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Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

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Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#91

Post by odyssey7 »

An illustration:

Recently a recruiter asked me to do a coding challenge. He told me to spend twenty minutes on it. Three hours after starting, I had completed the six questions that covered things like dynamic programming, converting between integers and Roman numerals, and processing data from csv files; and I had figured out why their submission script was causing a stack overflow and let them know about the bug.

The code was clean, it passed all but a few of the hidden test cases, and the recruiter told me I scored well; and I could get back on the work I was now behind on for the day because of my naïveté. Two weeks later, the company didn't move forward with an interview.

Why is my reaction to coding challenges an allergic one? A coding challenge (completed alone) is a cheap and wide net that is can be costly for the engineers who fall into it - and yes, I’ve already done enough of them to know something is fishy.

What if I’m about to spend my best hours of the day producing free, production-quality code, and you aren’t going to honor that with something as small as a phone call from the decision maker to talk afterward? Keep in mind, usually the discussion at this point has been: “Hello.” “Hi.” . These conversations don’t look very different, and, empirically, continuing doesn’t have a great expected value.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#92

Post by NeedMoreTea »

acconrad wrote: post #87

As a hiring manager I'm literally losing sleep over this problem. I've been on both sides of this now and it's such a delicate balance. As a developer, you want to be fairly evaluated to prove your worth. As a hiring manager, you want to make sure you don't hire a dud (or worse, someone that will drag down the rest of your team). I spend more than 1/2 of my day now trying to build out a team that I need to aggressive…

Hmm, that sounds more than a little onerous. How many expected hours/days does that translate to?

> As a developer, you want to be fairly evaluated to prove your worth.

Indeed, but what I don't expect is to give a day or three to a potential employer knowing full well that most applications are going to be rejected. When a vacancy often gets 100+ applications it's clear people are going to be rejected for the most tenuous and marginal reasons.

If I got the job, no problem, but if not and I have another 20 applications with a day's coding hoops to jump through each time, that's an awful lot of evenings or weekends potentially being burnt...

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#93

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Lunatic666 wrote: post #86
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah...but you see, I have committed a serious, unforgivable crime. I've allowed myself to become old. I'm well past 40. Most of the time, rejections come within a couple of hours of submission, so I know that a "robo-scrubber" detected eld, and bounced my résumé. It's actually funny. I see a position advertised, where I am a 100% fit, I submit a CV, and get a bounce within an hour. Then I see the position still bein…

I'm 41 and just hired a 50 year old devops guy, because he's good, a little nuts and fits our salary range. The problem with older developers for me is mostly the salary expectations. I'm looking for mid level or senior people, but for most developer positions a few years experience are enough – we're not doing rocket science and the extra experience only makes them more expensive, not more effective. This looks tota…

As I've already stated, I would have (the key is "would have") been happy to take a fairly low salary or work as a contractor, as long as the work was interesting and the environment bearable.

It's just not gotten to that part. In some cases, a decent salary would have been required in order to support a move to a higher-cost-of-living area, but it still would have probably been surprisingly low.

As a manager, I made a pretty decent salary for a long time. I would not expect that, as a coder.

I have received a few rather direct answers, and once was privileged to be accidentally CCd in an email, discussing my age.

It's illegal as hell, but hard to prove, and not worth it. If you make a big deal out of it, you blackball yourself.

This kind of behavior has been rampant in the finance industry for decades. It's still crazy as hell, with 25-year-old kids running billions of dollars worth of other people's money through virtual slot machines, while acting like drunken frat boys.

When there's money to be made, people will look the other way. Check out the industries where there's not a lot of money to be made, like social service or education. You will see people being keelhauled regularly.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#94

Post by Lunatic666 »

fsniper wrote: post #78
Lunatic666 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hiring a lot at the moment, I have multiple interviews every day, we had 100s of candidates, but not a single one had more than a getting-started project on their GitHub profile. I'd take open source code any day over our coding exercise, but I cannot hire people without seeing some code first.

Do you offer any engineer as a pair for the testing? Or can you except personal project codebase offers instead of the automated tests? Also don't you have an onsite technical interview process that you use to assess the candidates abilities which invalidates any need for online coding tests? If you can't answer yes to these questions. Unfortunately you are part of the problem.

But I haven't answered your question precisely: We don't offer a pair, because we don't use the coding platforms. I'd say the homework counts about 80%, the following tech interview 20%.

Of course I have to trust the candidates that they made the homework themselves, but if you don't start on a trust basis that would be a really bad starting point. There's still probation to make sure they're a good fit. I'm investing a lot more work into vetting when it's an overseas candidate compared to local, but mostly to make sure we don't put someone on the street, because I didn't do my job properly.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#95

Post by fsniper »

Lunatic666 wrote: post #94
fsniper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you offer any engineer as a pair for the testing? Or can you except personal project codebase offers instead of the automated tests? Also don't you have an onsite technical interview process that you use to assess the candidates abilities which invalidates any need for online coding tests? If you can't answer yes to these questions. Unfortunately you are part of the problem.

But I haven't answered your question precisely: We don't offer a pair, because we don't use the coding platforms. I'd say the homework counts about 80%, the following tech interview 20%. Of course I have to trust the candidates that they made the homework themselves, but if you don't start on a trust basis that would be a really bad starting point. There's still probation to make sure they're a good fit. I'm investin…

This process still doesn't cover my problems.

I do have the experience, and have the code to show. Why would I be subject to a "homework"?

This process objectively discriminate against people with enough age and experience, but don't have the time outside work. Even just not having the will to do a "homework" is an enough reason to pass.

Are you hunting for young eager engineers who can put the most to self proving, or a diverse experience base?

I am not suggesting anything against your process, but highlighting the shortcomings.

I would probably pass your interview process directly.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#96

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ecf wrote: post #85
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Why would I bother spending time "freshening up" on HackerRank? I don't do DSA, so things like binary trees are a waste of time for me; but they are a favorite of schools. Every second I'm doing that is a second that I'm not devoting to the driver work I'm doing (ONVIF stuff). I have a VERY full dance card. Writing generic driver code for a sloppy spec like ONVIF is...challenging. I was interviewed a while back fo…

Look I'm not trying to be rude, an attitude like yours doesn't really fit into a startup. They aren't looking for an absolute rockstar who believes their experience puts them in a level above all other engineers, or someone who believes they are too good to go through the process everyone else went through. They want someone who won't spread toxicity through the small team, and your numerous accolades does nothing to…

Could ask said references what I'm like (See "Won't last long in a Japanese corporation if not a good team player").

I don't do self-promotion well. I just state the facts. Apparently, that's enough to "have an attitude."

I spent most of my career at a marquée corporation; surrounded by the finest engineers and scientists in the world, where I was NOWHERE NEAR the top of the heap, and never pretended to be so.

The simple fact that stating that I have a PROVABLE PORTFOLIO means that I "have an attitude" is a sign of how sick the industry is.

BTW: That portfolio is full of errors and mistakes I've made, as well as successes. I'd never dream of getting any work by deception. I want folks to know what they are getting; warts and all.

I know damn well that I'm not a "rockstar." I was a hiring manager for years. This is not a Dunning-Kruger binge. I'm quite aware of where I fit in the food chain.

And I guess that it's obvious. I'm done looking. I wouldn't post stuff like this if I were. Sooner or later, I'll probably be looking to hire other folks. I'm a really, really good manager. You should see some of the testimonials on my LI profile. One of my "golden rules," has always been to treat others as I would want to be treated; regardless of how I am actually treated. Being a working engineer during my entire management career helped me to have a lot of empathy (and hard to BS). I was also privileged to manage a really high-functioning team of top-shelf developers. They knew more than me; and that was great.

If things don't work out...well, I can wash dishes as well as the next guy. I don't really have as much ego tied up in this stuff as it seems. I just love tech.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#97

Post by sys_64738 »

odyssey7 wrote: post #91

An illustration: Recently a recruiter asked me to do a coding challenge. He told me to spend twenty minutes on it. Three hours after starting, I had completed the six questions that covered things like dynamic programming, converting between integers and Roman numerals, and processing data from csv files; and I had figured out why their submission script was causing a stack overflow and let them know about the bug. T…

Bill the company for your time doing these tests. $250 is the going rate for contracting.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#98

Post by fit2rule »

firepoet wrote: post #56
fit2rule wrote: post #38

Gave up doing coding interviews long, long ago. Nowadays the only really effective measure of how useful a person is going to be in the work environment is to actually put them in that work environment for a day and let them contribute as best they can. This always filters out the incompetent from the productive. If we can't survive a day with you in our environment, games over. If however, you survive a day in our e…

Do you pay candidates for the day they spend working for you?

Sure.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#99

Post by dmoy »

lhnz wrote: post #59
dmoy wrote: post #2

Sure, yes. I don't like coding interviews that focus on super complicated algorithms where you get a massive advantage from already knowing the subject area, or require a sort of "a ha" realization to solve properly. When I ask coding questions they tend to be fairly straightforward. Do some basic transformations on data, handle a couple of edge cases (bonus points if you can see the edges of your own code), that's a…

The problem with this approach is that interview nerves don't just stop you from writing complicated algorithms, they often cause people to forget or stutter over trivial/simplistic stuff like syntax or popular APIs. For example, recently I did a simple algorithmic coding test in JavaScript. The overall logic I wrote was completely correct, but there were two issues: (1) I accidentally missed a function call (which I…

Yup I agree you need to cut people a lot of slack in interviews. Don't use the same rigor you'd expect from production code.

Definitely as an interviewer you shouldn't care about syntax or remembering proper libraries. Even better, give hints about libraries, and maybe be proactive about saying you don't care about syntax.

The coding under pressure line is bullshit, code under pressure ends up being bad code that makes things worse. Rollback under pressure sure. Look at monitoring graphs under pressure. Write new code? Helllll no.

A lot of interviewers have unrealistic expectations though, it sucks.

Re: Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

#100

Post by Izkata »

Youden wrote: post #61
ldoughty wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then people will cheat and have a friend do the test for you. I have people pretending to have certifications they don't have.. or actually having the certification but somehow can't answer non obscure facts... (How can you be AWS solution architect, verified certificate, but not know that the general purpose EC2 instances is... Or what AWS service provides script execution in languages like python or node? A…

> Because then people will cheat and have a friend do the test for you. Isn't this problem shared by all exams? How often do people successfully cheat on their university/college entrance exams? And hell, can't you potentially do this with a technical interview? Nobody who interviewed you is actually going to see you again and I don't recall an ID check at any of my interviews. > Other than that, there is teaching to…

> And hell, can't you potentially do this with a technical interview? Nobody who interviewed you is actually going to see you again and I don't recall an ID check at any of my interviews.

I don't think this is reliable. One of my interviewers became my manager; we make it a point to hire for a specific team and get someone on that team in the interview.

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