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

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

#611

Post by naveen99 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #102

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…

sorry for being offtopic: i see you list people you follow in your profile. Are you using a 3rd party service to follow them, or using the hn api yourself ?

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

#612

Post by SamReidHughes » Sat, May 18, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

ht_th wrote: post #160

skrebbel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have it all backwards. Companies shouldn't be making custom interview processes just for you. That hurts the accuracy of the process.

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

#613

Post by phendrenad2 » Sun, May 19, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

A lot of people are saying they declined to continue interviewing after receiving a take-home programming assignment that was too difficult to do in the expected timeframe. I wonder if the better tactic would be to simply tell the recruiter that it's too difficult, and see what the company says.

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

#614

Post by kelnos » Mon, May 20, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #480

kelnos wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home assignments are probably not yet the norm, but are becoming more common. There's been a lot of backlash toward whiteboard coding, but most companies still want some sort of concrete work product. I would expect a reasonable home assignment would take no more than a couple hours to complete. If a company gave me something as time-consuming as Uber's, I'd say no thanks. Otherwise, I'd prefer a home assignment over…

As always, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. I've only experienced whiteboard coding (and in a limited fashion), but I'd prefer interacting with an interviewer and getting instant feedback compared to submitting a lump of code and potentially never hearing back. Communication is something key they fail to measure with this type of interview.

I've never done a take-home either. I'm perfectly able to "pass" a whiteboarding interview, but I just find them kinda lame when it comes to actually evaluating skill.

I think pairing the take-home with the in-person interview is a nice compromise. Assuming you didn't turn in complete crap code, they can call you in for the interview and you can talk through your solution and why you made the choices you did.

Another possibility is to make the take-home a part of the in-person interview, and just give the candidate a laptop and internet access and a few hours to work on it, with an interviewer at hand to answer questions. The downside of course is that everyone gets less time just talking to each other. A plus is that this timeboxes the possible assignments so things don't get too crazy, and also weeds out people who can't complete it in that time (which could be bad, too, I guess).

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

#615

Post by smeyer » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

spraak wrote: post #515

smeyer wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer has sometimes given out challenges that take a few hours. We just ask the candidate when they'd like to do the take-home and email it to them on that schedule. Then they have to submit their solution within the allotted time. It's a nice way to make sure the candidate knows it really only will take a couple hours, because neither side wants the candidate to spend 30 hours on a 3 hour take-home.

That still sounds quite stressful. Are any of your devs able to complete the task or similar in n hours/3 tim

I don't doubt that it's quite stressful for some people. In general, I think any element of an interview process is going to be stressful for at least some people, just given the stakes involved. That said, at least this guarantees it's not stressful and a big time sink.

Also, I do think that some people are able to complete it in a third the time, but I think the more useful evidence is that many candidates complete it and do a perfectly good job, some even with a healthy chunk of time to spare. If it were a totally unrealistic time goal I'd expect we'd quickly notice when no one finished.