Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments • Hacker News Board

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#151

Post by jonjonBoy » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

Great article. Agree with most of the points there. It's an idea that looks great on paper but it's actually not that great.

It's like the 'unlimited vacation' rubbish. Like yeah, people area actually afraid of taking vacations or they take too much and got terminated. It's best to know how many days you've actually earned and take what you have than playing those games.

Plus no actual way to verify who's doing the homework assignments anyway as opposed to a live interview however imperfect that is.

On top of that, some sketchier startup founders opened up that they're starting to abuse this to get tasks done for free. So as a candidate why'd you allow yourself for this?

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#152

Post by arwhatever » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

Recently had a place give me a "homework assignment," but with a 2 hour deadline and a "feature request," but with no really concrete completion criteria, just to see how far you get in that much time. I preferred this to most other types of interviews that I've done.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#153

Post by perl4ever » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #150

perl4ever wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's a thing per se, but my former employer (Fortune 500 non-FAANG) quite definitely claimed any code I wrote during my employment whatsoever. I did one time formally ask (just to see what would happen) whether I could volunteer at the Red Cross, which demanded I sign a boilerplate intellectual property agreement saying anything I made as a volunteer belonged to them. The letter of my employment agr…

I find it is often better to seek forgiveness than ask permission in these matters.

Yes. Like I wrote, it was something of an experiment.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#154

Post by astura » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

nybblesio wrote: post #118

jasonincanada wrote: post #65

I recently did a homework assignment as the first step in an application process, and I didn't find it inappropriate or untoward at all. It's certainly not abusive, I don't understand why the author used this term. It got me through to the second step, a video conference interview with a couple developers and a chance to go over my code, explain my reasoning, answer some challenge questions, etc, in other words, tech…

You received a response. What if you hadn't? How many hours did you invest? How many of these would you be willing to attempt if you never got a response of any kind? When the author speaks of abuse, I believe -- in part -- this is what they're trying to highlight. For every submissions, like yours, that gets a response, there are probably hundreds that hear absolutely nothing. I'm OK, within reason, with these homew…

And there's the asymmetrical relationship if you're asked for a several hours time commitment before they put any time into you.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#155

Post by newnewpdro » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

I can totally envision recruiters spamming candidates with the take-home exercises regardless of what the employers intended when drafting them up, in the interests of keeping a full queue of candidates+results on hand.

That's unfortunate, because I strongly prefer the take-home approach over in-person whiteboard exercises. Recruiters are often sleazy, that's really the crux of the problem IMHO.

Personally, I've always had a portfolio free software projects to point them at for review before any in-person interactions take place. I think that's probably the best defense for candidates in this scenario.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#156

Post by sytelus » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

swift532 wrote: post #135

sytelus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is effort asymmetry. For in-person interviews, company must spend as much time as candidate is spending in evaluation. If homework thing becomes standard, I'm afraid that will become first line of filtering because it doesn't cost much to company. So you will still get in-person interview and may be even bit of whiteboarding (to make sure your friend didn't took test for you or somehow you cheated out by…

I disagree with one click solutions for homework being viable. In my view, the best way to assign homework would be to take a small feature or an interesting bugfix a current developer already solved, and assign it to the candidate. Of course, this is tough if you want to keep your code secret and can't isolate the component/service/something source code from the rest of the system.

The core issue in interviewing is exactly this: asking a good efficient question! It doesn't matter if you use whiteboarding or homework or take a long walk together (Steve Jobs style). Most companies cannot expose their internal code base and expect someone to fix bugs in an hour of time. Ultimately you have to simplify the problem, chip away the unnecessary stuff and still it be good enough to evaluate candidate effectively. So if you think about this more deeply, you might realize that whiteboarding or IDEs or just talking is merely a medium to deliver the question and consume the answer. A vast majority of effectiveness of your interview doesn't depend on the medium but actual content of the question.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#157

Post by will4274 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #111

If there really is a developer shortage that we're always hearing about, then why don't more developers say "f. you" and walk away from homework assignments, 5-round interviews, cubicle farms instead of offices, etc. It would be a self-correcting problem -- companies that wanted good candidates would stop doing this shit. The only explanation I can come up with is that the developer shortage doesn't exist. Maybe it's…

> why don't more developers say "f. you" and walk away from homework assignments, 5-round interviews, cubicle farms instead of offices, etc

Some of us do and some of us don't find it all that terrible. I've declined interviews with homework and told the company I didn't think their interview process was reasonable. Companies are looking for leaders in addition to code monkeys - having a stance on what's reasonable that you can support and explain in a professional manner might lose you a few job opportunities, but it might also win you some respect and serve as a signal that you're mature enough to evaluate the landscape and make judgement calls about what actually is reasonable, which is something managers (people leaders) and architects (technical leaders) do on a day to day basis.

On the other hand, I find whiteboarding to be fairly reasonable for most candidates. I recognize that are a few candidates with social anxiety problems who might only be able to perform ubder an alternate process but in these cases, I think it's reasonable for the candidate to ask and then for the company to accommodate.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#158

Post by sytelus » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:29 AM UTC

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #91

sytelus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is effort asymmetry. For in-person interviews, company must spend as much time as candidate is spending in evaluation. If homework thing becomes standard, I'm afraid that will become first line of filtering because it doesn't cost much to company. So you will still get in-person interview and may be even bit of whiteboarding (to make sure your friend didn't took test for you or somehow you cheated out by…

> you can bet sites pop all over that allows you to search problem and frameworks and download the common solutions with a click. Sounds like a lucrative business, especially if you can introduce enough variety into the downloaded code to prevent detection by a system like the anti-plagiarizing systems colleges use.

I would fully expect rent-a-coder style service from Asia popping up to take on your homework question by an experienced programmer for a modest fee.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#159

Post by pmiller2 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:51 AM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #81

ryandrake wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why not go all the way and make it “open internet”? Literally googling stuff takes up a substantial portion of any software engineer’s day. I would seriously doubt anyone who says otherwise.

Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

#160

Post by astura » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:21 AM UTC

caboteria wrote: post #44

I was recruited by a large travel company that advises people on trips. They sent me a questionnaire beforehand and asked that I send them my answers. Being earnest and naive, I spent a couple of hours writing a bunch of short essays as answers. When I arrived for the interview, nobody had even read them. Needless to say, each time I've been re-recruited by that company in the intervening years, I've declined. Fool m…

What sort of questions were they? Technical? Personal?