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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

#471

Post by CM30 »

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…

> 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.

Doesn't journalism also have a lot of sites/publications/companies trying to get people to work for free full time? I know quite a few pass it off as working for 'exposure'...

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

#472

Post by Franciscouzo »

BjoernKW wrote: post #251
colordrops wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then people that aren't part of that network of trust (like minorities or women) can't get work.

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

#474

Post by lowbloodsugar »

pwthornton wrote: post #322
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…

You really can't. There are some people who have a skill for talking about what they've seen others do, and for memorizing what others said. If that person has sat in a post-mortem for some failure, they'll be able to tell you all the things that went wrong, how "they" fixed them, and why. And yet they can't code.

I'm not hiring people who can talk and not code. I'm hiring people who can code (and, ideally, talk). The only way to verify that they can code is to witness it happening.

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

#475

Post by monocasa »

TheGRS wrote: post #463
Clubber wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think this assertion that the technical interview is inherently filtering out great candidates is being very honest (you responded similarly to another comment of mine the same way). One quality being tested is "can you try to do the thing that we're asking for?" That's a measurement in competence and the willingness to get something done. If said candidate is saying "this test is ridiculous and a waste of my…

Most senior devs have a family, value work/life balance, and currently have another job. I don't expect them to take their work home past 5 while they're working with me, so why should I expect them to do that before I'm even paying them?

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

#476

Post by TheGRS »

gaius wrote: post #456
stupidcar wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 Here's the thing tho': my CV is honest and my track record is pretty good: some small companies and some name-brand, well respected in their industries, known for probing interviews, over about 20 years. There may be some bad actors in the global candidate pool. But serious…

I see on this board more than any other where people will agree that taking time to hire correctly is by and far more cost efficient than hiring quickly, but incorrectly. I've definitely gone through a lot of experiences now where someone looks like a rock star on paper, have a great cultural interview, and we don't give them a ton of technical exercises, only to find out that they can't hack it or, even worse, are dragging down the rest of the team. I really wanna trust people on this stuff, my instincts are to appeal to the greater good in people, but I've been burned enough to not trust it anymore.

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

#478

Post by bassman9000 »

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…

These are objective measures on a set of borderline "well known" problems

Risking downvotes is having to remind you to read TFA, where they address the "objetive measure". Hint: they're not.

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

#479

Post by lowbloodsugar »

Franciscouzo wrote: post #472
BjoernKW wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then people that aren't part of that network of trust (like minorities or women) can't get work.

And likewise, we get cliques of bullshit artists. Literally this guy just proposed "It's not what you know, its who you know" as the solution.

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

#480

Post by spelunker »

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…

I've worked at a non-tech company as a software developer. At that place the department (we were rolled in with IT) was viewed as just another cost center. It's not great.
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