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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

#531

Post by pathseeker »

speby wrote: post #345
colordrops wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you prefer? Some sort of rating or ranking system based off of objective standards?

Well, perhaps. I don't want to suggest "licensing" because that's kind of a naughty word around here but man, it sure would be nice if something like that could take the extreme repetition and time wasting of "technical screens" out of the interview process completely.

The problem is that the license test can be gamed just like the technical interviews they are designed to replace.

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

#532

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

monocasa wrote: post #434
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…

> 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. Or... large companies, particularly defense, excel at hiding mediocrity in their ranks, and it's easy for someone who produces no or negative work to be handed around rather than fired.

Small companies also excel at hiding mediocrity.

What's the success rate for startups?

The reality here is that everyone is supposing their particular bias explains what happened.

No one seems to have asked what actually went wrong in the interview. Was the interviewee truly incompetent? Were they nervous? Were they fine at code but terrible at interviews? Was the language or environment unfamiliar? Had they just got off a plane after zero hours of sleep?

Without data, opinions are worthless. And generally, there's too little data about the relationship between interview performance and job performance, and too much unthinking mimicry: "We do this because everyone else does."

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

#533

Post by muddyrivers »

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.

No projects are budgeted to 45 minutes. The real world scenario for such limited time is debugging in production issues. It is a completely different scenario. The people who jump in are mostly those who are familiar with the services or application that are showing issues, those who have a clear understand of the architecture of the company, those who have skills on their tech stacks and know where to look at and how to analyze, etc.

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

#534

Post by fsloth »

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.

"Solving a problem within a fixed time period is the best real world scenario for programmers"

The funny thing is an artificial examination style setup totally freezes me up. I'm a valued contributor and write original technically non-trivial code day in and day out.

The last time I did an interview a few years ago my brain completely locked up. The interviewer was very polite, and it could have not have been any less stressful situation. Yet, somehow my brain knew I was in an interview, and it was time to lock up all that valuable technical information ... somewhere where my conscious mind could not access it.

Which is really weird. Usually at work the occasional unexpected stress put's my brain on turbo-charge, and ... it's so beautiful to experience it, everything has perfect clarity, I know what needs to be done and I just do it so much faster than regularly.

My "on-interview" brain is complete opposite of my "million-euros-are-at-a-risk" brain at work. I have no idea why.

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

#535

Post by droidist2 »

aje403 wrote: post #462
talmand wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we're tacking on an additional aspect of the job that we didn't know about before. If the job requires a social interaction with people outside of the company then, of course, it becomes a factor. Let's not be silly in an effort to just be right and prove someone else wrong.

People exist inside the company too, and sometimes when you are employed there, you need to have "social interactions" with those people, even if a lot of your time is spent writing code. I'm sorry, I'm not going to be polite - I think you are a complete moron if you believe companies should re-tailor their interview process to specifically suit people with anxiety attacks and no social skills

They should if they want those people, if not then don't. But if you don't, you shouldn't also complain there's a shortage of skilled people.

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

#536

Post by toss1 »

Arzh wrote: post #417
psyc wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah we try to have a limit of 4 hours for this kinda thing. We understand that it is the interviewee's free time but when you need to screen 12 people for a job it is not worth a Senior Engineers time for a small startup.

WHAT?!?

Getting the right team is one of, if not THE key to startup success.

Yet you consider it not worth a senior engineer's time to evaluate the candidates for the next hire, and the presumably with whom they will need to work - productively?

Check your org's runway and be sure to have your resume ready when it gets close to the end. I wouldn't expect take-off.

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

#537

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

> Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume.

Working for nothing __is__ obnoxious.

Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Perhaps licensing a programmer / developer / engineer would be over doing it. (Read: Yes, it would be. But the examples do help.) That said, can't there be a formal certification(s)?

If the time from these "take home test" was invested in a more universal certification process, wouldn't that be to everyone's benefit? A recruiter with value add, if you will

The employee gets a clear picture (read: context) of where his/her skill set stands, or doesn't.

The employers get to mitigate risk and fear.

All parties gets to reduce friction and time.

Clearly, no one is happy with the status quo. That's a problem. It's also an opportunity. Hint. Hint. ;)

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

#538

Post by tytytytytytytyt »

trowawee wrote: post #408
tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Take-home tests.

But people are already crying over take-home tests being like working for free for the company, and then there's no way to prove they aren't cheating, which is a showstopper. That by itself is definitely not a "better suggestion for filtering out people who can't code".

> all of these options will make the interview process more appealing for everyone.

No for people who can competently handle an onsite interview and don't want hours of extra work at home.

> 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.

Maybe you being so disingenuous makes you feel better, but interviews aren't "angry/combative/aggressive" just because someone asks to see some code on a whiteboard.

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

#539

Post by gdilla »

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…

i agree with you. it's a two way street. pay people if you want them to produce some product that takes more time than the interview.

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

#540

Post by gdilla »

haskellandchill wrote: post #458
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…

> $300k, $400k+ a year Amazon, Facebook, Google? Those are hard salaries to get in my experience. I'm reasonably well respected in my field; attending conferences, speaking, leading meetups, and tirelessly researching computer science in my free time. Can't get a job at those 3, but going to try and take the hedge fund route I guess (I'm in NYC).

That's total comp. Salaries top out at what you'd expect. It's bonuses, stock grants and discounted stock purchase programs that can push you up there.
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