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A hiring test I'd like to run
31–40 of 203 posts
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#32First test of any software dev: Do you know how to look for answers on stackoverflow? Second test of any software dev: Do you know how to ask a good question on SO?
I've never found anything of actual use on StackOverflow in my ~decade of doing this professionally. The only time StackOverflow provided useful answers to my questions was during my first year of programming courses in university.
StackOverflow is fine when learning a new language. But indeed, hardly seems to help in real-world problems.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#33I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…
> was allowed to Google whatever but 50 minutes is still a crazy time crunch to figure out a lot of the stuff that needed to be figured out.
The point of such interviews is to see how you handle a situation with limited time and - like in this example - mostly new tech and paradigms to you. Usually you are not expected to output anything.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#34I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…
Sorry to hear about your experience. I'm at twilio and we recently started a hiring guild to tackle this exact problem. Most of the members of the guild on the technical side are there specifically to address bad interview experiences like yours. We are focusing on improving process, questions, and candidate experience. We are moving the technical portion towards work sample like questions and ensuring the interview focuses on what you bring to the board as opposed to someone's pet question in their favorite stack.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#35After a couple of years working as a web developer, I decided to go to College. I took a "Web Development" class. I failed the final. The assignment was to code a website by hand. I used BBEdit to pretty print my hand coded HTML and it inserted a tag that I didn't catch. I dropped out and went back to getting paid. Been doing it for 20 years now, though I use Prettier to do my formatting these days.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#36I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…
> In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, without the use of any framework, just vanilla JS.
> I was allowed to Google whatever but 50 minutes is still a crazy time crunch to figure out a lot of the stuff that needed to be figured out.
This actually might not be so nuts if it were clearly a way to evaluate how you handle unfamiliar problems and they made it clear they didn't really expect you to finish the whole thing in 50 minutes, I guess.
Part of the problem is that most companies seem to be complete dogshit at communicating:
1) what they're going to quiz you over—they seem to think it must be a pop-quiz with absolutely no way for you to know what might be on it or specifically prepare for it, sourced from literally all of your past experience, all of CS, all of software engineering practices, and maybe even stuff you never claimed to know, which is plainly, to be blunt, fucking bullshit and goddamn insulting, and that's not even getting into how many of these questions/challenges rely on recalling (rarely on formulating or discovering, that's just impractical and unlikely) some very specific "ah-ha" insight to not look like a complete dumbass while trying to solve them—and,
2) why they're giving you certain challenges or asking certain lines of questions, what they're trying to evaluate, or how you'll be judged, leading to stressful, pointless guessing games like "should I risk not completing this challenge to write very complete tests, because they'd rather see good tests than a working solution, or am I just completely fucked and a getting a definite 'no' if I don't have a working solution anyway, so I should not write any tests that don't increase the likelihood of my finishing in the time allotted?"
[EDIT] "why don't you just ask questions to resolve point #2?" Yes that can work, but a lot of this is so damn vague that then you've got the meta-guessing-game where there's a real chance you'll "lose some points" if you ask valid-in-context but "wrong" questions, because any "real" developer should know the answer ("of course you must write extremely complete tests for all code ever! Ugh, this guy must suck.")
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#37If the test doesn't reflect the job you'll be doing then it's not a good test of whether or not you'll be able to do the job. If you're applying for a role that expects you to know an application then looking in the help is cheating. If using the help is acceptable in the job then it's not. It's also worth noting that people don't like "proxy tests" for the skills they'll need to use on the job. If the test only tang…
This really nailed it on at least one particular job I was interviewing for. I'm freelance and really happy with it, but was referred by a friend to a (at least regionally highly regarded) company, so I thought I'd go.
I was first presented with a IQ test-looking set of pictures where you choose what comes next in the sequence. Seeing as I love puzzles, I scored great on it, but also aware that it doesn't really say anything about my skills on the job.
They were very positive and wanted to move forward. So I got a take-home test in Java. There wasn't a time estimate, but it was fairly convoluted, and it was meant to show what you would turn in, had it been my task, meaning I wanted build configs, testing, deployment, etc.
The problem was that I hadn't worked with Java for a decade, nor did the position have any connection to Java. I didn't even have a jdk installed at the time, but made an effort at setting it all up, figuring out maven or gradle, making my classes and data models, getting a skeleton set up, and after three hours figured I wasn't even half way done.
I wasn't interested enough in the job, would have gotten a pay cut, and had a 3 month old at home I was much more keen to hang out with on my free time, so I reported what I had done and that I was unlikely to do more. They stated that they would set up a meeting with the CTO, but never heard back.
I wish they had done a (sort of) exit interview or just sent out a minimal effort feedback questionnaire. It would be one of the first one I'd actually like to fill out.
I don't think I'm top tier in my field or region, or that I would've gotten/taken the job anyways, but they really put me off for the wrong reasons.
And I bet this is more common than it has any right to be.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#38First test of any software dev: Do you know how to look for answers on stackoverflow? Second test of any software dev: Do you know how to ask a good question on SO?
First test, part deux: Are you able to ascertain the validity of answers on StackOverflow?
Indeed. Sort the crap from the useful fast is a nice addition.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#39I interviewed at Twilio. My resume and phone chats made it abundantly clear that my professional experience was 95% backend in languages like Java and Go. I looked at their Glassdoor where people wrote they were heavily biased to the algorithm type questions, for better or worse. In reality I was given only a single coding interview my whole onsite, and it was to build a JavaScript SPA, including routing/linking, wit…
> was allowed to Google whatever but 50 minutes is still a crazy time crunch to figure out a lot of the stuff that needed to be figured out. The point of such interviews is to see how you handle a situation with limited time and - like in this example - mostly new tech and paradigms to you. Usually you are not expected to output anything.
Seems unnecessarily cruel and divorced from reality, even if that is the point. In real software jobs, you don't have to learn a new language, framework, and especially a new paradigm in 50 minutes. Those are things that happen over weeks, months, and years. I don't know of any useful skill that adding even more stress to an interview will surface.
Re: A hiring test I'd like to run
#40I'm a mechanical engineer by training and still occasionally do some entry level hiring in it.
My favorite question in recent years has been posing an advanced project - not unreasonably difficult, but one I know they won't have covered in school. Make it clear I don't expect them to have the answer, but have them talk through their approach to this project with me. "How would you get started?" "What would you need to know?" "What resources would you use?", etc.
For us it's been a great filter - both a gauge of their current knowledge and ability to tackle an unknown.