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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

#391

Post by learc83 »

h1srf wrote: post #224
learc83 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It's fairly easy. You just have to follow the guidelines. They are also guidelines not hard and fast rules. If you ask a contractor to come in from 9-5 for a week because that's when you're company is open, but it's a short term engagement, you don't buy them a computer, you don't prevent them from working for other companies, you don't offer insurance or vacation, you don't reimburse them for business expenses, and you have a written contract, you're not likely to run into problems.

>This is why a lot of larger companies will not employ sole-proprietors directly.

There are plenty of large companies that do contract directly. For example, Coke does it all the time.

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

#392

Post by iamcasen »

dasil003 wrote: post #216
threatofrain wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might assert that what developers have is not a privilege. A privilege is something granted out of generosity or grace by another party, perhaps even undue (and hence the grace). What developers have is some "game", which makes them a "player". As soon as they lose their game, they cease to be players. Their relation to the game is exactly their value and nothing less. Tech employers are higher level players who kn…

A thousand times this. Although I still write code, and I would be comfortable being a tech lead forever, after 20 years I decided to focus my career on management for my own job security. It was either that or specialize in some hot field, but that's not where my heart is. So as a generalist I would be perpetually competing with the ever widening cohort of "senior" devs who have the SV-standard 5-years experience th…

Spoken like a programmer with years of experience! I feel this all too acutely. My only game these days is to find small companies who are desperate for engineering experience and leadership because their in-house/contract devs aren't getting the job done.

If I went to google or FB or whatever, it would likely be a nightmare of constant sink or swim projects and unrealistic expectations.

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

#393

Post by poulsbohemian »

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…

I’m going to show some vulnerability… this happened to me this week. I’m probably like a lot of you here: professional software developer for 20 years, have shipped countless products in multiple languages / technologies. Work has appeared on tv and print media multiple times. Have generated millions and millions in cost savings and revenue for employers and clients.

But I totally failed a technical screen.

It’s been a week of reflection as a result. I nearly canceled the interview to begin with because the entire process felt like a cattle call - totally cold, the company had shared no information about themselves or the role. There were ten minutes of rapid fire (“you have one minute to answer this question.”) followed by the proclamation that the next 45 minutes would be spent on “as many coding problems as we can get through.”

Within the first few minutes I was able to describe a general solution to the problem, but over the next 40 I totally struggled to produce a working solution. Now, sitting here I could likely write it in 5 minutes. The problem was:

--I was completely frustrated by the experience from the beginning

--I was in a code editor that I wasn’t familiar with

--I had limited access to documentation

--An interviewer looking over my shoulder harassing me

--I realized that while the problem was simple, there were things I’d just never needed in that particular language before, so didn’t have a complete understanding of what was available to me.

--I focus on design before implementation, where the interviewer just wanted me to jump in and bang out code.

--I realized that the last time I wrote this particular bit of code was 20+ years ago, as a college freshman, and certainly not in the language I was using today.

So I agree with the other commenters: we should all check our premises before we disregard another experienced programmer as as hopeless hack.

I wrote a long blog article this week about what I think the interview process should be, will be posting it soon. There are ways to fix this process.

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

#394

Post by helper »

tptacek wrote: post #236

I believe the big problem people have with take-home work is trust. Nobody wants to do a take-home assignment that doesn't really impact their prospects of getting a job, or, worse, that has only downside for them. Hiring teams give assignments and then run a standard interview gauntlet. On both sides, most people believe it's the interviewers making the real decisions, without much consultation to the tests. The can…

Do you time box the work-sample or can candidates take as long as they want on it? Do you know what the average time is to complete the assignment?

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

#395

Post by newobj »

mywittyname wrote: post #390
newobj wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wrong if the company benefits in any way from your interview/probationary period. (Probationary periods are just wrong period IMHO.) Interviewing is a huge burden to most companies, so if your interview questions are entirely synthetic, it's ONLY a cost to the company to interview you, which they should naturally want to minimize on their own. But you know what's even more expensive than interviewing? Dealing wi…

You're not refuting my point though. I agree they should do what they can to ensure they get a good hire, but I also thing they should do the minimum amount necessary to do such. I've worked on many great teams whose interview process was little more than asking intelligent, pointed questions about previous work experience. Of course, this puts the onus on the interviewer to know what they are doing. I personally kee…

I wasn't trying to refute your point... in fact I think I was mostly agreeing with you?

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

#396

Post by Arzh »

psyc wrote: post #388
monocasa wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps it's because you insist on testing their ability to live code on the spot as a performance piece, and misinterpreting that as testing their ability to code. If you're turning down someone who wrote space shuttle firmware, because they "can't do fizzbuzz", then you are administering a terrible test and getting a false negative. I have 20 years of industry experience. Everything on my resume is the truth. I've…

Then the other option is to do a small take home test. Are you ok with that?

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

#397

Post by psyc »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #393
monocasa wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m going to show some vulnerability… this happened to me this week. I’m probably like a lot of you here: professional software developer for 20 years, have shipped countless products in multiple languages / technologies. Work has appeared on tv and print media multiple times. Have generated millions and millions in cost savings and revenue for employers and clients. But I totally failed a technical screen. It’s been…

There's no shame in it. Same thing happened to me last week, and I was furious about it. I've resolved not to take any more live coding interviews, on the grounds it is uninformative, degrading hazing. We're composers, but we're being tested as if we're live concert pianists. Then companies complain that there's a talent shortage! This hurts everybody, and it needs to stop. For my part, I will refuse to participate any further.

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

#398

Post by Clubber »

retbull wrote: post #351
neurobashing wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IT fixes peoples computers. Software Developers don't do that. We aren't Network Admins, we don't know how to set up or fix AD and we don't manage hardware. IT is a different field. I write software to process data and mostly I don't interact with hardware or troubleshooting arbitrary software directly. If I am offering support I am a level above IT. I understand that IT needs to be done but it is a very different jo…

That definition morphs by time and company. At the last place I worked the IT department was the devs, dbas, net admins, and help desk.

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

#399

Post by poulsbohemian »

tboyd47 wrote: post #384
adreamingsoul wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check your premise. It sounds to me that an assumption is being made because they didnt meet the expectations within a fixed time period. The danger with this is that this is not a real world scenerio of how two people would approach a task or problem. It’s also important to recognize that everyone is different with regards to how they process information. Stress has a real biological effect on how the brain processe…

Solving a problem within a fixed time period is the best real world scenario for programmers. No project has an unlimited budget, so no one gets unlimited time in the real world.

"Plan to throw one away." This was one of the major thesis statements of The Mythical Man Month, by Fred Brooks. It's one of the hallmark texts on software development. I don't disagree with what you are saying - that we need to be cognizant of time and money - but there is a scary shift happening in software where more emphasis is put on time-to-market above all else, where we are boiling the frog of consumer expectations. Millions of people lose their personal financial information in a hack, and the entire population just shrugs their shoulders. I'm left wondering if this would be the case if we put less emphasis on continuous production deployment, and more on the care and quality of our processes and systems.

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

#400

Post by psyc »

Arzh wrote: post #396
psyc wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's because you insist on testing their ability to live code on the spot as a performance piece, and misinterpreting that as testing their ability to code. If you're turning down someone who wrote space shuttle firmware, because they "can't do fizzbuzz", then you are administering a terrible test and getting a false negative. I have 20 years of industry experience. Everything on my resume is the truth. I've…

Then the other option is to do a small take home test. Are you ok with that?

Yes. I strongly prefer an offline test, if it realistically wouldn't take more than a few hours.
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