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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

#851

Post by kerberos84 »

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…

Why not to have a 1 hour technical conversation and figure out if the person knows what you are talking about? Talk about data structures/algorithms/design patterns/OOP 10 minutes for each, plus language specific points if you want and it should be enough.

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

#852

Post by exDM69 »

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…

If you're interviewing with 10 companies, that would mean a solid month of work. I'd much rather spend 15-30 minutes on the whiteboard per company.

But the whiteboard test should only be a smoke test for can/can-not program (ie. test for impostors and frauds), not an assessment of aptitude or in-depth knowledge about algorithms. 10-15 lines of code or so, "Guess the number", "FizzBuzz", "Count zero bits in 32 bit int", etc.

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

#853

Post by bewe42 »

The best hiring process in my opinion:

- select your candidates that maintain a public profile. You should get a broad idea about the skills and interest of that person

- have an informal interview to see if they fit your company culture and values

- then have them work on a small real project for less money

I'm a dev and happy to work on such a "taster" project. It's a win-win: I'm not working for free, the company gets a realistic picture of how I work and how I fit into the company.

This works naturally best for hiring contractors, but even then I don't understand why not more companies do this.

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

#854

Post by Clubber »

underwater wrote: post #619
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…

Most programming happens in a team environment. It can be difficult to separate the impact of a good programmer from a substandard programmer in a good team. GitHub and code samples can be useful, but not every candidate will have shared code on GitHub (in fact, most don’t) and retaining copies of code they’ve written for a previous employer is a major red flag. The biggest issue with using prior experience is that i…

>It can be difficult to separate the impact of a good programmer from a substandard programmer in a good team.

I believe it's actually easier. If everyone is given part of the whole and 4 out of 5 people get theirs done properly and 1 is flailing, everyone, and I mean everyone on that team knows it.

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

#855

Post by Clubber »

_pmf_ wrote: post #819
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…

> Apart from getting a candidate to actually pump out some code, even trivially, we don't really have a way to de-facto verify that the person says they can do what they say they can do, short of a personal reference from someone, say, in the company already that knows and has worked with the person in the past. How do hospitals make sure that their surgeons can do surgery without having them do surgery? Do they have…

If it's anything like white boarding, then they would bring in a game of operation and have the surgeons pull out all the pieces. If the buzzer goes off, well they just aren't good surgeons.

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

#856

Post by notyourday »

s2g wrote: post #604
neurobashing wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real talk? There is nothing wrong with being in IT. Imagine if someone said "I would be concerned I'd be seen as a carpenter and not a woodworking artisan". You're a carpenter. You nail boards together to serve the business interests of the company. Even if the boards are SQL queries or ReactJS or whatever. Companies need tech. You can bring value by making everyone's jobs better with your technology - sand off those…

> Imagine if someone said "I would be concerned I'd be seen as a carpenter and not a woodworking artisan". It's entirely reasonable for a carpenter not to want a job where they just nail pieces of wood together. Not really building anything, not really using skill. Just nailing a few boards together all day.

For $350k/year i would change a light bulb

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

#857

Post by Clubber »

newobj wrote: post #676
timr wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I spent two days implementing a typeahead search results system for Etsy, including writing my own ingestion pipeline, map-reduce framework, index builder, and request processor." Seriously? You did all of that? For a take-home interview problem?? Oy. This is why companies get away with this crap... I'm going to say something harsh, but you really need to hear it: you failed at your number one responsibilty. It does…

Your speech is very impassioned, but you did nothing to defend your point of view, just reiterate it multiple times. Why is an employer asking for "proof of capabilities" tantamount to abuse? Seems a little hyperbolic, yeah?

Sure, ask a surgeon to do a few free surgeries to make sure he's up to par.

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

#858

Post by Clubber »

ggggtez wrote: post #593
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 whole point is that these people DO make $100-$400k+. At the high range, that's $1000 for a day of work. Imagine asking someone "Hi, please give me $1000 application fee for this job." With a whiteboard interview, at least you get to talk to the engineers directly. You could argue a company that is willing to spend it's engineer's time doing hiring is spending more than you are, which is not true for a homework a…

That's the "anyone can win the lottery" fallacy. The vast, vast majority of people doing that crap pay 'market rates.'

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

#859

Post by Clubber »

newobj wrote: post #350
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at other fields for examples. Few have to interview like devs do. Other professionals may have continuing education like conferences, but that's not the same. Imagine nurses or docs getting asked to take vitals for an interview.

Imagine a nurse that failed to properly take vitals during an interview

A more similar analogy to the practices that go on in tech, it would be asking the nurse to take vitals on a cadaver.

It would never happen real world, but "there are so many frauds out there, this is what we came up with. You should now how to take vitals."

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

#860

Post by Clubber »

djsumdog wrote: post #244
dmoy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you try to hire people who currently have jobs with strict anti moonlighting policies? (Or maybe the answer is just don't bother, and you can afford shrinking the applicant pool without any big adverse effects)

Those people made poor choices for signing those policies. I personally never sign non-compete agreements. I've also seen agreements where any OSS projects you work on need to get approved. I walked away from that bullshit.

You are right, but usually the people who come up with that crap aren't tech people. Most likely they are biz people who just googled NDAs and noncompetes on the internet and picked the harshest one.
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