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Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

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Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#121

Post by ldite »

chrisseaton wrote: post #97
ldite wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this approach you'll miss good senior people; I have dependants and very little free time outside work. Last time I was looking for a job I skipped everyone who wanted me to do prep/homework. If the other interviews hadn't worked out I'd have gone back to them, but I didn't need to.

> With this approach you'll miss good senior people Aren't you already spending many hours researching a job as the part of the process? Aren't you already taking a full day off work for the interviews? Why is that time all fine to spend, but not fine to spend a couple of hours on doing an assignment?

Not really. I've never needed to research a job beyond a bit of Linkedin/glassdoor stalking and reading of corporate guff.

I've never had a full day interview for a company I'd actually want to work for (based on what I've learned while grinding through the interviews) so I'm beginning to take requests for those (along with requests for advance coding exercises) as a recruiting smell.

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#123

Post by kstenerud »

ldite wrote: post #85
Puer wrote: post #13

My most enjoyable interview was for an internship in college. I had a take home coding challenge where I had to write some simple code to fetch information from an API using whatever language I liked. I was given a week to do it, but it only took me an hour or so to meet all of their explicit requirements. I liked that there was no time pressure in that regard. After the week was up I went into the onsite and in the…

With this approach you'll miss good senior people; I have dependants and very little free time outside work. Last time I was looking for a job I skipped everyone who wanted me to do prep/homework. If the other interviews hadn't worked out I'd have gone back to them, but I didn't need to.

So, if this is a deal breaker, what is your ideal interview scenario?

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#124

Post by kstenerud »

mchannon wrote: post #119
rglullis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what is the difference between taking the time for an interview (no matter if via phone or in-person) and one for a gate-filter task?

In theory there shouldn’t be any, assuming it’s limited to an hour, both in description and in reality. In practice there’s a pervasive phenomenon called asymmetry of effort. The hiring manager may crib a task set either from a perfunctory google search or their own body part. The sum total of time spent on their part is often five minutes, including coming up with the problem and their review of your code. This foll…

So what interview process tasks are acceptable to you in order to gauge your ability?

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#125

Post by scarface74 »

pjc50 wrote: post #81
wonderwonder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negotiating a salary is a situation I have never been in as I have always told them up front before interviewing how much I want to get paid after finding out the salary range. Whenever a recruiter calls, I ask the salary first and tell them where I want to be on that range before even sending a recent resume. Not that negotiating for more if I have several offers would not be great, just not something I have experie…

First you have to find out the salary range, and a horribly large number of companies are secretive about this.

That’s the easy part - don’t apply blindly.

I’ve always gone through local recruiters that have relationships with the hiring manager. They know the salary range, the interview process, and where other candidates fail because they get feedback from both the candidate and the hiring manager.

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#126

Post by hvidgaard »

CamTin wrote: post #122

Describe what the job entails, ask me if I believe I can do it, and then hire me if I agree. Fire me later if I was wrong.

Yeah, that is not going to work. It's prohibitively expensive to hire and then fire a candidate. You have to convince me you're fit for the job. Either through referrals, or something equivalent - and no, I'm not a trying to show how smart I am by having you recite a RB-tree implementation with a correct remove. That wouldn't show me anything about how you can do the job, just that you studies RB trees...

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#127

Post by jgforbes »

maccard wrote: post #86
l0b0 wrote: post #36

I would give them opportunities to show their skills at real-world tasks: - Version control. Given a terminal (or Explorer with TortoiseSomething) and an existing project, make some simple changes and commit. - Testing. Given a simple piece of code, its tests and either a bug report or feature request, explain at least in high level terms how to move forward. - Code review. Give constructive feedback on how to improv…

> Version control. Given a terminal (or Explorer with TortoiseSomething) and an existing project, make some simple changes and commit. Does this really tell you anything about a candidate? If you sat me down in front of a terminal and said "here's a git shell, make a change and commit it" I'd fail the test immediately. I've used perforce for the last 9 years, and the terms are not the same, and the commands are _not_…

I also balked at it, but for the opposite reason. Everyone should be able to sit down to a terminal, make a change to a repository, and commit it.

I mean even if you don't know the command (or they are using a different version control system then you are used to) you can always check the help or man page. It's still a trivial task.

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#129

Post by Etheryte »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #110

An interview is designed to answer three questions. 1) can you write software? 2) can we tolerate writing software with you? 3) can you tolerate writing our software?

This is a great brief summary. Currently, most interviews put very heavy emphasis on 1, slightly touch 2 and often forget 3 altogether.

Re: Ask HN: What should an ideal developer interview process look like?

#130

Post by mchannon »

kstenerud wrote: post #124
mchannon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory there shouldn’t be any, assuming it’s limited to an hour, both in description and in reality. In practice there’s a pervasive phenomenon called asymmetry of effort. The hiring manager may crib a task set either from a perfunctory google search or their own body part. The sum total of time spent on their part is often five minutes, including coming up with the problem and their review of your code. This foll…

So what interview process tasks are acceptable to you in order to gauge your ability?

Resume review, Phone screen (30 min), on-site (less than 2 hours), probationary period.

Everything else is simply busy work for all parties because it doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, plus it scares away quality candidates.

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