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

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

#321

Post by newnewpdro » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #250

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…

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

Which may have proven nothing more than this person was too nervous to function.

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

#322

Post by pwthornton » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:18 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…

You can tell if someone knows what they are doing by talking to them and having them walk you through what they have worked on.

Also, in the United States, you could fire someone easily if they were really incompetent. Considering how much time and money people spend per candidate to interview, it's probably much cheaper and more efficient to hire faster and fire faster. Some companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars per candidate they interview!

Hiring is a skill, and an overly long or drawn out process is a sign of bad hiring, not good hiring. The second part of the equation is to train people up and mentor them. Hiring is not enough. The second big part of good management is to actually get the most out of people and to help them learn and grow.

Now if it were only the tech industry that had long, ridiculous hiring processes, maybe we could say that it is necessary, but many companies and many fields have similar processes. I believe that many people have mistaken length of interview process and time spent with rigor.

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

#323

Post by magissima » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

newobj wrote: post #301

It's unreal that will people will bitch and moan about having to invest a couple days, maybe even a whole week in cramming/prepping/interviewing, to perform on-demand, one time, for a job that realistically will earn them $100k, $200k, $300k, $400k+ a year. Meanwhile people that work harder than us 5 days a week for the entire duration of their career will make 1/2, 1/4, 1/6th, or less of income, with none of the per…

If you're only applying to one job and you get it, sure. But when you're looking for a new job and sending out dozens of resumes, it adds up pretty quickly! On top of that, it makes rejections all the more dispiriting when you spend hours or days working on one job application.

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

#324

Post by JauntTrooper » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #292

walshemj wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's often a clause in the Employee Handbook you're asked to agree to periodically.

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

#325

Post by newobj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

131012 wrote: post #310

newobj wrote: post #301

It's unreal that will people will bitch and moan about having to invest a couple days, maybe even a whole week in cramming/prepping/interviewing, to perform on-demand, one time, for a job that realistically will earn them $100k, $200k, $300k, $400k+ a year. Meanwhile people that work harder than us 5 days a week for the entire duration of their career will make 1/2, 1/4, 1/6th, or less of income, with none of the per…

You can't know for sure that dad/friend/partner didn't write or review the assignment either. How about a 4-5 hours coding rush in the office, where you have to add a few functions or features to an existing codebase?

> You can't know for sure that dad/friend/partner didn't write the assignment either.

I don't follow what you're implying here, sorry?

> How about a 4-5 hours coding rush in the office, where you have to add a few functions or features to an existing codebase?

I work at a company where we actively keep a small set of tasks groomed for new hires. It's extremely difficult to keep a set of meaningful actually-in-the-codebase problems groomed at all times and totally infeasible that the person will spend less than a day coming up to speed on the infrastructure etc. The overhead of doing that is really prohibitive from an interview perspective.

I do think that for the most part, the coding problems need to be synthetic, then, not an active need in your codebase. I am definitely a believer in longer more open-ended coding challenges than 45 minute white board jams though.

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

#326

Post by pwthornton » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #250

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…

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

We have to separate whether or not someone doesn't know how to do a job from whether someone doesn't know how to interview.

This is one of the biggest things I try to guard against. Some people just interview better than a lot of other people, but that doesn't mean they do anything other than interview well.

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

#327

Post by dep_b » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

I had to do homework assignments twice. Once was for TopTal, which kind of made it worth at the end since I've got a few years of work out if it already and they're supposed to check their candidates thorough.

The other one was for Automattic that seemed to be intentionally vague to check if I would spot some pitfalls and smells they left behind. Never heard back. Mailed the guy that I had contact with twice. Not a fucking word. Thank you for wasting my time.

I don't think I'll ever do it for free again unless it's a position for Godmaster of Cooltech at AwesomeCo.

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

#328

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

newobj wrote: post #301

It's unreal that will people will bitch and moan about having to invest a couple days, maybe even a whole week in cramming/prepping/interviewing, to perform on-demand, one time, for a job that realistically will earn them $100k, $200k, $300k, $400k+ a year. Meanwhile people that work harder than us 5 days a week for the entire duration of their career will make 1/2, 1/4, 1/6th, or less of income, with none of the per…

Personally, I think it's fine to expect employers to verify a candidates skills. But they should also limit their verification to the minimum amount necessary.

People are just arguing where that line should be drawn. Whether it's hours, days, or months of verification. Some careers do require months of unpaid internships in order to get jobs. And it's not because it takes months to verify a person's ability, but because companies will do anything they can to pay people as little as possible for their work.

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

#329

Post by newobj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

magissima wrote: post #323

newobj wrote: post #301

It's unreal that will people will bitch and moan about having to invest a couple days, maybe even a whole week in cramming/prepping/interviewing, to perform on-demand, one time, for a job that realistically will earn them $100k, $200k, $300k, $400k+ a year. Meanwhile people that work harder than us 5 days a week for the entire duration of their career will make 1/2, 1/4, 1/6th, or less of income, with none of the per…

If you're only applying to one job and you get it, sure. But when you're looking for a new job and sending out dozens of resumes, it adds up pretty quickly! On top of that, it makes rejections all the more dispiriting when you spend hours or days working on one job application.

IMHO, if you can't land, say, 1 out of 3 interviews, there is a systemic personal problem, not just a bad day, and "the problem is u" -- sadly you will just need to work harder because something in your skill set is not up to snuff.

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

#330

Post by speby » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

stupidcar wrote: post #247

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…

The hiring process is a response to the fact that employers cannot trust a single word candidates say about their experience. This isn't paranoia. Literally, most candidates we see cannot code, even when they supposed have a decade or more of industry experience. If the industry wasn't so full of lying incompetents, it wouldn't be an issue.

Others have definitely mentioned this experience. For me, I have encountered this very rarely. More common, IME, has been people who seem like they have a TON of deep experience in something but then, when pressed or inquired, only have shallow experience. So, in short, I don't run into people who claim to code but can't as often as I do people who can code at least a little bit but quickly are unable to deal with more complex technical problems, or more expansive knowledge of the language they prefer or use most.