred Euros a day (after tax etc.) for their pre-interview homework? Given that the cost of a bad hire is orders of magnitude more than that, this seems like a really good deal for the company.

are you willing to pay for it? Would you pay the candidate a reasonable sum This would be additional income complicating tax, and many companies restrict employees from taking on outside paid work without approval. No matter how you slice it, these multi-hour homeworks are a stupid idea. And the real reason for them is to discourage candidates to justify getting indentured labour instead. Or to discriminate against o…

This would be additional income complicating tax, and many companies restrict employees from taking on outside paid work without approval.

It seems wrong to reject a good idea because other bad idea will interfere with it. Maybe I'm fortunate; I take extra irregular work in the sum of about 30 days a year, and at the end of the year HMRC and I settle up very simply and easily. I couldn't imagine taking a contract that said I couldn't do any other work; it's by no means uncommon in the UK for people to have extra part-time work that fits around their main job. I think we shouldn't reject a good idea - paying people if you want them to do multi-day interviews - just because other bad ideas (tax systems that can't handle earning extra cash, employers who view their staff as property) will make it awkward for some people.

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

#76
”..format that involves reviewing code together and talking about it. The process typically takes between 30 minutes to an hour.”

This sounds like a good idea to try. Much less time consuming than having to create meaningfully things from scratch. Also more relevant as you don't usually need to write code in front of others, but you might need to review existing code.

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

#77
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…

> Why not get people at a desk quickly and evaluate them on the job?

Because then the other developers would not be able to haze the candidates. Seriously, there's way to much ego involved in development these days.

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

#78

I spent days almost 10 hours, completing a massive interview project for one company. I submitted a fully working solution, had unit test, was pixel perfect, and they didn't even give me an interview. Not only that they gave me a vague reason, only after pressing for feedback. Left a very bad taste in my mouth, don't think I'll be doing code assignments again, what a waste of time.

Would you still do it if you were paid for your time? Say $500 for this 10 hour project.

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

#79
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money where your mouth is; are you willing to pay for it? Would you pay the candidate a reasonable sum, certainly over a hundred Euros a day (after tax etc.) for their pre-interview homework? Given that the cost of a bad hire is orders of magnitude more than that, this seems like a really good deal for the company.

are you willing to pay for it? Would you pay the candidate a reasonable sum This would be additional income complicating tax, and many companies restrict employees from taking on outside paid work without approval. No matter how you slice it, these multi-hour homeworks are a stupid idea. And the real reason for them is to discourage candidates to justify getting indentured labour instead. Or to discriminate against o…

The homework is, in part, a personality test to see how much the company will be able to take advantage of an applicant. This may or may not not be the intent, but it is a result.

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

#80
post #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 GuteFr e.The wo…

Lol as an American living in Germany I totally empathize with you, it made me smile.

Germany also says it suffers from a lack of developers, but in my opinion what they don't say is that they need more developers to treat poorly and with a low salary.

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