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

A hiring test I'd like to run

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 203 posts

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#161

Post by perl4ever »

avip wrote: post #53
ditonal wrote: post #25

I 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…

I don't do much hiring, but when I do I make an active effort to avoid reading candidates resumes. I've found it's not possible for me to enter an interview with an unbiased mind having read a resume.

Less information means more bias. You may not have the bias that comes from misconceptions about the information on the resume, but now you have the bias that comes from assuming a "typical" resume whatever that is in your context.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#162

Post by xivzgrev »

ditonal wrote: post #25

I 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…

I had an interview like that. I’m a marketer and my background is clearly B2C, and a hiring manager reached out about a B2B role. We chatted, had a fine conversation, then I had an hour “test” on lead scoring. I wasn't passed on, and told it was because I had no prior experience with B2B lead scoring...duh?

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#163

Post by iandanforth »

ditonal wrote: post #25

I 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…

> engineers aren’t recruited

Yes they are? Gift baskets, personal emails/calls from the CEO, offers of travel just to meet the team (not an interview), offers to fly out and meet with them. The whole nine yards. The number of people who get this treatment is small compared to the number of engineers, but it's not zero.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#164

Post by perl4ever »

avip wrote: post #73
josephorjoe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels weird to me. If you have advertised a job and I've given you my resume, it is to give you some information you can use to avoid wasting your time and my time. Just like I would hope your advertisement is accurate and useful enough to let me decide if it is a good use of time for me to send you a resume (e.g., saw an ad for "react developer" -- got to the interview and they were looking for a "server side j…

It is rude. People put lots of effort into resumes. But it's ruder to reject a candidate based on age, gender, martial status, education or lack thereof or doing non sw jobs in the past. I always talk on the phone before and that's where we both make sure the interview is of relevance.

Not reading resumes can be part of a process to efficiently discriminate by age, because it's precisely older people who have an interest in you reading a resume, because it's they who have important stuff there.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#165

Post by 70jS8h5L »

GreenJelloShot wrote: post #107
hinkley wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last two times I went through an interview cycle (one on each side) it struck me how dependent your success was on your chosen tools and whether the coding question dovetailed with those choices or not. For instance if I'm working on a hard problem I usually need tests (whether I initially admit that to myself or not), and despite the fact that I'm often the one who sets up and/or defines our testing strategies,…

Most interviews seem to weigh heavily in favor of "sprinters" over "marathoners". That is, they select for people who can go from nothing to working code in a short period of time. I am one of those people who takes a while to get rolling, especially when starting from scratch. Interviews generally give you 30 minutes or an hour to produce something. I will easily take an hour to think about the problem, do some rese…

Exactly my feeling. I've been pondering a couple of recent negative interview experiences and felt this was my main issue. For any normal issue/work/feature/whatever, I'll have a few hours/days to ponder it and think of possible approaches and any issues that I might encounter down the line.

When put on the spot with a time crisis I tend to go too deep down a rabbit hole before realising the shortcoming of the approach I chose to take.

This leads to me usually doing great in take homes, compared to these recent in-person assessments. Also, confounded by having to work on an unfamiliar machine without any of my usual tooling which I'm not a fan of, especially as a keen fan of having a decent debugger set up.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#166

Post by mixmastamyk »

plughs wrote: post #122
ditonal wrote: post #25

I 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…

I had a 2 hour coding project in a language I'm familiar with - entirely based around a sub module that I've never used before. Maybe 2 hours should have been enough? I don't know - with the stress of writing under time pressure ( I had a new sympathy for contestants in cooking shows ) and complete unfamiliarity with the module, I was pretty impressed that I submitted something that passed the unit tests. Then I got…

Yeah bullshit, in the real world you’d refactor.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#167

Post by dntrkv »

Aeolun wrote: post #140
dntrkv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really take random comments on the internet into consideration when you're looking for your next gig? If you do, in my experience, every company is off the table.

What else am I supposed to take into consideration? The companies marketing material? Maybe the signal in those comments is a bit biased, but it seems far less biased than the alternatives.

At this point, unless I talk to someone I trust within a company, I try to reserve all judgement. In fact, I do that with everything nowadays. The internet and modern media skews so negative, according to them nobody is happy anywhere and everything sucks. That hasn't been my experience.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#168

Post by mixmastamyk »

avip wrote: post #53
ditonal wrote: post #25

I 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…

I don't do much hiring, but when I do I make an active effort to avoid reading candidates resumes. I've found it's not possible for me to enter an interview with an unbiased mind having read a resume.

Biased with more information?

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#169

Post by perl4ever »

city41 wrote: post #99

At my previous company, the technical interview was 2 hours long. The candidate was given a choice of about 10 very small, simple projects. Then we sat at a pairing station and paired on the problem. The candidate can use google, their favorite editor, write tests, anything they want. The goal is not to finish the project, but just code with them for 2 hours. It's the best technical assessment I've yet seen in an int…

I don't know if it should go without saying, but don't have two halves of your interview process run by different people/groups with decoupled ideas of what to look for.

Like, if you have a take-home test, but you don't trust the results because people can cheat, then you're going to bring in people who are unsuited for a programming test in-person. Besides any cheaters, I mean.

Re: A hiring test I'd like to run

#170

Post by mixmastamyk »

peter_l_downs wrote: post #90
hellisothers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience on both sides none of that matters, also none of the “how do they look stuff up” matters, what matters is did you just know what to do and do the right dance.

My experience has been the exact opposite.

Most interviews and interviewers are poor, meaning jump thru ten hoops, miss any and disqualified. Highest score wins.
Post reply on HN