When people are turning their interview questions into successful companies, maybe it is time to start asking some easier interview questions. This is a visceral demonstration of how absolutely ridiculous interviews have gotten.
I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
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Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> advised that we should spend no more that 3–5 hours on the task I have to wonder if they didn't get the position because they spent more than the advised time for the task.
No one could do what they ask in 3-5 hours. At this point they are not testing your ability, they are testing your commitment.
Seems like a really obnoxious way to communicate though. If they want somebody to do their best work and really do not care how much time it takes them to get there, they should just be upfront about it: "You have until next Monday, good luck".
If that makes them look like assholes, yeah, I can see why someone would feel that way but at least they are clear about their intentions and not insulting anyone's intelligence in the process.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#23When people are turning their interview questions into successful companies, maybe it is time to start asking some easier interview questions. This is a visceral demonstration of how absolutely ridiculous interviews have gotten.
I call them low self esteem corporations, the interview process requires you to constantly flatter them and tell them how much you'd like to work for them. I have too much respect for my own time, what's important is on my resume and the rest they can find out in a short interview, homework assignments and cover letters are plain silly.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#24A few things ... the word 'Crunchr' is real hard to make out when overlayed on the image of the person mid-pushup ... in that same-but-too-small font is your company name 'Tona' or 'Tonu'? ... the busy graphics on almost every screen looks great at first but would wear me out and get between me and my info, and looks too much like a cult-of-body-and-youth or like Men's Fitness, definitely not relatable ... the need to select a fancy background for every class listing would be tedious and would require extra info on whatever back end manages schedules, nobody will go through all that work and will be left with weird unrelated defaults ... that your original interview submission contains no rough work would make me worry you'd commit to a suboptimal path without opportunity to reset the course after a preliminary critique.
I don't like all aspects of its design but after getting through its initial quirks the Android Simple-Workout-Log app is dead simple and bare-bones and works quite well without the busy graphics.
EDIT: additional point.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#25> You have ‘4–6 hours’... No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task I fixed that problem for my candidates then turned it into a startup: https://takehome.io
This is a really neat idea.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't spend half a day in your building without being paid. At home, I can split the task. Beside, 4 hours task is a bad joke. I interview at a lot of different companies. I have no time for this.
My policy, before finding a place I like and plan to stick around at, is no programming tasks. There's plenty of companies desperate to hire than you can be picky if you know your stuff. I also will walk out if they start up with those 'clever' programming questions that have nothing to do with the job.
Can you illustrate that in practice?
You took out the time to go to some office. You just spent an hour talking about your hobbies and attitudes and the company's working culture etc. Then, a programmer asks you to balance a red/black tree. You do.. what? You angrily throw the marker on the ground, cry insult, and run out the building? No, right? So then what?
I see this repeated a lot on HN and I'm not sure I'd have the guts to walk out of an interview. To be honest, I doubt many people do.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#27Are you sure you didn't sign any NDA, preventing you from working on ideas you might get during interview? Google used to have pretty water-tight policy on outflow of ideas (but inflow was encouraged) during interviews.
Does Google make you sign an NDA before you interview?!
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#28When people are turning their interview questions into successful companies, maybe it is time to start asking some easier interview questions. This is a visceral demonstration of how absolutely ridiculous interviews have gotten.
Google can afford to do that. They have so many applicants willing to jump through the hoops, they can pick the top 1-2%.
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
My policy, before finding a place I like and plan to stick around at, is no programming tasks. There's plenty of companies desperate to hire than you can be picky if you know your stuff. I also will walk out if they start up with those 'clever' programming questions that have nothing to do with the job.
Can you illustrate that in practice? You took out the time to go to some office. You just spent an hour talking about your hobbies and attitudes and the company's working culture etc. Then, a programmer asks you to balance a red/black tree. You do.. what? You angrily throw the marker on the ground, cry insult, and run out the building? No, right? So then what? I see this repeated a lot on HN and I'm not sure I'd have…
Also agree with you. Although I want to try it sometime, maybe when I have an offer on hand and just interviewing for shits and giggles
Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
#30Are you sure you didn't sign any NDA, preventing you from working on ideas you might get during interview? Google used to have pretty water-tight policy on outflow of ideas (but inflow was encouraged) during interviews.
They have nothing of the sort, as of last year. The ask politely that you not share the specific design prompts or your solutions, so that future candidates can't copy you, but they're all over medium anyway. There are no legal teeth behind the request.
This applies to the design prompt specifically, which is an early-stage take-home thing. I don't recall whether google had an NDA for the onsite interview portion itself, but I think their badge signin thing might have one baked in, and other companies of equivalent size had paper NDAs as part of checkin. Presumably they only care about you stealing the cool stuff you hear about, and you wouldn't be in danger for running with their (intentionally generic) interview prompts on your own.