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

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

#181

Post by conanbatt » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #98

dnaismith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm interviewing with 6 companies simultaneously and like you they all think they're deserving of free labor. I'd wager your company must have the worst devs, those who have little self respect and zero other prospects. Do you not understand that you're requesting free labor from an applicant? Did you forget the purpose isn't to have the sickest challenge ever but to evaluate someone's code/ingenuity?

What surprises me the most is people making 6 figure salaries complaining about making 1k investments into themselves.

Absolutely worth it if it gets you the right job. Hell, most people pay multiples of that through recruiters and referrals.

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

#182

Post by midasz » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

djhaskin987 wrote: post #140

Is HN truly this bad of a bubble that everyone thinks interview tests are normal? The last time I had to do a test it was on site and I was just out of college. Most interviews just talk about the challenges of the team, my past work on similar problems, and how I solved them. I've been on the other side of the table too. It's usually easy to tell if the applicant is a quack or if they are skilled by how they talk ab…

Am not in the USA, Netherlands actually.

For my internship I first had a good conversation with the lead developer. After it was determined that I was a culture fit and didn't bullshit them, I got a small simple assignment which I had to do on a whiteboard. Later found out it wasn't really meant to figure out whether or not I could write a simple function, but more to see what my thought process was. Like, did I instantly start writing one big function that did stuff - or did I break the problem down into smaller steps.

Anyways, the interview for my second job (for a fairly big consulting firm) was purely focused on culture fit, and questioning about stuff I've previously made.

Third and current job was the same as the second - only on my initiative I came by on another day to check out what the other developers were actually doing and trying to help them out.

I don't think a test is really useful, if I'm not up to par (or they don't meet my expectations) either of us can decide to end the contract in the first month. This focus on tests strikes me as silly, especially in the USA, since you can just be fired for no reason anyways.

edit: I do have an (outdated) github repo with some code, but not much else.

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

#183

Post by gregd » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

mrisoli wrote: post #74

amelius wrote: post #3

> You have ‘4–6 hours’ to design a slick product, with a memorable brand and cohesive working method. No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards. To make this more fair, why not let the designer work at the company's office, so the interviewer can actually see how much time it took, and the inte…

I've done that a few time actually. My last company they flew me from another continent to do a 3-days assessment, I worked with the team on a legitimate feature(that would be trashed after as they couldn't use the code because I was unpaid). I liked it, I met the team, I interacted with them, I did the task and got a job offer in the end. All engineers at the company highly valued the 3 days assessment because we go…

I'm not sure what country you're from or what country you flew to for this ridiculous 'interview' process, but it's one of the many things I loathe about this field...right up there with "rock star" and "ninja" coder.

Honestly it's stuff like this, that has me contemplating giving up this career path because there's just no more room for people in their 50s with 25 years of experience in information technology, who aren't willing to sleep at the office, drink your "insert trendy microbrew here" on tap, and suffer through a ludicrous ask like "we want you to work for three days for absolutely nothing to see if you're a good fit".

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

#184

Post by simongr3dal » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

thomascgalvin wrote: post #170

djhaskin987 wrote: post #140

Is HN truly this bad of a bubble that everyone thinks interview tests are normal? The last time I had to do a test it was on site and I was just out of college. Most interviews just talk about the challenges of the team, my past work on similar problems, and how I solved them. I've been on the other side of the table too. It's usually easy to tell if the applicant is a quack or if they are skilled by how they talk ab…

> It's usually easy to tell if the applicant is a quack or if they are skilled by how they talk about different technology: commiserating about familiar pain points, how they solved common problems. I almost feel at this point that it's unprofessional to hand out tests to people. The problem with what you're describing is that it's using a proxy (discussion) to vet a particular skill (ability to program). It's very e…

Maybe just ask applicants to spend an hour or two onsite without internet making them to solve project euler-type problems and discuss their solutions afterwards.

I’m sure you can somehow include technologies relevant to the position and keep the problems to the same scope.

Or these companies could begin creating actual value instead of just draining it from the world. Why don’t they expand their pipeline that converts intern/junior positions into more senior positions? And make it a big enough so they don’t need to hire as many ready-made 10x engineers from outside.

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

#185

Post by JansjoFromIkea » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

Is there a reason there's no naming and shaming going on here?

One company asked me to do an implementation of the Bay Area MUNI network which fetched live updates of the locations of all buses every 10 seconds; there was more to it but I can't remember it now. This was to be done in React with D3 and no additional libraries were to be used to help with integrating D3 maps in React. The role was junior level, the job listing did not specify D3 as a requirement (which pretty much guarantees a lot of people would start into it without realising maps are one of the more complicated things to do in D3 as a newbie or how poorly D3 played with React), the role was in Europe. If someone can confirm I'm not breaking any rules I'll happily share their name.

The best interview experiences I've had are with groups who just went through my (not very impressive) Github. A small coding challenge can be good as a thing to talk through during the final interview but anything longer than that and I'll tend to pitch sending them something I wanted to make in my own time regardless.

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

#186

Post by toyg » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:57 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?

> How is that even remotely related to the job at hand?

It is not. But they cannot ask you "did you vote for party X? Because everyone here votes for party X and it would be awkward to have someone with Y sensibilities", that would be discriminating.

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

#187

Post by eschneider » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #128

ScottFree wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is brilliant or sadistic. On the one hand, it really tells you who's smart enough to realize the task can't be done in the allotted time. On the other hand, not being able to do something as simple as adding a button in 45 minutes has to screw with the candidate's mind. That sort of thing would shatter what little confidence I have. I'd probably tank the rest of the interview. > I learned a lot a…

Yeah, adding a button to a codebase is an awful test. If someone made it to an onsite and you don’t know whether they can add a button in swift, something failed in your screening process. If you’re testing how someone navigates a codebase, you can just look at it with them, and let them drive the chat. If you’re testing an engineer for a serious job, do an algorithms test. If you’re testing an engineer for a specifi…

Your odds go way up if you repeatedly fire at the guy to your left.

Being a senior engineer is knowing the difference between doing what your told and figuring out what needs to be done to achieve project success. In this case, getting to the next round.

Next question?

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

#188

Post by airstrike » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #159

Loughla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 every…

> Alan Greenspan's story of finding a competitive advantage because everyone else was happy to ignore half the population in hiring

Maybe I'm living under a rock, but I've never heard of that. Would you mind sharing a link?

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

#189

Post by kemiller2002 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #99

Urgh. I recently had a similar situation. I started interviewing with a company who have a take-home assignment which I could have completed in the required time without taking any care over the quality of code I was submitting, but to do it properly I spent a bit of time thinking about it and building a reasonably extensive test-suite along the way. I was asked to come in for a face to face interview, for which I ma…

I had one a little while ago where I spent a fair amount of time on the request, and I thought was pretty well done. It completed all their tasks, showed how to use their api, and it showed I know how to integrate several different technologies, from front things like React to building an API to interact with theirs and setting up and configuring cloud technologies. They came back, and said, "We don't want to continue, we expected more from him." I sat there baffled and so did the recruiter, as it clearly did everything and more than they asked for in the assignment.

I am so glad they didn't want to go further as I am sure they are a nightmare to work for.

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

#190

Post by allenu » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #113

Is this common? > I was told it was extremely close and that I should reapply in 12 months, It seems really weird to me to put this burden on the applicant. If someone is above the hiring bar but just got edged out, shouldn't they go into the bucket of people to contact as soon as there's an opening? And for designers at a place the size of Google, wouldn't that be much sooner than 12 months?

I interviewed at Google and was told something similar. However, in their case they did reach out to me about 12 months later asking if I wanted to reapply. This was for a dev role though.