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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

#761

Post by systematical »

Sounds like it might be the same company the author is referring to. I'll throw them under the bus. Hello Fresh interviewed me and that interview went fine. They then wanted me to deliver an application using no framework. I was allowed to use libraries, but no framework.

After reviewing the requirements I quickly determined that it would take me days to build an application that I felt would effectively WOW them. I told that to the recruiter and bowed out. Being already employed I looked at the opportunity cost and it was too high. Sure they paid more and are a bigger company, but that is A LOT of work. I rather do almost anything than unpaid programming on an application that will be thrown away in a few days.

If I were hiring, the "lab" portion of the interview would be simple. For mid to senior level developer:

1. Write a small inefficient application that requires some indexes, SQL optimization, and some code optimization. Very, very small. Very, very easy for a reasonable developer to fix. Afterwards I'd have a conversation about other general optimization things like Redis, Beanstalkd etc... because we'll optimization is important, especially to me.

2. A small class with very poor cyclomatic complexity. Clean it up. Because clean code is important.

3. A small insecure application. Things like not using bind parameters in queries, not cleaning inputs, XSS etc.. Secure it.

4. Show me something you've done. Personal or professional. I would then ask questions and it would be an open conversation. Because I want to see how much you enjoy programming and how we'll you can speak about it.

I think these 3 items, combined with the other interview questions, their experience, and resume would give me enough to go off. Ideally, 1, 2 & 3 can be done in under an hour. I think that is reasonable for pre-screaning an applicant. I certainly wouldn't send me running, but I am also writing the test so who knows...

Why would I want to look through 10 or so applicants full fledged application? God no. I have better things to do. I guess for some companies its a way of weeding people out, but these large tests are akin to using DDT to remove weeds.

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

#762

Post by brentonator »

We had someone come in and spend 45 minutes on interview problems e.g. produce an array of 100 to 1. You had free access to Google and were encouraged to use them for reference.

After each attempt we said no that's not right, and then at the end we were asked if we were going to use his code in our platform and if he should be paid.

Felt kinda bad for him, clearly didn't pass the interview test.

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

#763

Post by wan23 »

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…

In other professions like law or medicine there's a professional organization that requires members to take a difficult test to become certified to practice. In those fields nobody with 20 years of experience is asked if they can FizzBuzz on an interview. I wish we could get the algorithm whiteboarding out of the way one time after graduation and then have every company trust in the certification from then on and instead focus on experience and real-world skills.

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

#764

Post by YZF »

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…

The homework doesn't get you the job though. You may need to go through 10 of those to find someone who wants to hire you and you also wanna work for them. Let's say you're currently employed, where are you gonna find those 10 weeks? Minuscule one-time effort? You never switch jobs?

There are lots of professions that make just as much or more as your average software developer. Accountants, sales people, bankers, lawyers, dentists, managers ... the list goes on. Software developers are middle class (or at least what's left of it).

Is the homework a strong enough signal? What if someone helped the candidate? What if they won't get along with the team or the culture? How close is it to the real work the candidate would be doing? I wouldn't base a hiring decision on homework. So this is basically just a screen, a very expensive (to the candidate) screen. Who are you screening? Anyone good enough that doesn't need to invest a week to get a job, that's for sure.

If you feel homework is a good indicator and you ask someone to do that for you, pay them. $200/hr sounds like a good starting price.

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

#765

Post by Clubber »

carlosdp wrote: post #430
Clubber wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And the conventional wisdom goes that IT is a cost center. Only by beancounters, and if you take it away and go back to paper, they'll quickly change their mind.

Yea, they don't generally "go back to paper", they outsource overseas...

Hah, in my experience with companies using cheap developers overseas, going back to paper might be better.

Good developers cost a lot no matter where they hang their hat.

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

#766

Post by slimshady94 »

BjoernKW wrote: post #599
Franciscouzo wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s whataboutism. Is there racial or gender-based inequality? Yes, unfortunately there is. Should we therefore resign and stop trusting each other altogether? No, we shouldn’t. We should rather try and extend our trust to others. Inequality isn’t caused by trust but by a lack of it.

That's not whataboutism, that's valid criticism of a flaw in your idea.

>Should we therefore resign and stop trusting each other altogether?

This is a strawman, that was not suggested. What was suggested was to have an interview process which doesn't involve informal/subjective trust. The best programmers don't have huge twitter networks or github stars - some might, but not all. That's no criteria for filtering.

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

#767

Post by gaius »

exodust wrote: post #629
maxk42 wrote: post #580

This literally happened to me last week. On a Friday night before my girlfriend's birthday they sent me -- without warning -- an assignment that "should take about 8 hours". I told them to give the job to someone hungrier than me which was the politest way of telling someone to stuff it I could think of. The company in question advertises here on HN's "Who's hiring?" threads, but the role was brought to my attention…

But you didn't say how long they gave you to do it. Could you hand in the assignment a week later? I've never been given a homework assignment for a job interview, but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry! I would much prefer an 8 hour homework assignment. That pressure would be fun, and I get to work with my tools in my comfort zone. I…

but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry!

It’s not “instead of” it’s “in addition to”

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

#768

Post by mncolinlee »

nvarsj wrote: post #696
poulsbohemian wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to show some vulnerability… this happened to me this week. I’m probably like a lot of you here: professional software developer for 20 years, have shipped countless products in multiple languages / technologies. Work has appeared on tv and print media multiple times. Have generated millions and millions in cost savings and revenue for employers and clients. But I totally failed a technical screen. It’s been…

Only way to code under pressure like that is with practice. I turn into an idiot non-coder in these situations, but I've gotten much better over time, to where I always pass a live coding session. In the real world, I spend a fair amount of time thinking and teasing a problem apart before I actually start coding. This is hard to do in an interview - even if the interviewer says "think about it for a few minutes", the…

This. I noticed that I have gone for over fifteen years through some pretty tough jobs, but never needed to write any Leetcode binary tree problem from scratch in thirty minutes in my work while being questioned. I normally freeze up because I worry about current best practices every step of the way.

In the end, I scored a job with a FAANG company literally because I didn't want to work there. A friend warned me away before the interview for work-life reasons, but I decided to go ahead with the interview anyway as practice and I nailed it. There's no reason to stress if you don't want the job. Another friend who worked there later convinced me to take the offer.

What bothers me is: you're basically the same coder both before and after competitive coding practice. You're only more marketable with the same skills.

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

#769

Post by stratigos »

Ive been grinding away at these for months... coming out of freelancing, latest contract with a startup that hit its burn rate and failed, and having beeen unemployed for almost 6 months (except not really unemployed, since contractors dont actually collect unemployment...).

So many companies have these assignments. Theyre infinitely better than whiteboarding, or hacker rank tests, or "pair programming" on some crazy abstraction for only 30 minutes. Some of them are so much work - I am working on my 20th hour of a really involved full stack project, and still think I have about 6-8 more hours before its "pretty".

Then I have 2 more to do, and I told the HR people at those companies Id do them 3 days ago.

One weekend I spent 12 hours doing a SOA example project, and on Monday, the owner simply deleted the upstream - and my fork along with it - and said nothing back to me. I hadnt even turned it in yet!

Hours, weeks... its been months of this. Im working for free and its just energy that goes into thin air.

Not once has anyone actually done a real code review, I suppose they just get buried in hundreds of these little projects to review and select someone and just never get back to you :-/

Next week I have about 6 interviews lined up. Cant wait to see how many unpaid hours of work I get to do!

...oh, and I have > 12 years of industry experience, have built multiple applications that garner 50mm requests per month (I can almost guarantee you, that youve been on at least 2 of my websites before), have worked with IoT, HIPPA medical, ecommerce, greenfielded, been on big teams, worked internationally, have buttloads of experience, and every person Ive ever worked for praised and lauded me plenty. Yet I cant get a fucking job for the life of me because of these paint-by-number processes.

Yah anyway, back to the grind, for free...

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

#770

Post by hansthehorse »

goatherders wrote: post #744
nikanj wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very strong correlation "you have to dress like an adult", and "you will be treated like an adult". Yes, a lot of adults wear sweatshirts and hoodies now. However, if you wore a shirt and tie to a high school, they would make fun of you for dressing up like your dad. We have collectively agreed on a "grown-up" attire.

I wore a tie to school every day in high school. Then I did it again at a well know startup. In both instances someone pulled me aside to tell me "keep dressing like that and you're going to stand out." Yes.

I attended catholic high school in nyc from 1965 to 69 and we wore a sport coat and tie with dress slacks. Hair length inspections were conducted. It didn't kill anyone as far as I know.
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