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Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

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Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#81

Post by lliamander »

ryandrake wrote: post #55
chaddattilio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya I agree, I was all ready to blast it but then realized it had a couple good pointers in the case that you are gonna offer homework. I do disagree with the premise though. As someone who's worked in the tech field for 15+ years and has been on plenty of interviews, I for one would much rather do a short homework assignment than have to stand in front of a few people and white board shit in real-time. Here are reaso…

Unfortunately the homework project is usually followed by an in-person whiteboard hazing, which nullifies those benefits. I recently interviewed with a well known tech mini-giant who admitted that my homework assignment was among the best they’ve received, but still flunked me based on the in-person slugfest so YMMV.

I really think that all technical interview questions should be "open-book". Whether that's doing a homework assignment or simply telling the candidate what technical issues to study up on for the whiteboard.

For the brief stint that I did interviewing, I had candidates whiteboard after doing a homework assignment, but all I had them do was step through the very algorithm they had implemented in the homework using a very simple input dataset. None of them had any issues with the whiteboard, even those who were clearly very nervous/anxious.

Building software is hard enough as it is. I doubt making the coding tasks open book is probably not going to allow in many (if any) unqualified candidates.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#82

Post by caconym_ »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #36
daenz wrote: post #11

The title is a little click-baitey, because it suggests full on assault on homework. The actual post is more measured in its criticisms, but basically the idea is: don't use homework as a cop-out for not having a good interview process, and thereby likely wasting everyones time. Personally I like homework, because it allows me to show my strengths (actually writing code that is solid) without being "under the gun" in…

The article is clear: homework is the best approach from the perspective of company time. That this practice is widespread should be interpreted as a lopsided labor market with a glut of supply (workers) and limited demand (companies).

The insight regarding supply and demand in the job market did occur to me, but I still think companies have an ethical responsibility to respect applicants' time and effort. In particular, time should be taken for a thorough and objective review of every single "homework assignment" that is given out, and the company should attach an appropriate weight to it as a hiring signal.

e.g. If my thousand lines of code are being weighed objectively and fairly against a thousand other applicants' code, so be it. If they get bored of reading and pick one near the top that isn't terrible, that's bullshit. And if mine is the top entry, I'd better not get passed over because someone didn't like the color of my tie.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#83

Post by mohaine »

chaddattilio wrote: post #30
daenz wrote: post #11

The title is a little click-baitey, because it suggests full on assault on homework. The actual post is more measured in its criticisms, but basically the idea is: don't use homework as a cop-out for not having a good interview process, and thereby likely wasting everyones time. Personally I like homework, because it allows me to show my strengths (actually writing code that is solid) without being "under the gun" in…

Ya I agree, I was all ready to blast it but then realized it had a couple good pointers in the case that you are gonna offer homework. I do disagree with the premise though. As someone who's worked in the tech field for 15+ years and has been on plenty of interviews, I for one would much rather do a short homework assignment than have to stand in front of a few people and white board shit in real-time. Here are reaso…

Seconded. I really like the idea of a small homework assignment. Here is the last one I did for an interview: https://github.com/mohaine/expense-allocation

It was a great screen for them and something to talk about durning the interview.

That said you still do need to do some coding during the interview though. We've had enough candidates bring in professional interviewers to solve the coding portion of our remote interviews that there is no way we would trust that the candidate actually solved the homework themselves. We no longer allow any remote interviews due this alone.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#84

Post by iteriteratedone »

"Should" is inheriently a subjective comment. We all have our morals but lets ask a question of the companies. Why? The answer is a need they have to fill.

Guve them another way to fill it. Otherwise you judgements will only be burdens to avoid not arguments to consider.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#86

Post by shady-lady »

shady-lady wrote: post #80
chaddattilio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya I agree, I was all ready to blast it but then realized it had a couple good pointers in the case that you are gonna offer homework. I do disagree with the premise though. As someone who's worked in the tech field for 15+ years and has been on plenty of interviews, I for one would much rather do a short homework assignment than have to stand in front of a few people and white board shit in real-time. Here are reaso…

> If you complain about having to spend a couple hours outside the interview on work, maybe you don't really want the job that bad enough Maybe I'm talking to more than one company and don't feel like subjecting myself to this absolute nonsense over & over. Maybe I'm just feeling out the opportunity without having to worry about solving a made up issue and hope it conforms to what the employee reviewing it considers…

To add to this; if a company does want me to put effort into proving I can code a solution to whatever problem, then they better have gone to the trouble of:

a) setting up a git repo with working code in it (including tests, dependencies and whatever else) so I don't have to worry about inane(but taxing) decisions in terms of project structure/code style. Also, verify it works before sending it out to candidates.

b) including clear & detailed instructions on what is expected

c) given the test to current employees (blind) & timed them on it (allowing for the fact they know the domain & technology)

d) make it somewhat representative of day to day. i.e. I have 0 interest in spending time configuring and doing anything which is a 1-off task such as authentication etc..(unless the companies primary product is security/auth)

In short, make it easy for me to prove myself.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#87

Post by netaustin »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #45
netaustin wrote: post #12

My company, a fully remote consulting firm, uses test projects for some candidates whose skills we cannot fully evaluate using the code samples they have submitted. We only use test projects under conditions designed to skirt the clear pitfalls mentioned in this article. - We pay all candidates for the test project, whether they pass or fail. The original article did not mention paying for homework, which we conclude…

This lines up with what I finally concluded (and blogged about) as well - find some small, somewhat isolated project and pay them for it. My preference would be for it to be a project you actually intend to use, especially if they also need to interact with your team in some small way. This way you get to actually seem them in action - how do they communicate, what questions do they ask, how do they approach the proj…

We've toyed with either paying them for something we can use or asking them to add a feature to one of the open source projects under our care — but in either case, you lose the reliability and objectivity of the task, because different candidates will have better or worse prompts. Using the same prompt for everyone means we can use the same rubric for everyone.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#88

Post by ThrustVectoring »

chaddattilio wrote: post #30
daenz wrote: post #11

The title is a little click-baitey, because it suggests full on assault on homework. The actual post is more measured in its criticisms, but basically the idea is: don't use homework as a cop-out for not having a good interview process, and thereby likely wasting everyones time. Personally I like homework, because it allows me to show my strengths (actually writing code that is solid) without being "under the gun" in…

Ya I agree, I was all ready to blast it but then realized it had a couple good pointers in the case that you are gonna offer homework. I do disagree with the premise though. As someone who's worked in the tech field for 15+ years and has been on plenty of interviews, I for one would much rather do a short homework assignment than have to stand in front of a few people and white board shit in real-time. Here are reaso…

>If you complain about having to spend a couple hours outside the interview on work, maybe you don't really want the job that bad enough.

As an employee, I see it the opposite way. If a company is offloading interviewing costs onto interviewees in this way, then I am competing as a commodity and the overall offer is unlikely to be good. A company with this sort of process can afford to test everyone and pick up the 0.1% of folks who are geniuses that don't know that they're worth $150k+ at a salary of $60k/yr.

If I'm not imposing costs proportional to what I'm expending, I'm unnecessarily weakening my negotiating position and setting up the wrong incentives. This is why it's a good idea to get your customer service complaint resolved through tying up a phone agent, making a complaint on twitter, or generating a paper trail that concerns the "no regulatory incidents" department.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#89

Post by ThrustVectoring »

anaking wrote: post #73
0xcafecafe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. Also, I don't want to do some work for "free".

I'd prefer to see it as an investment in yourself, so not really for "free". Also it's (probably) not like the company will make any money of the home assignment they give you.

The company makes money off of using this as a candidate screening tool in lieu of in-person engineer hours.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#90

Post by wilsonnb3 »

strict9 wrote: post #17

>Candidates spend many hours completing homework assignments for companies which are not sufficiently interested in them. This is abusing candidates. Knock it off. Given a choice of spending 2-3 hours on a take home assignment vs. 1 hour of writing code on a whiteboard in front of 3 or more developers, I'd choose the former any day. It's not even close. The author is taking one end of the spectrum and painting it as…

Interesting. I'm the opposite. I'd rather pseudocode something on a whiteboard than spend my personal time doing it.

As long as the interviewer isn't a stickler for correct syntax when I'm writing stuff on the whiteboard.

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