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Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

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Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#1

Post by protocontrol »

I hate all forms of on-line/in-situ developer exams and tests. It is basically non-sense code golf in 5 minutes on an universe of problems plus all the pressure of a job interview.

Today when you have code repositories, container repositories, challenge sites (HackerRank, CodeChef, etc), linkedin, blogs, h-index ranks, ... My line of thought is: With all of this free avaliable on-line information if a recruiter still need to test if I can extract max value without a binary search tree, then he didn't do his job. What do he wants to test? If I hired a genius to build a fake developer profile for me? And then I present myself to the job interview anyway? For what?

Look at this way: If I have 130 GitHub repositories (not forks), half of them fully passing tests through CI, my issues reports, my PR's, my own code metric reports including object-coupling, cyclomatic complexity, Halstead, Hansen metrics and all the stuff... should I really spent 3 months to practice how to add without + operator? And then get on-line interview just to discover they want me to write a k-partition problem solver?

There are companies which do not rely on these stupid stressful tests?

Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#3

Post by Osiris »

I think it depends on the company and where you live. This culture may be prevalent in Silicon Valley, but less so in other places. I live in Denver and every interview process I've gone through is different.

For one, I walked in and they handed me a laptop and a paper with a list of requirements for a REST API with some sample data and said, "We'll see you in 3 hours".

For another, I had 5 in-person interviews, none of which included any coding, whiteboarding, quizes, etc. The closest to that was "Describe the architecture of a system you've built".

For most, I'd say there is some amount of coding involved, but they rarely involving writing code on a whiteboard or solving a "quiz". Usually the coding I've had to do is at a computer, like pair-programming, or a project submitted ahead of time.

"Quizes" are the reason I've never even thought about applying to any of the giants, like Google / Facebook. I don't like them either, but I don't mind showing off my coding chops.

Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#4

Post by byoung2 »

My latest job search (Oct-Nov 2018) involved 6 different companies all requiring quizzes or live coding (I only applied to 100% remote jobs). I got "code an elevator controller", "code a number guessing game", "architect a analytics system to handle 1M data points for under $2k per month on AWS", "build a react app to let users pick a timezone and display the current time in it", "code a tic tac toe game", and "build a reusable dialog box component". With each exercise taking about 2 hours, it was a significant chunk of what could have been billable time. One company made an offer (the number guessing game one), which I accepted. In the end it was my open source project on github that won them over.

Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#7

Post by AllegedAlec »

jurgenwerk wrote: post #6

Here is a repository of companies that don't force you into solving fizz buzz problems: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

Half of the companies on that list are even worse. Don't make me do a n-hour bit of homework without paying me for it.

Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#8

Post by GuiA »

Let me preface this by saying I despise whiteboarding as much as you do. I’ve been rejected from jobs dozens of time, and only got a handful of job offers in my ~10 year career so far.

But - all interviews are, in essence, is an exercise in virtue signaling. Can you do the local dance to prove that you belong?

If anything, whiteboard interviews are not the worst thing ever. I am from a Western European country, and my dad is a chemical engineer at a large chemical company with 30+ years experience, many patents, books, etc.

When I explained to him the interview processes I had to go through to get jobs in Silicon Valley, he exclaimed “oh wow that’s great! I wish we had that! Our interview process is a 1 hour conversation with a manager, and if you went to the same school as them or share the same hobbies, you get the job. We hire so many mediocre people because of that, I wish we actually asked them to solve technical problems”.

Now that I think about it, I actually declined a job offer once from a startup because their interview process with me was a 1 hour presentation where I showed some of my work, and then a phone call with HR. I thought to myself - wow, this is too easy. If I get an offer this easily, what caliber of people am I going to be working with?

Pick your poison.

Re: Ask HN: Can you actually get a dev job without doing a stupid quiz?

#9

Post by burnThemAll »

It's all designed to fuck you over. Ignore whatever they throw at you. They're rejecting you by default, if they subject you to the quiz show.

That's the real lesson of the coding quiz. You are rejected by default. Take aims to flunk it by default, is the natural response.

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