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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

#871

Post by freehunter »

erispoe wrote: post #793
reaperducer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Immensely more job security (Henry Ford didn't have an "exit strategy"). Ford is a public company. That's an exit. An exit is whatever makes your stock liquid, not the end of the company.

Ford didn't go public until ~10 years after Henry Ford died.

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

#872

Post by tremon »

retbull wrote: post #351
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…

IT fixes peoples computers. Software Developers don't do that. We aren't Network Admins, we don't know how to set up or fix AD and we don't manage hardware. IT is a different field. I write software to process data and mostly I don't interact with hardware or troubleshooting arbitrary software directly. If I am offering support I am a level above IT. I understand that IT needs to be done but it is a very different jo…

IT fixes peoples computers.

Rather, we manage peoples computers, and the environment that allows them to function. The misconception that IT is only there to fix, is because we're invisible to you when everything works as expected.

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

#873

Post by freehunter »

vonmoltke wrote: post #554
chiefalchemist wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. Working for nothing __is__ obnoxious. Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Perhaps licensing a programmer / developer / engineer would be over doing it. (Read: Yes, it would be. But the examples do help.) That said, can't there be…

> Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Shitty plumbers are licensed. Shitty electricians are licensed. Shitty hair stylists are licensed. A license says nothing about current competence. It says the person demonstrated some minimal level of competence at one point, fills out their paperwork every year, and hasn't fucked up royally enough yet…

So because some licenses don't have ongoing re-certification requirements, that means all license are bad? Couldn't it just be that a "programming license" has regular testing and re-certification?

Because a license/certification test is the exact definition of "skills/competency assessment". If the licensing test doesn't meet those needs, that's not the fault of licenses in general, that's a fault in the test and can be fixed.

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

#874

Post by ozim »

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…

And when you make fire drill in company someone has to die because that what happens in real fire situation. Sorry Bob it is your turn this time :)

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

#875

Post by monocasa »

Clubber wrote: post #847
keithnz wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The majority of shops that firmware devs come from (and particularly defense) have a policy of only verifying the dates of employment and nothing else.

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

#876

Post by freehunter »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #662
vonmoltke wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Shitty plumbers are licensed. Shitty electricians are licensed. Shitty hair stylists are licensed. A license says nothing about current competence. It says the person demonstrated some minimal level of competence at one point, fills out their paperwork every year, and hasn't fucked up royally enough yet…

Indeed: you can become a "licensed dietitian" in a day or two.

Is that true? Wikipedia says (at least in the USA) you need 1200 hours of supervised and practical experience and you have to have a bachelor's degree. Following their source link, it looks like you have to apply for the licensing test 12 months before actually taking it, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietitian#United_States

--edit: I think you might be talking about a nutritionist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionist) which is not regulated in any way and is not a medical job. These are the people who will talk to you about essential oils and homeopathy and Herbalife.

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

#877

Post by corey_moncure »

WorldMaker wrote: post #706
monocasa wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a little more on the interview. I've got a laptop setup with eclipse, all rigged up with an integration test and filled out function signatures. I show the interviewee what to press to compile, and the subsequent failing tests. The code builds in it's initial state, but the tests fail. I also show them on the desktop that the original source is squirreled away in case they fat finger and erase everything (I've tot…

Luckily, no one ever customizes their IDE, source control aliases, has wars over emacs versus vim, or uses an alternate keyboard layout.~ (Being forced to use someone else's machine is a developer hell with so many dimensions.)

I think this profession tends to attract obsessive and neurotic personalities by its nature.

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

#878

Post by gaius »

eadmund wrote: post #867
gaius wrote: 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 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…

The problem is that a lying liar will also have a resumé like yours. How can I — who have never met you, and have no-one I trust recommending you to me — differentiate between gaius the awesome developer and gaius-prime the lying liar? I've got to administer some sort of test to distinguish the two, and the likeliest sort seems to me to be one which attempts to discern whether one knows the sort of stuff gaius would…

I can tell within 10 minutes if someone is genuine or not just by talking through real, representative scenarios. If the job really involved implementing red-black trees from scratch, then and only then bring it up!

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

#879

Post by freehunter »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #799
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…

So hire someone on a probation, and give them the boot if they don't live up to expectations in the first weeks?

That's the answer, and lots of companies do it. If you're going to fire, fire quickly. One problem with that is the high cost of onboarding, which is (IMO) caused by HR making their own job security by pushing for long hiring processes. If you just spent 3 months searching for candidates and getting them at a desk, you don't want to spend another 3 months if that didn't work out. So you have to cut your hiring lead time to a more reasonable level first.

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

#880

Post by monocasa »

Clubber wrote: post #848
monocasa wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most places that firmware devs come from around here have a policy of only verifying dates of employment. That doesn't tell you much.
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