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

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

#401

Post by trowawee » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

xor1 wrote: post #387

trowawee wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several really, really good programmers with pretty intense anxiety. Automatically ruling them out because of a poorly-formatted interview process would be a big mistake.

What is working with them like?

I mean, they're people. I'm still close friends with a few of them, and I didn't like some of them. It's no different than working with anybody with a disability or an illness (or kids, or elderly parents, or any of the million other human things that can make you a less-than-full-functionality worker bot) - you make the necessary accommodations, work around issues when they arise, and live with it. Specifically, it involved toning down a bro-y, combative work environment (which was a change that I really appreciated).

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

#402

Post by monocasa » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

pwthornton wrote: post #326

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…

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.

Oh totally. Fizz Buzz shouldn't take you the whole 45 minutes, so the remainder is just a conversation where I dig down in their experience on a hunt for bullshit.

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

#403

Post by geebee » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:59 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…

To me the problem usnt fizzbuzz, its “find all matching subtrees in a binary tree” in 45 min at a whiteboard.

I dont need to hit the book to write fizzbuzz, and i could probably code up dfs and bfs without prep but i dont walk around ready to retake my undergrad algoriths midterm. Especially when i really dont even know what the topic will be.

Im aware that the question i posed isnt terribly difficult and perhaps it does say somethingabout me that i need a bit more time to refresh my data structure to do this at a whiteboard.

But i do want to be clear that fizzbuzz is not representative of the 5+ hour whiteboard grilling ive gone through at nany of these interviews.

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

#404

Post by draw_down » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:00 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…

> 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.

Yeah. I was pretty interested in a place recently, my initial chat with them seemed great and everything, but I lost interest when they gave me the homework test. It's not that I resented the homework -- hell, I've even worked in a place that had a take-home test which typically resulted in a good signal for a candidate's ability. I just didn't feel like doing more programming shit after doing it all day at work.

I think to make this idea work for candidates that aren't actively looking, a company needs to make it clear what they're offering beyond "we're hiring". Employers have been so in control for decades now that they think they should just be able to hang that phrase out there and get what they want.

(And nobody cares about foosball and free soda as perks anymore, we all know that shit doesn't cost anything.)

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

#405

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

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…

I'm intrigued by the on the spot performance aspect, so I wonder if anyone has performed a skit at an interview. It's a tempting idea. Some people are intrigued by live performance, especially the kind with constraints like this, people like Frank Abagnale for example.

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

#406

Post by Arzh » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #315

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…

Look at other fields for examples. Few have to interview like devs do. Other professionals may have continuing education like conferences, but that's not the same. Imagine nurses or docs getting asked to take vitals for an interview.

Cooks do a stage after a phone / in-person interview where they work in the restaurant for a day or so (multiple days if they are expected to work with different people).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_(cooking)

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

#407

Post by Clubber » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

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?

The other, other option is just refuse to do either. I get all my work from friends I've worked with in the last 20 or so years. I mean if a company insists on these hiring practices, and they continue to get bad applications because of it, the probably aren't going to be around for long anyway.

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

#408

Post by trowawee » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #377

trowawee wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several really, really good programmers with pretty intense anxiety. Automatically ruling them out because of a poorly-formatted interview process would be a big mistake.

Not if you can find others who are just as good. And what's your better suggestion for filtering out people who can't code and not filtering out the good ones with anxiety?

Take-home tests. Lower-stress environments for coding tests - working on their own hardware, working remotely, no panel interviews, no actively combative/aggressive interviews. Also, cool aspect of that: all of these options will make the interview process more appealing for everyone. And if the justification for angry/combative/aggressive interviewing is "well, that's how our culture is", I would say the company has a bigger problem to fix.

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

#409

Post by tptacek » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

helper wrote: post #394

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?

We have a suggested amount of time to take, but we don't put people on an actual clock or take into account how long it takes them to solve the challenges.

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

#410

Post by Clubber » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #364

throwaway84742 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds to me like fight or flight response. Happens to me sometimes, and when it does I can’t code worth a damn, in spite of having a decade and a half of experience on the top projects at some of the top companies in the industry. This, in fact, happened to me the first time I interviewed with Google: I bombed that pretty spectacularly. The second time I applied I already had a couple of very generous offers el…

Hence the take home interview. At least at the last company I worked at we began doing these because we could tell that the stress was filtering out some otherwise decent candidates. At least that was one of the reasons, it also gave us a chance to talk about technical solutions the candidate produced in a more stress-free way.

So you decided to filter out good candidates in a new way; the take home test.