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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

#841

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> 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…

Most larger companies have clearly defined boundaries between IT and software development. And with the push towards automation and security at every layer of the stack, even IT has a growing role for software architecture and development skills.

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

#842
post #455

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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…

It happens to a lot of us and sometimes fear that is just how the industry is. I have heard senior engineers just stop interviewing and often switch jobs via their network/friends.

>I have heard senior engineers just stop interviewing and often switch jobs via their network/friends.

Count me in that group. I have no desire to go through that BS. Seems like the bozos have taken over and ruined development work.

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

#843
post #798

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Hop off your high horse, gatekeeper.

Why, I have a good view from here :) And I can take great photos of scenery, now I do understand what the photos are showing is not something that everyone would love but still, those are photos, you can shoot the one making them but the scenery is not going to change by that, or we would just shoot all war journalists and there would be no more wars. But joke aside, what is the issue, do you disagree?

I would argue that demand has increased dramatically, but the supply of natural-born developers (eg. those tinkering since childhood, not just following the money) has not.

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

#844
I did this for a data scientist position. It was obnoxious. Compounded by the interviewer believing his dissertation work was representative of the entire machine learning field. I didn't get that job. I'm more interested in the people I'll work with in hiring than what they know. to a certain degree anyways.

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

#845
In my last job search I solved a dozen or take home assignment. For the one I finally got, I... refused to solve the assignemnt... and it is a very good one. Do everyone a favor and refuse, fixing the situation is in hands of anyone looking for a job.

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

#846
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…

Couple days ago I watched youtube and stumbled onto airline pilot channel. Every company does extensive tests, psychological and technical and most of time simulator flight even if you had thousands hours under your belt. They can kick you out of interview because you are not dressed well enough, like wrong tie to wrong shirt...

Check out interviews and jobs section on pilot forum for comparison with our field: https://www.pprune.org/interviews-jobs-sponsorship-104/

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

#847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

The amount of times I've heard interviewers go "Oh I had this super experienced guy who but in the interview he couldn't even do some simple programming problem". To me that is a failure in the interview process. I've seen this when I've interviewed people. If people don't do well when their resume implies that they should, I'll discuss it with them and say we want to get some kind of confidence in their abilities. T…

The only way I could see that scenario could ever occur is if the candidate outright lied on his resume. A quick solution is to check references (call the school said person graduated from, call references, call references via their company line, etc).

Sounds like the interviewer didn't bother checking references.

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

#848

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I always end up linking this piece in response to people like you, and here I am again. These folks have real data on lots of interviews, and have done some analysis on them: http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-w... The takeaway that's relevant to you is the section titled "Interview outcomes are kind of arbitrary". Specifically, things like: As you can see, roughly 25% of interviewees are cons…

I'm amused at the idea that because I pass on senior devs who literally can't do FizzBuzz, that I must have a terrible interview process.

Why didn't you check references? I mean wouldn't you consider it a failure that you got a candidate to the interview table that was so bad? Assuming you aren't making it up, the guy was obviously lying on his resume, that could have easily been solved by checking his references.

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

#849
post #456

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…

It's so funny, people who support that garbage just aren't hearing it. This forum probably has some of the best developers in the world chatting, and these guys just refuse to change their ways, regardless of how many people tell them it's a bad idea.

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

#850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No--a ten-minute conversation with no coding, not a pop-quiz.

That's not realistic. You and I are complete strangers; we can have a talk for 10 minutes where not a single word that comes out of my mouth is true and you'd be none the wiser.

If you are a programmer, you can tell; just ask them about their previous projects. Dig into their answers and ask follow up questions. What data structure did you use to do this part? What in the database was designed poorly and why? (Every database has a design issue).

I mean if you were at a party and some guy came up to you chatting, claiming to be a senior whatever at BigTechCo, you'd start chatting him up and you could tell if he was full of BS pretty quickly.

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