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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

#561

Post by TheGRS »

kmkemp wrote: post #510
monocasa wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Almost too obvious solution: do an initial phone chat to filter qualified candidates into a small pool and then pay your final round of candidates a nice rate to complete a take home project. Bonus points if you can make it something that you can actually use at your company.

The take home exam is quite a bit more of an efficient filter than a blanket phone screen. Anything less than a 20 minute call isn't going to tell me much.

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

#562

Post by psyc »

the-pigeon wrote: post #555
psyc wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> I've resolved not to take any more live coding interviews, on the grounds it is uninformative, degrading hazing. Depends on the job. I'm currently hiring and the live coding exercise is a must for the position because I want to see how the person problem solves while under stress. Because stuff happens. My team works on mission critical systems that can have issues that we sometimes must resolve quickly which is ve…

I agree this point is valid, but I think it's much more exceptional than whiteboard interviews are. I've personally never applied for such a job, since I typically work on consumer products at BigCos with a glacial development pace.

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

#563

Post by TheGRS »

ryandrake wrote: post #517
TheGRS wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, by the time we have a phone interview I'm pretty seriously considering that candidate and I want to get to know their personality better to see if they're a good fit, so whatever I can do to shrink that pool in a way that's fair to everyone is necessary.

I love trying to square these conversations about needing to shrink the candidate pool to something manageable with the widely claimed “shortage of engineers”.

That's easy, there is a vast chasm between people who say they can do things and people who actually can do things. This is precisely why these filters exist!

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

#564

Post by gshulegaard »

Interesting, I actually prefer take home challenges to the previous trend of whiteboard interviews. And within the realm of take home challenges I prefer ones without time limits which usually implies they are full or multi day assignments.

Even with rehearsal I am not a great public speaker and impromptu formats certainly don't make me better. I also prefer take home assignments since it is more closely related to how I actually do work: Get a problem, think about the requirements, do some research and design a solution, implement.

Since I personally prefer this style of interviews, I have given assignments like this. Usually a simple microservice that is given AWS t2.micro size constraints and no time limit for a response. When I get a submission I am looking at code style, tests, and documentation as well as solution quality to get a better picture of how a candidate approaches tasks and gauge how they work independently. It's amazing how much you can tell about a single person from a challenge like this.

I also think it is more flexible since there are no strict pass/fail criteria. A solution in C/C++ that optimizes heavily but skimps on documentation could be just as impressive as someone who uses Python to stitch together multiple tools with more features and more thorough documentation.

Interviewing is difficult...for both interviewee and interviewer. Finding the right compromise between depth for the interviewer and work required of the interviewee is a challenge. I am sure there are take home challenges that are ridiculous, but I wouldn't dismiss all take home assignments.

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

#565

Post by the-pigeon »

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.

One that hit me hard was a homework assignment that I absolutely aced. It was timed and I was super proud of myself for not only getting all of it completed including the bonus questions with what I considered very good quality code.

But I hadn't talked to anyone in the company prior to them giving me the homework. So they are impressed and move me on to the next stage, I talk with them and immediately find out that 60+ hour weeks are the normal for them several months out of the year. So my time on the coding exercise was wasted, a simple phone screening where they gave me details of the position would've saved me from that and I now insist on a quick chat with the hiring manager to "find out if I'm right for the role" prior to completing a non-trivial exercise.

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

#566

Post by Mc91 »

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…

> Nobody wants to do a take-home assignment that doesn't really impact their prospects of getting a job

I spent a few days on one, sent it in and was told that day that they had made an offer to someone who accepted the offer. Then I did another one over the course of a few days which was looked at, but a new VP came in and eliminated the opening.

It's similar to asking me to come down for an interview for a few hours during the work day (and then to come back, because one person I had to talk to wasn't there). Or before I've even talked to anyone, they hand me a form asking for three references, preferably (or exclusively) former managers, and their current phone numbers.

I don't mind them asking or me giving these things if they are near a decision about me, but almost every short phone screen I have nowadays is followed by a request for a work sample that in reality would take a couple of days to do (between my schedule, and wanting to send it in near-perfect).

Something I think is preferable is for them to ask me for code I wrote. Then I can write something once and be done with it.

As others on the thread have said, in a tight market, companies put up huge new barriers to getting a job with them like several days worth of free work, then bemoan the fact they can't hire qualified (young, SF local) people who "care about their mission" of selling advertising junk from one corporation to another corporation.

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

#567

Post by henrikschroder »

carlosdp wrote: post #459
monksy wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure its just the recruiting side. We're seeing some concerning positions in the market: 1. Expectation of long work hours (Frequent and short deadlines due to agile) 2. Micromanagment being the standard (agile) 3. Terrible environments (open desk/office) 4. Removal of vacation time (unlimited PTO means you have no vacation days)

> 4. Removal of vacation time (unlimited PTO means you have no vacation days) That's just not universally true at all. Using my current employer as an example, they have been very good about encouraging employees to take advantage of unlimited PTO. Managers take PTO and encourage people that haven't taken it in a while to do so. Even the CEO goes in front of the company at all hands every once in a while and tells pe…

How many days of vacation per year does the average employee take?

> I personally am so spoiled by this

I had the standard six weeks of vacation per year at my first real job. How many weeks of vacation do you use per year?

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

#568

Post by toephu2 »

ModernMech wrote: post #268
waylandsmithers wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does a lot of interviewing, I tone down the technical stuff as the experience and responsibility level increases. I think a lot of the annoyances you mention still make sense for an entry level position, because there are a lot of folks who actually can't write code who apply for those jobs. For candidates with many years of experience, obviously they can and have been writing software effectively, so…

I have a PhD in Computer Science and 10 years in the industry, and I've never not been asked to do some trivial programming task in an interview. Thanks for showing some common sense, but most interviewers are just lazy. One time I couldn't implement a skiplist, and the feedback I got was "we were concerned about your problem solving skills".

As it should have been. The fact that you have a PhD means nothing to Google, Facebook, and the like (except possibly a slightly higher base salary than a new grad w/ only a BS)

The question is, can you whiteboard? They will be testing that. If you can, then all is golden and you probably didn't need to waste those 4-6 years getting that PhD because what you will be working on will have nothing to do with your topic of research (unless it was AI/ML).

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

#569

Post by s73v3r_ »

aje403 wrote: post #436
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it bother you that you don't know the answer?

Bother me I don't know what answer? I don't follow. I think it makes sense to hire people with communication skills unless you're specifically looking to hire cave troll code drones

Communicating in the office is quite different than communicating in an interview setting.

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

#570

Post by toephu2 »

vpmpaul wrote: post #545
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've hired and it is astounding the number of people with CS degrees and years of experience that can barely program. Until there is some sort of professional IT association like the BAR for lawyers this type of treatment will continue. Unfortunately there are about 1000 competing bodies trying to be this association. It seems that the tech crowd would rather in-fight than work together to be treated seriously.

And the number of coding schools that have popped up in the recent years and the fact that every econ major and their mom is trying to become a developer now isn't helping either.
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