Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

work.qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

961–970 of 1001 posts

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

#961

Post by wink »

ams6110 wrote: post #284
teachrdan wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The best "work environment" tech job I ever had was at an investment bank. Didn't disrupt anything (quite the opposite) but got great experience with databases, unix, C, scripting, working with internal clients, determining requirements, managing projects, etc. 9:00 - 4:30 daily hours, no nights, no weekends. Full benefits, good salary, good yearly bonus, quiet office, great people who were there to get a job done an…

That might be the difference between "investment bank" and "bank" because I've heard stories about near-unhirable people who've been toiling away with Java 1.5 (as late as 2016) at (German) banks. They hated it, wanted to get out, but they'd lost touch with current tech unless they managed to sneak in some off-work hours with non-ancient stuff :/

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

#962

Post by syndacks »

newobj wrote: post #329
magissima wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're only applying to one job and you get it, sure. But when you're looking for a new job and sending out dozens of resumes, it adds up pretty quickly! On top of that, it makes rejections all the more dispiriting when you spend hours or days working on one job application.

IMHO, if you can't land, say, 1 out of 3 interviews, there is a systemic personal problem, not just a bad day, and "the problem is u" -- sadly you will just need to work harder because something in your skill set is not up to snuff.

IMHO newObj you've participated too much in this thread. Get off your high horse.

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

#963

Post by Retra »

toephu2 wrote: post #780
Retra wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have to answer any hackneyed technical questions or take any tests to get a job. The most technical thing I did was explain how a data structure I wrote works, which came up naturally in a conversation about what kind of programming I have done. If you can demonstrate that you understand programming concepts and can learn, then it's not much more to assume you can write code. If you need someone who can hit…

Google does not hire people by simply assuming the candidate can code. You do not get the benefit of the doubt, and in fact, you must prove otherwise. They want to see you write code on the whiteboard and solve the technical challenge given.

And as we all plainly know: what Google does is what we all should do. That's probably the one company that's never done something unnecessary or wasteful.

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

#964

Post by sammoorhouse »

modbait wrote: post #637
retbull wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience, Software Developers that can't configure/diagnose/fix hardware/networking issues are usually pretty mediocre at development as well. And vice versa for "IT" guys that can't program. Specialization is for insects.

> specialisation is for insects

And, like, literally everyone since Adam Smith and his pins.

Assessing how good people are at skill A by trying to determine how good they are at ever-so-slightly-related skill B is what led google and the rest of the valley down the ridiculous problem solving interview quest of the aughts. Take your manhole covers and suck on them!

Abstraction is a skill, one that’s difficult to assess in an hour-long interview, but one which allows me to say “I’m great at C# but I’ll call someone when the printer is broken” - because there are only so many hours in the day.

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

#965

Post by thegigaraptor »

I've been on both sides of this, having completed and reviewed interview tasks, and I have to say it's absolutely crucial.

As an interviewee, it gives you a glimpse of what work will be like once you come on board. Are the requirements solid or loose? Is testing required or even mentioned. These and other things can give you insight into how the business interacts with engineering.

As an interviewer it's hard to take resumes and unfortunately even GitHub profiles at face value. I've personally had code taken from work put up on a colleagues personal GitHub. The coding task is also not a sure-fire way, as I've seen those taken from online tutorials. The real magic is in the tasks code review.

I'm not saying this is how it works everywhere, but given the task matches the deliverables asked and we make it to the code review stage, it becomes less of a tech interview and more of a glimpse into the social skills of the developer. PR criticism is a daily occurrence and getting an opportunity to test these waters prior to fully committing to onboarding a developer.

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

#966

Post by cs02rm0 »

jonhendry18 wrote: post #950
cs02rm0 wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I avoid doing interviews, but I've suggested fizz buzz a few times to people I've worked with because it's so simple but once outside the environment of your usual IDE seems surprisingly simple to screw up. Whenever I've suggested it a usually more junior guy has scoffed at how trivial it is... I'm yet to then have one supply a complete and flawless solution. These are from people I work with, respect and happily rel…

" Why they didn't just tell me what attribute they were after I'll never know" Number of seats?

Possibly. Ha.

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

#967

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Clubber wrote: post #899
monocasa wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

References would be personal references - someone with a cell number and call the college he attended; they should also verify enrollment and completion. You don't want to be calling the HR department. Also, a secret is if the reference (not HR) only verifies employment, that's a negative review. They are concerned about liability. If it was a good employee, the references have no qualms about saying so; it's the neg…

> References would be personal references - someone with a cell number and call the college he attended; they should also verify enrollment and completion.

Yeah, right. Personal references aren't worth squat because nobody gives references that are going to badmouth them.

The worst hire I've ever seen had a highly positive reference from a previous job.

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

#968

Post by Hallucinaut »

wink wrote: post #961
ams6110 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best "work environment" tech job I ever had was at an investment bank. Didn't disrupt anything (quite the opposite) but got great experience with databases, unix, C, scripting, working with internal clients, determining requirements, managing projects, etc. 9:00 - 4:30 daily hours, no nights, no weekends. Full benefits, good salary, good yearly bonus, quiet office, great people who were there to get a job done an…

That might be the difference between "investment bank" and "bank" because I've heard stories about near-unhirable people who've been toiling away with Java 1.5 (as late as 2016) at (German) banks. They hated it, wanted to get out, but they'd lost touch with current tech unless they managed to sneak in some off-work hours with non-ancient stuff :/

Working at a (German) investment bank still using Java 6 and Perl 5 extensively in 2018, I can assure you it's not just retail banks. Legacy technology mires are everywhere in the enterprise world and often the premia to work in those places is precisely for dealing with this kind of old technology and decades of technical debt.

In any case the same bank with Blockchain and big data lakes will also be working with mainframes and COBOL, so generalisations about technology aren't particularly useful when it comes to organisations that are so large.

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

#969

Post by henrikschroder »

user5994461 wrote: post #959
henrikschroder wrote: post #934

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6 weeks is not standard in the US. I know, I was trying to add some outside perspective. Where I'm from, 5 weeks is the legal minimum, and everyone has the legal right to get 4 consecutive weeks off in the summer. Consequently, since everyone does this, and expects this, companies adjust for it, and most importantly: No-one bitches about it. There's no masochist culture around not taking vacation. The problem with…

The number of holidays is always written in the contract. A company would never write that you have unlimited holidays, that's just plain stupid. If it's written, it means that you have the minimum legal number of days in your jurisdiction and you are being screwed severely.

The legal minimum in most of the US is 0 days, right?

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

#970

Post by Clubber »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #967
Clubber wrote: post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

References would be personal references - someone with a cell number and call the college he attended; they should also verify enrollment and completion. You don't want to be calling the HR department. Also, a secret is if the reference (not HR) only verifies employment, that's a negative review. They are concerned about liability. If it was a good employee, the references have no qualms about saying so; it's the neg…

> References would be personal references - someone with a cell number and call the college he attended; they should also verify enrollment and completion. Yeah, right. Personal references aren't worth squat because nobody gives references that are going to badmouth them. The worst hire I've ever seen had a highly positive reference from a previous job.

It certainly isn't perfect. You have to interview the reference a little too, not just "how was he?"
Post reply on HN