161–170 of 243 posts
Some companies list a take-home assignment as an alternative. IMO, that's worse than a whiteboard interview. My time is valuable, and I don't want to spend my evenings or weekends on an assignment.
When a company insists on a take-home assignment, I send them a quote at my standard contracting rate. Curiously enough, some agree
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As someone who has been in this industry for a long time and seen a lot, this still baffles me. Who agrees to being on call 24/7 for a week? Especially when you are getting paid a typical professional salary? It seems absurd. I've always been active after hours and willing to jump in when things happen. But this idea that you are essentially working (since you need to always be somewhere you can start working within…
I've been on call most of my working life. When I worked at reddit, I was on call 24/7/365. The only time I wasn't on call was for the weekend of my wedding. When I got to Netflix, only being on call one week a month was a drastic improvement. It meant that I could plan my vacations and important family events around not being on call. On the flip side, my family understood if I suddenly got up from dinner to take a…
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> How is providing a code editor or text editor different than writing it out on the whiteboard? At least for me, it's vastly better. In an editor, I'm in my element, I have autocomplete, things work they way they usually do and everything is much more comfortable. I could even throw together some quick tests and test drive my code!
As an interviewer I'd prefer a whiteboard and an open discussion. With a computer I have to deal with pedantic reality instead of discussing the concepts or approach. You also need a projector or a large screen if it's more than one other person in the room. At one interview I was given a coding test (this was alone and timed). I was put into a separate room and pointed to a computer. It was a Windows box and Notepad…
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When a company insists on a take-home assignment, I send them a quote at my standard contracting rate. Curiously enough, some agree
Would you do the same for an in person interview? Why is it different for a take-home assignment?
Take home is just you wasting time. Or do you suspect they will spend as many hours evaluating your answers as you took to create them?
"Take home" challenges are excellent - they give an opportunity to create a common platform for discussion that every party feels comfortable with. As for time investment, it's worth to dedicate 4-6 hours of your life to make sure the next few years of your employment are good for both parties. It is not whiteboard that is a problem, but pressure of being evaluated by a random dude. It's like dancing naked. Whiteboar…
As a company looking for people, do you want to have your 6 hour take home project to happen after the candidate has an offer? As a candidate, are you really going to spend another 6 hours, if you have an offer in hand?
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As an interviewer I'd prefer a whiteboard and an open discussion. With a computer I have to deal with pedantic reality instead of discussing the concepts or approach. You also need a projector or a large screen if it's more than one other person in the room. At one interview I was given a coding test (this was alone and timed). I was put into a separate room and pointed to a computer. It was a Windows box and Notepad…
I agree with the 'easier discussion' aspect of a whiteboard, but I feel that any whiteboard test should therefore be asking for pseudocode and explicitly disregarding the pedantic reality of syntax.
Using a whiteboard, or even having trivia-like questions isn't the problem. The problem is that people think those tools are trying to test your ability to get the answer right. No. They are a medium through which you can see how someone approaches problems, their thought processes, how they structure their ideas, what they do when they get stuck, how well they communicate, how well they understand directions, how we…
> Quite the opposite, slamming in a memorized algorithm with the right answer has been a reason for 'no hire' in my experience. Because all it shows is that you can code. So the people who already know the solution to your problem are supposed to pretend to have an "aha moment"? Really this is one of the reasons the process doesn't work as well as you hope, people will memorize algorithms and pretend to have that gen…
I previously interviewed at a company and of the three interviews, I knew, and informed them that I knew, 2 of the problems they asked. I solved all 3 and got the job, likely because after I implemented an lru cache in ~10 mins on a whiteboard, we turned around and I actually coded it up in an ide, added tests, and then we had some extra time to fix a few small bugs and discuss caching strategies.
I'm still torn on the value of that interview though. And I'd much prefer to ask you a question you don't know than to have you write down a rote memorized answer, or pretend to be uncertain. I can usually tell and it wastes both of our time.
Its interesting how many of these companies have 'take home' challenges or projects. Even though the companies may say, "This should only take an hour", 99% of the time, it occupies my entire night/weekend, if not in coding but in thought. There's always something more you could do. Its presented as an objective test, but its very subjective, just as much as the whiteboard test. With the whiteboard test, as a candida…
I’ve worked at three companies that usually had candidates complete take home assignments. The subjectivity is part of the point. They want you to only spend an hour or two so they can level you accurately and determine what the interview will look like, if there will be one at all. Most people submitting solutions are usually screened out because they’re empirically inexperienced or unsuited for the role. It’s a red…
The right way to do a take home exam if you must do this: give them something real and pay them consulting rates for it. If the result is good, you've hired a great worker. If the result is bad, you will know, they'll get a few bucks for their time, and no hard feelings. If you can't screen them to the point where you you can't screen for decent odds on a take home, you should consider a new career. Maybe picking potatoes.
Instead of this subjective us/them mentality, I'd be more interested in some hard data showing that not using a white board leads to higher quality hires. I'm really not convinced this is the case. Besides, that list is not what the title is. It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers. But a lot of them use white boards. And to be honest, using a white board is important. You will be doing that a lot in any…
I've easily spent more time at whiteboar in interviews than at a white hard in all my time on the actual job, over many years. A good design discussion is written up and discussed. Ad hoc scribbles on a board don't add much anything, not in the 21st century with good computer drawing tools
I get a lot of work done at a white hard with 1-3 coworkers. We reach a consensus there, and then you formalize and write up the design and break out lucidchart or whatever.
It's not worth spending time making a design when you're going to forget something important and have to rework it. Use a whiteboard until you're confident you aren't going to erase again, that's my rule.