The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by walshemj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #156

mschuster91 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an additional difficulty in many cases: the law. Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors, so you want to hire them. To "hire" someone formally for a week, though, entails a lot of paperwork and has, depending on the country, legal consequences (e.g. voting rights in worker councils, minimum employment durations, right to sue for wrongful termination)... The opt…

>Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors, so you want to hire them. At least in the US, this isn't a problem. You just make out the check to the individual, and then send them a 1099 at the end of the year. No need to have any kind of established company/status, because by default anyone running a business without incorporating or organizing is operating a sole propriet…

Yeh but the rates for these 1099 contractors are so low to what I would expect.

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

#222

Post by walshemj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #144

I'll take a 3-day take-home project over a whiteboard interview or live coding session any day. Working at my pace with my tools in my space? Yes please. The article makes two good points re: bias and lack of research. To the first I think it's up to us as interviewees to mention this in all of our calls. "Do you have a non-take-home option? For some groups this could be an exceptional burden." To the second there's…

Id possibly go for that but id want £500+ per day

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

#223

Post by vkou » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #213

My response - and even how I got jobs early in my career as a developer was this: "let me know show you some of the software I've developed on my own - I'd me happy to tell you how it works, the tech involved and the patterns used ..yada yada" Corollary : if you apply for a job or walk into a tech interview and can't talk about these things, its a red flag for the interviewer. PS. Now well on in my career, and having…

Someone who has spent 10 years, doing good work in a large company likely never built a single piece of software that they can show on their own.

They may have built software on their own, but it would all be internal, proprietary stuff that they can't demo, and you have no way of verifying.

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

#224

Post by h1srf » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #156

mschuster91 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an additional difficulty in many cases: the law. Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors, so you want to hire them. To "hire" someone formally for a week, though, entails a lot of paperwork and has, depending on the country, legal consequences (e.g. voting rights in worker councils, minimum employment durations, right to sue for wrongful termination)... The opt…

>Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors, so you want to hire them. At least in the US, this isn't a problem. You just make out the check to the individual, and then send them a 1099 at the end of the year. No need to have any kind of established company/status, because by default anyone running a business without incorporating or organizing is operating a sole propriet…

Unfortunately it's not as easy as that.

The IRS has guidelines on who is considered an employee. If you set their hours, provide equipment for them to use and there's a few other things I forget, they are a de-facto employee regardless of how you pay them: 1099 or W2. This is why a lot of larger companies will not employ sole-proprietors directly. They require you to either go through a contracting company or set up some corporate structure so that you can't claim to be one of their employees.

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

#225

Post by colordrops » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

speby wrote: post #218

Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. e.g. "I've written large production programs in C." Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly. Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have…

What would you prefer? Some sort of rating or ranking system based off of objective standards?

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

#226

Post by mattbee » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

cimmanom wrote: post #118

some_account wrote: post #89

I prefer homework to timed, monitored programming sessions. But the task should never be a big task. When i interviewed for a backend development position, the task was to set up flask with two routes, connect to a dB and retrieve a couple of rows when user visited the routes. It was not hard even though I never worked with flask before, and it wasn't supposed to be hard either. It was a test if I had basic programmi…

Exactly - a take-home test that will take more than ~2 (maybe 3) hours to complete is unreasonable. And it should be administered only after a preliminary phone screen. I'm willing to give up an evening for a job that appeals to me and that I have a decent chance at landing. I'm not willing to give up all my weekday free time for a week or stay up until 3am. And I won't do either if you're not willing to first invest…

The problem with any take-home test, ESPECIALLY one that you only expect to take 2 hours, is that you hand people an advantage who do have more time to spend on it.

That was what stopped us doing it, and started looking at reasonable tests that you can't prepare for, and can't spend more than the allotted time on. So that means we weave the testing into a 1-2 hours interview, and everyone has the same chance.

(we also document our process so you can see what you're getting into before you start)

https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process

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

#227

Post by hamidhasan » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

cimmanom wrote: post #132

animal531 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find code review-style discussion of a simple coding challenge to be great for assessing both culture fit and skill. What we administer is like a web app equivalent to FizzBuzz in terms of difficulty level. But unlike a whiteboard FizzBuzz, it doesn't put the developer on the spot. As an extra bonus, unlike FizzBuzz, you'll get different results from the kid who just successfully finished a CS degree and the grizzl…

This actually sounds really interesting, putting some code up for one interview or take home assignment, and then asking them to walk through a code review. You could also throw refactoring into the mix, ask them to actually refactor it if needed.

It also got me thinking: what if you just had some generic code, which was low quality, or a prototype front end app, and then asked them to refactor or code review it? That could spark some interesting discussion and be less stressful, but may be easily bsed I think.

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

#228

Post by pascalxus » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

danielh wrote: 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…

When the whole industry complains about not being able to hire developers, it's not due to lack of engineering supply. It's due to lack of hiring ability. Most engineers, quite simply are terrible at interviewing, at least until someone gives some actual training and mentoring, but even that is quite rare.

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

#229

Post by minimaxir » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #208

minimaxir wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never do a homework project as the first step in an application process. I would do one as the last step, after I had learned enough about the job and the company to decide that I really wanted it, and they had narrowed down the field to me and a handful of other candidates. When I was job hunting last year, the steps typically went like this. 1) 30 min phone call 2) Homework 3) Algorithm Exam 4) Onsite I t…

Maybe to your experience, but it likely is a filter for others.

I have no issues with doing homework as a filter, but a homework plus an algorithm exam for filtering is annoying, especially since the homework is more related to on-job performance and the algorithm exam isn't. (and in my experience, it's never a weighted average of doing well on the HW and doing less-well on the algorithms: it's always pass/fail).

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

#230

Post by icebraining » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #131

deepGem wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Just a week or two of contract work will tell you if the candidate is a fit or not. A 30 minute phone screen will tell you if a candidate is worthy of a contract. I think companies don't do this because a. They don't want to pay and b. They don't get to gloat 'we have a super rigorous hiring process'

There is an additional difficulty in many cases: the law. Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors, so you want to hire them. To "hire" someone formally for a week, though, entails a lot of paperwork and has, depending on the country, legal consequences (e.g. voting rights in worker councils, minimum employment durations, right to sue for wrongful termination)... The opt…

Most people are not contractors with an established company/legal status as contractors

Is this problematic? Here in Portugal I just update my status in the tax authority website, then declare the extra income when filing my taxes (plus possibly pay social security for that month). You don't need to create a company or anything like that.