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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

#251

Post by BjoernKW »

colordrops wrote: post #225
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?

An informal network of trust (which in fact already exists, it's just that many companies and many engineers don't use it), i.e. personal references, referrals, open source contributions, a project portfolio.

Many participants in the game unfortunately insist on hiring and marketing by three-letter acronyms.

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

#252

Post by majormajor »

nugget wrote: post #242
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…

Let me play devil's advocate for a second. Knowing how to write code isn't binary, of course; there's a wide range of skill even among those who have contributed to large production systems. If I hire someone who seems great on paper and turns out to be a dud, then I immediately let them go. It's bad for me, and bad for them. If a 10 hour project-specific coding task reduces mis-hires by 50%+, isn't it better for bot…

> If a 10 hour project-specific coding task reduces mis-hires by 50%+, isn't it better for both parties?

Does this fully replace the onsite? If I'm fully employed, interviewing with three or four places, and expected to take a day off and visit each of them, adding another full day of work on top of each is a big hurdle.

To keep going with the devil's advocate: If one of your competitors says "ok based on your initial chat with the director, we're gonna bring you straight to onsite" and you say "do this ten hour problem" guess which I'm going to favor? A hiring manager confident in his ability (probably learned through trial and error) to sniff out bullshit is a positive signal to me, the candidate. Intense homework tells me one of two things: they have way too many candidates for the role and there isn't enough data to screen by hand (this makes sense for seasonal stuff like entry-level, not so much elsewhere IMO), or they don't really have a solid picture of how to interview. And in the latter case, that probably means if someone else on the team or in the company suggests a bad but speciously-attractive technical design, they're also going to be unable to call that out.

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

#253

Post by ams6110 »

mavelikara wrote: post #175
pwthornton wrote: post #98

If you're going to expect people to do real work, you need to pay them. This is common in a field like journalism. Want to do a one or two day trial of a reporter? Pay them to write for you! Have them work in a real environment and do real work for publication. If you're not willing to pay people for their time, and it's not an executive position, asking for days of a person's time is asinine. Also, if the homework i…

> Want to work on my team? I'll screen the resumes, I'll do the phone interviews and then I'll bring you in in person. I'll be in on all of the interviews you have with various people. FWIW, if I were one of the interviewers on OPs team, I will find this to be micromanaging and will be uncomfortable.

Also, be very sure you understand what you can and cannot say, or ask, when talking with a candidate. HR (in theory) are trained to avoid the landmines.

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

#254

Post by monocasa »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #246
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…

As someone who does a lot of interviewing, I tone down the technical stuff as the experience and responsibility level increases. I think a lot of the annoyances you mention still make sense for an entry level position, because there are a lot of folks who actually can't write code who apply for those jobs. For candidates with many years of experience, obviously they can and have been writing software effectively, so…

> For candidates with many years of experience, obviously they can and have been writing software effectively

I wish that were true, it'd make hiring so much easier.

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

#255

Post by reaperducer »

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…

> Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious.

Agreed. The solution is to not work at a tech company, but instead work in a tech capacity at a real company.

- No silly games (before or after hiring).

- Better benefits (I'd rather have proper health coverage and a pension than a room full of toys and vaporware stock options).

- Immensely more job security (Henry Ford didn't have an "exit strategy").

- People respect you more as a professional with a needed skillset, and not a throwaway cog in a machine who can be replaced or offshored on a whim.

- And in many real companies, proper internal HR groups focused on making you a better person and a better employee, and not some farmed-out commission-based headhunter group that makes money on employee churn.

> In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume.

That's not an ideal world. That's the real world. Meaning not SV, and its wannabes.

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

#256

Post by mAEStro-paNDa »

colordrops wrote: post #225
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?

the article itself mentions a solution which isn't terrible, it's just the issue is a matter of trust

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

#257

Post by andyidsinga »

vkou wrote: post #223
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.

Hmmm.. Agree they can't show it, but they can most def. talk about parts of it, their role and show contrived examples, discuss language skills, architectural elements, improvements they wished they could have made, how they worked with others on the larger team, presentations they made... the list goes on.

This is especially possible given that a lot of work includes open source code, publicly available APIs, SDK services etc. In interviews I've conducted, when a candidate mentions these its an opportunity to dive into more detail on their expertise ..and again discuss contrived examples.

In addition, probationary periods are a way to guard against complete mismatches.

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

#258

Post by cimmanom »

hamidhasan wrote: post #227
cimmanom wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Tha…

Yeah, that is an interesting idea. Might be harder to come up with, though.

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

#259

Post by monocasa »

djsumdog wrote: post #244
dmoy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you try to hire people who currently have jobs with strict anti moonlighting policies? (Or maybe the answer is just don't bother, and you can afford shrinking the applicant pool without any big adverse effects)

Those people made poor choices for signing those policies. I personally never sign non-compete agreements. I've also seen agreements where any OSS projects you work on need to get approved. I walked away from that bullshit.

It depends on your state. Non-competes aren't valid in CA for the most part, but they are for most of the rest of the country.

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

#260

Post by hinkley »

maxerickson wrote: post #101
0x445442 wrote: post #85

If the software development industry was the home building industry... I'm a general contractor (Unicorn Homes Inc.) and I'm currently building a number of spec homes. We're going to need electrical work done in all the homes and I'm in the process of sub-contracting out that work. What I need from you, Joe Electrician, is for you to go wire the kitchen of one of these homes. Once you're done I will inspect your work…

It's the other way around. If the homebuilding industry were like the software industry. If software were like homebuilding, there would be legally enforced licensing.

And when someone tells me to do something dangerous or illegal I can tell them to fuck off because it’s not to code.

Would it be so bad?

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