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

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

#271

Post by amelius » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

amondal wrote: post #112

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…

This happened to me too. A company reached out to me on Angel with their coding "challenge" - create a facebook timeline clone with an API, enzyme + selenium tests, documentation, and deploy everything to AWS. fortunately i have enough experience to say no to this kind of thing, but I do feel that some more junior folks are being exploited into thinking this sort of project is normal for an interview

Perhaps this is why (sadly) junior devs are much more likely to get hired at tech companies than older devs?

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

#272

Post by tombert » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

I really despise these take-home projects. In NYC it's not uncommon for a developer to make ~$60 an hour, and these take-home projects can take anywhere between 2-6 hours, meaning that these companies are expecting you to spend up to $240 on a task where there's not even a guarantee of getting the job.

Whenever I've done these, I usually end up doing them in JavaScript in a hyper-functional style (as is my nature since usually they won't allow me to do them in Scheme or Haskell), which ends up with the reviewer asking me to write it in a more "modular" way (which really means "please write Java in JavaScript").

I have a line in the sand now that I'm done doing take-home projects; I really don't need to donate my after-work time just to have someone who doesn't understand functional programming explain to me how it's not as modular as some Java OOP crap, especially when I could spend that time building a project that will, you know, actually make me money.

EDIT: I realize that this came off as overly-hostile to Java. I'm not a fan of the language, but my point wasn't really the bash it, as much as complaining about people acting like my functional code isn't good because all they know how to write is OOP Java.

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

#273

Post by officehero » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:10 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…

The correct answer in this case is of course YES, it's justified. It's a hedge fund after all. Motivate with evolutionary theory starting with Darwin and ending with Nietzsche, maybe even bring in Sun Tzu depending on interviewer.

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

#274

Post by jacurtis » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

nerdjon wrote: post #155

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 probl…

I hate companies that act like it is a sin to use Google or Stack Overflow when coding.

When I hear this BS, then I know it is clear that they have never coded themselves. I would love to meet a software engineer who truly can sit in a padded room and write code with no internet access to use for help or reference.

Especially those of us that juggle multiple languages (full stack). Sometimes I know I need to run a method but I can't remember the actual method name or how it is formatted in this language. I know it exists, I have used many times before, but I might not remember the exact way it is worded. So I have to look it up. It adds Or I might know a method exists but not sure which parameters it accepts. I might usually use the first 2 params and leave the rest, but this specific use case requires changing something i don't normally need. So guess what, I have to look it up!

Sometimes I might get an error message that I don't recognize, so a quick look at StackOverflow reveals that a configuration item is off, or something was formatted incorrectly. I often can understand my problem with only just reading the first few lines of the selected answer on SO. I might be able to solve a bug in 60 seconds by using Stack Overflow, that might otherwise take hours to do without them.

Especially as software developers keep getting asked to know more and more stuff, we have to rely on documentation and helpful sites in order to do our jobs. It is crazy to expect that you don't use those resources.

Oh and ObjectiveC/Swift developers have it really bad. Some of the method names are entire structured sentences.

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

#275

Post by bloomer » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #221

geofft wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/05/business/the-quiet-allure... > Though David Rowe, a veteran architect of the Wharton forecasting model, has played a key role in developing the firm's econometric model, the senior staff, including Miss Eickhoff, Judith Mackey and Lucille Wu, is mostly female. Mr. Greenspan explains the gender bias with the free-market pragmatism that has become his hallmark: "I always valued men an…

Isn't this admitting that he's underpaying women? Because if he paid them as much as he would pay a man then they wouldn't be cheaper.

Well he is an economist so he is saying he is paying them the market rate which he believes to be underpriced relative to their intrinsic value. As an economist he would place the underpricing blame on society and the labor market. A similar situation would be if a company realizes it can get more value out of hiring junior developers cheaply over senior developers. An economist would also say they weren't underpaying the junior developers because no one else was willing to pay them more.

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

#276

Post by eschneider » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #225

eschneider wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

He never said you had to spin the chamber by an unknown amount , aren't your odds even better if you make sure the bullet is in the next chamber before you shoot left? Of course, many game theory calculations assume all players know the payoff matrix and equilibrium strategies of the others; making sure the bullet isn't in the next chamber is the rational universal strategy if the game has a fixed number of rounds. P…

There are many 'optimizations' once the lights go out.

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

#277

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

entropicdrifter wrote: post #209

grogenaut wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had paid you for your time would it have been ok?

Depends on if you're happy just being a hired gun instead of an employee. The real problem is that they've broken the social contract implicit in the interviewing process, which is that the work you're doing is only to prove yourself and that they won't benefit by it except to be able to gauge your skills. If instead they had been honest up-front that they wanted to hire you short term as a trial period type thing wi…

Not worthwhile, but it would have been interesting if you'd completed the project and included some telltale sign that you'd authored the code.

Then, if you found they'd deployed it without you having granted them a right to use your copyrighted work, you'd have an interesting basis for a lawsuit.

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

#278

Post by ghaff » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

RickS wrote: post #38

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #21

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 think that is crazy. You can turn laundry folding into a successful company. It's not that the interview question bar is high, it's that the "what can you make a company" bar is effectively on the floor. This is good. Also, OP launched on product hunt today. Calling them a "successful company" is generous if not outright false, though I wish them every success. Stated less dramatically, what happened here is "I tur…

>explicitly, this is 4-6 hours. in practice, it's 20 to 30 if you want to deliver at high caliber

This is a problem with a lot of take home assignments of many types (not just programming). If someone has landed an interview at a company they really want to work for, it's almost not rational for them to just bang out something that's "good enough for government work" some evening rather than taking the time and care to really do it properly.

But this doesn't scale if they're interviewing at a number of companies and/or otherwise just don't have much free time.

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

#279

Post by jacurtis » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #249

Someone I once worked with asked me a question that I think is relevant here and I will never forget it (roughly translated to English): Do you work to live, or live to work? It's beautiful, simple, and for me it put into perspective what really matters. I value and enjoy my job but I refuse to dedicate my life to it.

That is a great interview question. I would happily answer

"I work to live, and any company that doesn't want to hire me because of that answer is a company that I don't want to work for"

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

#280

Post by pembrook » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

corndoge wrote: post #240

agrippanux wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When interviewing execs who would be building new departments a few years ago, I would pose the question of "In the wake of Arab spring in Libya, the people decide that you are their next leader. What happens in your first 100 days?". The answers ran the gamut from lazy to fantastic to terrifying. A lot of answers where generic "coalition building" variety. The better answers identified key areas to focus on like inf…

>Bad answers had... Asking a politically charged question on statecraft and judging the answer based on your own personal ideas about how to run a state strikes me as a bizarre way to conduct an interview, even for an exec. >The worst answers had the exec killing people Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?

This is why we need less humans and more AI/ML in the candidate selection process.

The guy posing Arab Spring interview questions sounds just like those 65 year old talent scouts in MoneyBall skipping over a talented 3rd baseman because the kid “doesn’t have good legs.” Humans are immensely stupid and irrational when it comes to judging other humans.