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

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

#151

Post by jcadam » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

rdez6173 wrote: post #104

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 di…

> 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.

Heh, I actually wouldn't have minded that too much - but in addition to being a software engineer I'm also a former Army officer.

In any case, I think such a task can be relevant, if you're working in a fast-paced and competitive environment (esp. one with a lot of non-technical staff) you need to be able to hold your own in an argument. You wouldn't want to be the guy who is always right but gets overruled 99% of the time because you're unable to persuade others.

> ...but socio-ethical problems are way outside of my wheelhouse.

Mine too, and probably 99%+ of the world's population. But that doesn't stop most people from having strong opinions on subjects they don't understand.

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

#152

Post by grogenaut » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #142

Tomte wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the copyright situation in America anyway? I can't see company lawyers over here be comfortable with using code written outside formal employment.

Code is copy-written by default. So unless the company has you specifically license the code in a way they can use, there's defiantly some room to go after them.

A game studio I worked at had a blanket policy of destroying all fan fiction. And story plots we were sent just because someone had previously sued for stealing their idea.

Means a lot of letters from kids get read only by the secretary till the identify it and destroyed.

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

#153

Post by accnumnplus1 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

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…

I once received one of these tasks, described as requiring four hours. I had a look around the web, found the source of the exercise, complete with an expected time to complete of four hours, and the guy had completed all of two classes before abandoning it.

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

#154

Post by grogenaut » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

wycy wrote: post #41

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…

Apple's Reminders app is so glitchy that your interview task probably would've been vastly superior to the actual consumer product.

They would have failed then no?

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

#155

Post by nerdjon » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

Some companies do technical interview great, but there are a couple things that I have noticed that always make me question if I actually want to work somewhere:

- Being sent to a website to do a take home coding exercise, with a checkbox basically saying "I won't use the internet, stack overflow, or similar". I get that you need to test my knowledge, but shouldn't you care more that I know how to search for my problem and understand a fix instead of flailing around?

- (this one I have noticed in person) Being handed a thing to build, being told I have a limited amount of time. That all they want is a proof of concept, but the tooling they are asking me to use go completely against the idea that it is a "proof of concept" since they make certain assumptions about the end goal. EX: deploy something with terraform but we don't want you to build an AMI or anything like that so just manually go into each system once you create it

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

#156

Post by gowld » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

aloisdg wrote: post #5

Insanity wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's I thought too. At one of the companies I interviewed at, we had a programming task that could take max 4 hours. The interview was at the company itself. Less convenient for people who have a different job at the same time though.

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.

Perhaps you should be more selective about wich companies you advance beyond the intro chat with.

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

#157

Post by cecilpl2 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

I recently was given a toy problem in an interview - read data in some format, process it, and write the output. Expectation was 4 hours of work, which is pretty close to what it took me to get all the edge cases, test suite, requisite documentation, and VS project/solution files.

The feedback I got afterwards was "We're passing on you as your code doesn't compile/run on Linux", a requirement that wasn't specified.

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

#158

Post by grogenaut » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #86

ubercow13 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A two day take-home coding test is absurd regardless of whether it's the weekend

I read the grandparent as: The task should take 2-4h and be done within 2-4 days is how I read it. I’m still not sure why people expect it’s easy to fit this in and it’s the last thing you want to do after a hard day of work. I’ve just started taking a full day off for programming exercises I do when interviewing. It allows me to give well thought through and tested solutions even if I make some small mistakes or mis…

This is why I only do these for exceptional offers. Like a studio I wanted to work at and a problem that seemed challenging. Otherwise it's a strict decline.

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

#159

Post by geofft » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #129

rdez6173 wrote: post #104

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 di…

How is that even remotely related to the job at hand? Why would you sabotage possible good candidates just so you can get your needless debate rocks off?

Misaligned incentives: the people doing interviews have such indirect financial incentive to hire the right people (only that a good/bad hire affects the company's profit, which affects their own salary/stock), almost no way of telling if they made a bad hire decision, and definitely no way of telling if they made a bad no-hire decision. Remember Alan Greenspan's story of finding a competitive advantage because everyone else was happy to ignore half the population in hiring. If you have no direct incentive aligned with the business's needs, then the incentive of "I will derive pleasure from the interview process" (whether it's having a fun conversation, or having a conversation that makes you feel powerful / more confident about yourself, or hiring in a way that reinforces your existing biases) is all that remains.

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

#160

Post by ht_th » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #26

dawnerd wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

> Can you illustrate that in practice?

I have walked out of interviews as well. Sometimes the interviewer and I discover together that the recruiter we worked with didn't know their job, at all!

More often, though, it sort of was clear from the start of the interview that the company would not be a good fit for me. I would tell them so, and my reasons why I thought so, and leave after thanking them for their time.

If they ask me to do some simple programming task, I ask them if they have looked at my Github repository and what they think they will learn during the simple task they could not from my repository. If they do would have a good answer for that, for example they want to get to know my thought processes while coding, I am happy to oblige. But if they clearly have not looked at my Github repositories, nor have any inclination to customize the interview process, I tell that I do not believe in the validity of the process.

I have also walked away twice during the one-month trial period. Once the company was unable to find a project for me, even though they kept on promising there would be one for me soon. The other time I discovered I was unable to combine working full-time with finishing writing my PhD thesis.

Anyway, I also found that in half of the cases I walked out, the other party did understand and accepted why.

Of course, it is easy to walk away when you know you will find a job soon anyway and even if you would not you will get some support from the government anyway.