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

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

#711

Post by user5994461 » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

rhapsodic wrote: post #378

Clubber wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as in half didn't respond Wouldn't it be funny if the half that didn't respond were the best candidates you heard from, and you threw them away with your take home thing? It's the irony that the thing you did to make sure you got good applicants was the very same thing that turned the best away.

>Wouldn't it be funny if the half that didn't respond were the best candidates you heard from, and you threw them away with your take home thing? In my estimation, it's not likely that all of the ones who didn't respond were better than the ones who did, but it's likely that a sizeable portion of them were. They're not going to jump through ridiculous hoops because they don't have to. One time an employer of mine wan…

It's the opposite effect IMO. A good test is more likely to keep the better candidates and only reject the poor candidates.

The exercise is sent upfront. A good candidate can estimate that it's a reasonable program doable in an hour. It's up to him to decide whether he wanna continue the application or not. Either way, both parties win.

A bad candidate who can't code cannot return anything. Little risk of false positive.

I think the only important thing is to keep the exercise short enough, one or two hours top. It doesn't exclude people who have a family or other obligations.

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

#712

Post by yosito » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:14 PM UTC

As a senior level engineer who's currently job searching, this trend is really burning me out right now. I'm at the point in my career where I don't want to work for just any random company (I've already worked for NASA and done client work for Young Money, Carrie Underwood, UFC and more). All of the positions I'm applying for are highly competitive. My resume performs well; I get interviews at 70-80% of the companies I apply to. And I usually have 3-4 interviews that go well. Then I get to the final stage, unpaid take home projects that last anywhere from a few hours to a week. Many of those go well too; I get feedback from companies saying they're really impressed by my work and that they'll talk to their team and get back to me with an offer. And then a few days later I get an email saying that they think I'm a really talented candidate but that they're moving forward with someone else. Over the last month, I've been working 50 hour weeks, unpaid, on code that's looked at once and then never seen again. It's really demotivating and exhausting.

I think there are a couple of solutions to this; 1) Instead of unpaid sample projects, companies could offer paid trial periods where you work on real problems and get paid, with the option to continue as a full time employee after the trial. 2) Instead of doing tens of sample projects or exercises, one for each company you apply to, you could be evaluated one time by a third party and that evaluation could substitute for technical interviews done by the companies themselves. It would save companies the cost of evaluating candidates projects, and it would save candidates the cost of proving themselves time and time again. The evaluation could potentially be handled by different entities; tech recruiters, certification bodies, or standardized tests. This may be what companies like HackerRank are attempting, but they don't really seem to follow through with job offers.

As it is, I'm trying to find a solution to my own job search. If anyone has any recommendations on how to find a job without burning out, I'd love to hear them.

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

#713

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #601

irq11 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other option is to check references, do credential checks, and simple bullshit screens during interviews, like every other professional interview. Literally every other profession has this challenge! Programmers are unique only in their seeming inability to realize that they are not unique. Accountants are not asked to solve double-entry accounting whiteboard problems. Finance professionals are not given take-hom…

Every accountant attending an interview can produce a certificate from an accredited national group saying that they have taken an in-person, proctored exam on double-entry accounting, which is the 'credentials check' you refer to. There's nothing like it for programmers.

There are plenty of options. Programmers only just have to pick one, or create a new one for all that it matters. For instance, NCEES that runs the Professional Engineering accreditation that every other Engineering discipline utilizes, has a Software Engineering PE. Tomorrow we could grandfather in every Senior Dev with 5+ years experience as a PE and then start requiring it, and encouraging kids to train for it and acquire that accreditation.

One major proctored exam scales a lot better than every company for themselves reinventing an almost proctored exam.

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

#714

Post by megablast » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:16 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #144

I'll take a 3-day take-home project over a whiteboard interview or live coding session any day. Working at my pace with my tools in my space? Yes please. The article makes two good points re: bias and lack of research. To the first I think it's up to us as interviewees to mention this in all of our calls. "Do you have a non-take-home option? For some groups this could be an exceptional burden." To the second there's…

You just don't care about throwing away 3 days of your life? I have my own projects I would rather work on.

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

#715

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

Arzh wrote: post #603

anthuswilliams wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not to take away from your point, since I agree with you, but both accountants and finance professionals have stringent licensing requirements which (in theory) could provide a baseline expectation of competence.

That is the reason they get away with not testing them, because they have a universal test they can look to. Software jobs are pretty fluid, so unless we have a massive standard test that cover anything from embedded c to FE with react, it seems that kind of test is out of reach for software people.

Civil Engineering has a huge gamut in specializations and in the last century has seen quite a lot of technological change; programming isn't as special as it thinks it is here. A credential test doesn't have to cover everything, it just has to cover the foundations and get some sense that a person is capable of life-long learning and improvement.

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

#716

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:21 PM UTC

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…

1. You're forgetting that the candidate has to do this for just about every single job they're applying for. You're also forgetting that they likely have to do this while doing their normal day job.

2. You mention the money. Tell me, what is the exact dollar amount that one has to make before they have to stop complaining about this?

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

#717

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:21 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #137

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…

Contract before hire is a practice that is slowly growing, and not fast enough. I find test paid projects are the best interview technique for detail oriented work, whether it's software or otherwise. It's far better to select a task that is simple enough for the potential candidate to be a pinball through the code base or problem domain, ideally to solve a small problem that will be directly transferrable into the p…

I, for one, hope it doesn't really grow. There's a lot of abuse in the "contract-to-hire" space, where the company tends to dangle that carrot of getting the job at the end of the contract period to get the applicant to work lots of extra hours at lower pay, only to be told at the end, "nope".

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

#718

Post by walshemj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:22 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #373

walshemj wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh but the rates for these 1099 contractors are so low to what I would expect.

What do you mean? I generally made much more per hour when I was working as a contractor.

I've see quite a few comments on the workplace stack overflow where a 25-35% premium for contractors was considered generous and considered "normal" for the USA instead of the 200% / 300% id expect in say the UK

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

#719

Post by profalseidol » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:22 PM UTC

speby wrote: post #330

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.

Others have definitely mentioned this experience. For me, I have encountered this very rarely. More common, IME, has been people who seem like they have a TON of deep experience in something but then, when pressed or inquired, only have shallow experience. So, in short, I don't run into people who claim to code but can't as often as I do people who can code at least a little bit but quickly are unable to deal with mo…

I'm in that group you interviewed. Didn't know what perm-gen is although I've seen it in errors when java used up all memory. Next question was about Hibernate's different caching levels.

I've been rejected enough to eventually learn all these. Then finally when I got hired, questions were the very basic define static, inheritance etc.

I knew it was a matter of numbers and should not mind the devastating feeling of rejection. But damn, you can never know how it feels experiencing tons of rejection until you do.

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

#720

Post by tytytytytytytyt » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 11:25 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #621

tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of real world problems are troubleshooted in less than that time, under more pressure, and have far more variables to consider/are far more difficult, like build failures. The scenario here sounds like it's as relaxed and simple as you can get without it being so easy it tests nothing. Are you assuming the interviewer always yells like he's Sam Kinison?

> Lots of real world problems are troubleshooted in less than that time, under more pressure, and have far more variables to consider/are far more difficult, like build failures. Yes, and they're troubleshooted by people who are already intimately familiar with the systems they're troubleshooting. Nobody in the real world writes an app for a requirement they've never seen before from scratch in 45 minutes.

> Yes, and they're troubleshooted by people who are already intimately familiar with the systems they're troubleshooting.

So you're asserting interviewees shouldn't already be familiar with simple problems like reversing a list? Come on, give me a break.

> Nobody in the real world writes an app for a requirement they've never seen before from scratch in 45 minutes.

Being asked to reverse a list in 15 minutes isn't even close to "writing an app from scratch". It's not even theoretical - just look at all the people who make it past these interviews. I doubt they would call it "writing an app from scratch". Could you try any harder to misrepresent things here?