I turned my interview task for Google into a startup • Hacker News Board

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#101

Post by Zenbit_UX » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

aloisdg wrote: post #72

wycy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you take this approach for jobs to which you actively applied in the first place, or only jobs for which they reached out to you first? I'm with your comment's parent: I don't think I'd have the guts to walk out of an interview either, especially for a job I applied to first.

The last time I applied to a company, I ask them all of this. Something in those lines "Hello, I use your product FooBarTools everyday and it help me a lot. I really like it. It is nice piece of software. bla bla bla. I see that you have some opening positions in your careers page. bla bla bla. I would love to be a part of the improvement of FooBarTools. bla bla. What is your hiring process? What do you expect a seni…

Ya I get emails like this coming in from my contact form too. Honestly though it's very hard to distinguish real ones from spam so I never respond.

I'm not sure this is the best approach...

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#102

Post by ignoramous » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

A lot of people don't realise it but a lot of the tasks you do for you employer could very well have been a startup. There's a reason your employer has you working on those problems: They know what their clients want.

Cisco is famous for funding startups by its fromer employees that satisfy their client wants. Google might be trying something similar with Area120?

Being successful at startups is although an entirely different matter, and I guess that's why most people don't take up the opportunity. The paychecks are golden handcuffs, for some.

I think, these pg essays are relevant:

http://paulgraham.com/before.html

> The component of entrepreneurship that really matters is domain expertise. The way to become Larry Page was to become an expert on search. And the way to become an expert on search was to be driven by genuine curiosity, not some ulterior motive.

...

> At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity.

...

http://paulgraham.com/start.html

> ...you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to do better.

...

> The best odds are in niche markets. Since startups make money by offering people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are where things suck most. And it would be hard to find a place where things suck more than in corporate IT departments. You would not believe the amount of money companies spend on software, and the crap they get in return. This imbalance equals opportunity.

> If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks just watching what they do with computers. Most good hackers have no more idea of the horrors perpetrated in these places than rich Americans do of what goes on in Brazilian slums.

> Start by writing software for smaller companies, because it's easier to sell to them. It's worth so much to sell stuff to big companies that the people selling them the crap they currently use spend a lot of time and money to do it. And while you can outhack Oracle with one frontal lobe tied behind your back, you can't outsell an Oracle salesman. So if you want to win through better technology, aim at smaller customers.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#103

Post by milesdyson_phd » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

The last take home thing I did, I put it up on GitHub with an MIT license (didn’t sign any NDAs/etc). I figured if there was a chance they would actually use it, might as well open source it for everyone.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#104

Post by rdez6173 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

I am a software engineer and I was once asked during an interview at a large hedge fund to pick a side and debate why war is justified.

When I pressed them about the relevance, they indicated that they often have heated debates on all manner of topics, so they wanted to see my thought process.

I enjoy solving complex problems, but socio-ethical problems are way outside of my wheelhouse.

I politely indicated that I didn't think the company was a good fit for me.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#105

Post by klyrs » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #96

jordansmithnz wrote: post #39

This reminds me of a take home software engineering interview I was once given via email. Same deal, I was told about 5 hours. I’m an iOS developer, so I was expecting a pretty simple app. I opened the PDF to find not one, but three separate tasks. Completion of all three was expected, with an estimate of about two hours each. One of the tasks was to replicate Apple’s ‘Reminders’ app in its entirety, backend sync fun…

We've joked about giving potential hires a challenge to fix a problem we are currently experiencing, but we wouldn't really do it. That takes some balls to ask interviewees to write or fix production code.

Back in 2000, I had an in-person interview at a very small b2b website. They'd been using overseas contractors (zero local technical people) and the founder/interviewer barely knew a thing about computers. He didn't know how to run a technical interview, so he sat me down at a computer, logged in as root on prod (lol the only server), and pointed me at a couple of bugs. I knocked them out lickety-split and was hired on the spot. The world sure has changed

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#106

Post by ScottFree » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #100

ScottFree wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I'd have the guts to walk out of an interview either, especially for a job I applied to first. Have you no common courtesy? I terminate the process as soon as I find out I'm not a good fit for the company or vice versa, no matter who initiated first. Continuing with an interview when I'm sure I'm going to decline is just wasting everybody's time.

Maybe, but from a self serving standpoint acquiring multiple offers drastically helps your negotiating position.

Good point. That never even occurred to me.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#107

Post by allenu » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

siscia wrote: post #33

I believe Google have brainwashed us all. Are we sure that it is worth all this effort? Are they so much better than any other company or startup? Is our own self so much more valuable if a random intervier liked our works an epsilon more than the other candidate? People inside FAANG are unhappy as well, they leave their company as well. I believe we should be less impacted by the ads that Google is running to sponso…

I agree with you. I was immediately struck by the tone of the article that the author was "fortunate" enough to be interviewed by Google. Maybe it's because I've been working for nearly 20 years now and am becoming an "old man", but the feeling that Google is this promised land of opportunity rubs me the wrong way. Every company has pros and cons and I suppose Google may have a lot of pros (free food, good perks, and good pay) but at the end of the day, it's just a big company where you work on large projects and will likely have little say in the final product's look and feel.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#108

Post by Zenbit_UX » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #54

itronitron wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

As a general rule when I'm given a programming task that takes 4 hours to do then - IF everything I will need for the task is already installed on my computer and all dependencies bugs and so forth have already been taken care of in these things - it will take 4 hours. Maybe the same situation applies in Design somehow? I mean yeah it takes 4 hours to make the product if you happen to have all the graphical elements…

Unfortunately not.

Coding is like math homework. When your doing the math homework you know when your done, it's very obvious and anyone can check your work and clearly see it's either right or wrong.

Design is like a book report for English class, it's bottomless and can always be improved given more time, albeit with diminishing returns. Design challenges are evil and bullshit, you can poor hundreds of hours into a design challenge and still iterate further.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#109

Post by wccrawford » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

dnaismith wrote: post #63

sethammons wrote: post #56

The rule of thumb I subscribed to: have the interviewer(s) do the interview. Give the candidate 3x time to do it that the in-house people took. Or, framed in reverse, if you want the assignment to take and n minutes or hours, give yourself n/3 to complete it, and however far you get is the bar for the assignment. Interviewees are stressed, maybe outside their domain, and other things. Make something that they can sho…

We did this at my company. A developer at the level that that developer was applying for would do a task that took them 2-4 hours. We then gave the interviewee four days to complete the task with a recommended time of 2 days. We also always made sure to include the weekend in the time they had to complete the task as we know during the week time is precious.

We give a test that should take 1-2 hours, and give them an entire 7 days to do it. I feel like you might be being unnecessarily restrictive in your time limits.

What I've seen is that people spend the time they'll spend on it, and that's it. Only 1 or 2 people over the last few years have said they ran out of time, and the quality of their code showed that they weren't a fit for the company anyhow.

Re: I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

#110

Post by kqr » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #76

swish_bob wrote: post #47

I once completed the task sent to me by a prospective employer, and then thanked them and said I wouldn't be submitting it, as it told me enough about the way they worked to know I wouldn't enjoy it. Never forget that the interview process is two way ...

Those few big companies probably have more than enough candidates. If you have too many candidates you need to adjust interview difficulty to still hire only as much as you need. I don't think these companies care that the task is too difficult for 99% of people, or that there are smart people who are not motivated enough to complete it as long as they can get as many smart and motivated people as they want. That sai…

Then again, what the heck kind of use do they have for developers that can't push back on unrealistic demands? None, unless they're in the business of missing deadlines.