Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I turned my interview task for Google into a startup

uxdesign.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 615 posts

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

#421

Post by wingerlang »

thoreauway wrote: post #305

I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber. Here's the exact challenge: UberCab Coder Challenge 1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed ra…

I got a take home assignment from a large company a few months ago, it was the whole shebang as well. Build an iOS application with full test suite, several screens, should work with their test-api, should be polished, offline/online work etc.

I estimated it to take at least 2 weeks. Sent it to a colleague and he estimated it the same. In reality you had 48 hours to turn it back in. I gave up halfway into the project.

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

#422

Post by lawlessone »

LameRubberDucky wrote: post #337
kemiller2002 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 continu…

There have been anecdotes on HN about companies using this type of process to get free work out of people. If your code solved the problem they needed solved, they may have taken your code/ideas and used it and left you by the wayside. I hope that's not the case but it's possible.

If it was an android app you'd honestly want to download their app and put it in the apk analyzer .. just check.

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

#423

Post by gav »

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…

> 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.

One of my favorite interviews was when I was posed the question: "you work for the railroad, we've just spent several months asking our customers how they feel about the service; the majority of them are unhappy, what do you do?".

I spent an enjoyable hour in front of a whiteboard working on ideas with the interviewer.

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

#424

Post by qes »

ghaff wrote: post #194
xiphias2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great if you do it as long as you pay for it. I was doing a 1 week payed interview at Coinbase. I was not hired, but my memories of the interview process are great.

This sort of thing mostly works fine for students and similar. (And internships are often great for everyone concerned.) But this doesn't really work for someone who already is working full-time. Some pay is fine but there's no way I'm taking a week of vacation to interview with you.

At our place we reserve coding tests for applicants on the more junior end of the spectrum. I've always found conversational interviews sufficient for vetting mid to senior level developers.

We do pay a good rate for the time we instruct people to spend on the coding test. We value our people and prefer starting the relationship generously and in good faith.

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

#425

Post by kradroy »

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.

Our interviews have consisted of something similar, but never in a way that produces actual usable work. We've had candidates "add features" to code, except the code in question was in a language they don't know. So they didn't write anything. We have them tackle past PRs for bugs that have already been fixed. And we've had them do design work for systems/processes we've already built.

We're not evaluating them on whether they got the same answer as us. We care about hearing aloud their thought processes.

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

#426

Post by sfotm »

la_barba wrote: post #374
aswanson wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's just abusive...

That is devaluing the word abuse. A voluntary optional task which you can decline at any time, is not "abuse" no matter how you spin it.

I agree in this context, but not in the broader sense. Not giving clear responses to interviewees is unprofessional and shouldn't be tolerated, but "abusive" is a bit much.

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

#427

Post by gcheong »

rickyc091 wrote: post #206
TallGuyShort wrote: post #201

My last company did interviews like this - I was always disgusted at the way most of the team would sit around and just find things to pick on in the person's code. Dumb stuff too. It became an excuse for a lot of the engineers to just make fun of someone who had successfully completed the program, but didn't take the time to JavaDoc everything and follow the same code style best practices we did. Things you can easi…

Not saying this approach was correct, but given a choice, what type of interview would you prefer? Hackerrank? In person, programming challenges, smaller take-home assignment, other?

I prefer a small take-home project with a follow-up meeting to go over it. The follow-up meeting to discuss the project is crucial though, as I get to asses if I think the critique of the code is reasonable and I can make more in depth comments about the project (what was good, bad, areas I might improve if I had more time, etc) not the typical thumbs up/down with no clue as to why that is typical of companies these days.

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

#429

Post by wingerlang »

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…

>> Another, a task requesting Visual Studio (iOS devs have no need for any experience with this)

Ironically enough I just moved to another iOS job and have been sitting in VS for the better part of the last couple of days. Some shared systems are written in C# so all developers basically have to use it at some points.

I agree it shouldn't be a part of the interview though.

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

#430

Post by zoomablemind »

thoreauway wrote: post #305

I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber. Here's the exact challenge: UberCab Coder Challenge 1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed ra…

Was it an interview for lead position or just coder? How did this end?

It looks like a good chance to outline the resource requirements for accomplishing this. No way should this be a work of team-of-one.

State the expected stages and some ideas for possible architecture and frameworks.

Then ask for resources needed to implement this with some rough-optimistic estimates, including the budget.

That should be enough for a serious conversation to begin with interested party.

Post reply on HN