Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

work.qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 1001 posts

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

#291

Post by some_account »

mattbee wrote: post #226
cimmanom wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 als…

Time pressure always make me perform a lot worse, on programming tests as well as iq tests.

I did an iq test that was not timed and got 10 points higher, which is quite significant and also much more how real life problem solving works as a programmer. I'm never under any time pressure in my job.

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

#292

Post by matthewmacleod »

walshemj wrote: post #219
pwthornton wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't do this, but we do have people work for us on a contract basis for a period of time while they still have another job. We have a lot of people who are looking for extra cash or maybe they like to just do a bunch of contract projects. But one thing can lead to another and then you decide you both want to work full time with each other.

Which is flat out gross misconduct for 99.9 % of all full time employees in the engineering field.

Is that true? I’ve never had a contract that forbade me to work on side projects for cash.

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

#293

Post by rhapsodic »

TheGRS wrote: post #217
rhapsodic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I undertook this project after two 30 minute conversations had convinced both parties that there was a fit, and the project was a next step. In this case, I don't see it as unreasonable, because you didn't have to do the project just to have a shot at someone talking to you in person. 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…

I'm rethinking what I did on my last hiring position. I sent a take-home test that should take about 2-3 hours to those who sent in a decent resume. It filtered out a little over half of the applicants I responded to, as in half didn't respond. It further filtered out a small segment who didn't do very well on the test. A filter is definitely needed to weed out those who are simply casting a wide net, are looking for…

>I really can't call everyone who has a decent resume, its way too time consuming.

Even if you have, say, 100 resumes you consider "decent" (which to me would be an impossibly high number) then you need to be able to rank them, so you can pick, say, the top 10, and invest some followup time in those.

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

#294

Post by some_account »

derwiki wrote: post #134
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…

> the task was to set up flask with two routes Setting up a web server is also a different skill than backend programming -- many experienced back-end programmers have never needed to spin up a new server for their job.

Flask has built in web server so it wasn't an issue, but I've set up nginx and apache before and would be able to do it as well if needed.

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

#295

Post by neurobashing »

teachrdan wrote: post #265
reaperducer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"). - Peo…

Real talk? I'd be concerned that, at a non-tech company, I'd be seen as a IT rather than a software engineer. And the conventional wisdom goes that IT is a cost center. Some of the best career advice I've ever gleaned is to work on something that visibly makes money for the company. I get to do that every day at my tech company. I don't know that I could say that if I worked in a technical capacity in another industr…

Real talk? There is nothing wrong with being in IT. Imagine if someone said "I would be concerned I'd be seen as a carpenter and not a woodworking artisan".

You're a carpenter. You nail boards together to serve the business interests of the company. Even if the boards are SQL queries or ReactJS or whatever.

Companies need tech. You can bring value by making everyone's jobs better with your technology - sand off those rough edges on everyone's workflows. Demonstrate your value.

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

#296

Post by holtalanm »

dmoy wrote: post #139
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…

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)

personally, i think anti-moonlighting policies should be illegal.

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

#297

Post by adrianmsmith »

frenchie14 wrote: post #281
ams6110 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't really have a way to de-facto verify that the person can do what they say they can do We do, it's called the probationary period. 30 or 60 days, or even a bit more. If the person isn't working out, or is not a good "fit" you can say goodbye. And it goes both ways. Candidates might find that the actual work or work environment is not what was portrayed in the recruitment process. If they don't like your com…

Scenario: you have two offers on hand. One offer is for a full time position. The other is for "let's see how the next one to two months goes and then we'll decide if you still have a job or not." Which do you pick? All things being equal, the first offer carries significantly less risk as an employee and is clearly the better choice. If you're an employer who really wants to hire engineers, why would you give an off…

If I had the choice between a full time position with 3 days free coding prior, or "let's see how the next 1-2 months go" with no free prior coding, I'd chose the latter.

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

#298

Post by ksk »

theptip wrote: post #140
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'

How many engineers would accept an offer which is conditional on "a week or two of contract work"? Most of the engineers that I've hired came from another job (not all though), and so they need a confirmed offer before they are willing to jump ship. So this practice introduces its own selection bias; you'd only be sampling from the pool of currently un-/fun-employed, and those who hate their current job enough to qui…

I wonder if having multiple ways you can hire would be beneficial here. Behind Door number 1 is a confirmed job offer after 5 hours of grueling technical interviews. Behind Door number 2 is a 30 day probation offer after an hour long soft skills + tech interview, etc..

Maybe the lesson here is that the "optimal" strategy is to simply not abstract the problem. Its not "a person" you're hiring, its Bob. And Bob is more comfortable doing X or Y or Z, and Bob is best tested for his skills in ABC manner, etc.

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

#300

Post by erichurkman »

azinman2 wrote: post #279
erichurkman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whiteboard is cruel for actual coding. It's too far removed from your normal tools. Whiteboarding can be good for architectural design or stepping through something. A sixty minute screen share is the sweet spot for me. They get to use whatever environment they are familiar with. Seeing someone work in their environment also tells you potentially a lot about the candidate. Staff engineer that can't navigate their deb…

That’s interesting. How does one build test cases in excel?

It was a combinatorial sum-of-n problem. Given a sequence of integers, can you produce a target by summing N of the values. He used Excel to put the expected return value in column A, the target in B, and C+ were values. Saved as a CSV which his program ingested. It was neat, actually: the rationale he gave was that it made it easy for anyone to add test cases.

(The candidate was previously in the accounting biz, so his navigation of Excel to do this was wizardlike to produce a few dozen test cases in about a minute.)

Post reply on HN