Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that it's an automatic red flag. 8 hours? Yeah that's too long. But I would rather do a 2 hour take-home project than a 2 hour whiteboard coding interview. Edit to add: as far as getting paid, nobody expects to get paid for an onsite interview so I wouldn't expect to get paid for a take home project either. As long as it takes the same amount of time that the coding portion of an onsite interview reasonabl…
Do any of the take-home projects actually only require 2 hours though? Maybe some of them have a recommended time around there, but isn't it basically required to spend longer?
No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
531–540 of 646 posts
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree. I can’t imagine many people enjoy studying for leetcode type interviews, either, unless they are fresh out of a CS program and already practiced with that stuff.
Do people actually accept such interviews? That seems quite disrespectful to me, tbh. > Oh you've been working in a relevant field for 10 years? Here take this written test first, so we can check how well you can memorize hundreds of random irrelevant algorithms... I'd walk out, unless it was maybe some simpler algorithm that you can actually figure out yourself by thinking for a few minutes.
Had done the normal initial phone interview (overview of experience etc), a take home code challenge (only took ~1hr) then I was asked to come in for a final interview that was to be a 15-20min presentation on project I'd worked on (that related to what I would be doing at the new role) then 15-20min of questions on that project and the technical challenges/solutions. All this sounded great until I got an email the day before informing me the presentation and follow up questions would be ~20 mins total and then there would be a 20 minute whiteboard session on data structures and algorithms.
I retracted my application asap!
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this. If I select a candidate of three to offer a job, then as long as I'm not discriminating the others for things such as sexuality, gender, age, ect. then the person we feel is the best fit is just that. What we believe is the best candidate - no amount of arguing in a court is going to change that.
I think the problem is your "ect.", in recent years number of various minority groups that might feel discriminated has grown and keep growing. You never know what will be next discriminated minority that you might offend and that will might sue you next year for some seemingly innocent explanation. Why anyone would anyone take a risk? To make someone feel better?
Straight out of college I got rejected by failing miserably at a technical interview almost to the point of tears when I realized how little I knew. Maybe my interviewer saw this but I got very practical feedback, and knew exactly what to do with myself that summer to get hired.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the other 99 other places do the same thing because it's the new norm now? Do you stay unemployed?
Well, if everyone has ranting screeds on their Glassdoor you'll blame the ranters. If only one company has a ranting screed, you'll blame the company. No one writes a ranting screed for not receiving feedback. Therefore no one wants to be that company. Essentially, we're in a stable equilibrium.
The hell they don't. The root post of this very thread could easily have been a "ranting screed" on Glassdoor if the poster was of a different mindset.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#535In the final thank you email thread I asked:
Hi [redacted],
I really appreciated the speed of this entire process. I must admit, I'm bummed but understand; I also really do appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative. If you have any specifics on where I was specifically lacking, I would appreciate knowing but if Tempest's policy limits you from going much deeper, I understand that too.
I wish you the best at building your team; You'll find the person you're looking for. :)
Till next time!
Best, lgregg
So, I then got direct actionable feedback. They’re not long explanations (I.e. on X you should have considered Y) but we’re very specific and super helpful.
I now have told this story many times and pointed people to try that company.
I think startups are more inclined to do this than companies after their Series C.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, if you provide the laundry list its easy to validate your assignment against it. You submitted code which doesn't have things in my laundry list. Noticeably your db calls aren't surrounded by try/except. You have written no documentation. You didn't ship the code with git repo. No unit or functional test cases. I also expect these days one would use Python's typing library. Most of this helps in code maintai…
> Exactly, if you provide the laundry list its easy to validate your assignment against it. There is no laundry list. There is an expectation that a senior engineer writes codes like a senior engineer. > You submitted code which doesn't have things in my laundry list. Noticeably your db calls aren't surrounded by try/except. You have written no documentation. You didn't ship the code with git repo. No unit or functio…
Followed immediately by.
>>There is an expectation that a senior engineer writes codes like a senior engineer.
You have no written list, but an imaginary checklist running in your brain about how a senior engineer writes code. Other engineers have theirs. I ran some of it and guess what, in that list absence of basic documentation, unit test cases, basic exception handling, code with types. Or even input validation for functions, like null checks is a no go.
Yet, if you submitted your feature complete project under a tough deadline to me, I'm not going to sit down and split hairs about absence of a favorite add-on feature of mine. That is what we are discussing here.
The code you posted in the comment above obviously doesn't have things like documentation, or validating function variables. Not even None checks. This obviously happens when some one attempts to write and submit code in minutes. When you write code this quickly, you focus on the exact feature demand at hand. Which in this case was SQL injection.
Other people got their feature set, in which several security add-on features would have been good to have but not in the time given.
>>You are arguing reductio ad absurdum to hide the fact that the things which you claimed unreasonable are in fact routine, and your time estimates are off by order of 10.
Oh obviously anyone who can do produce thousand(s) lines of code 24 hour project in 2.4 hours, is some totally different beast altogether.
There sure could exist such people who can produce >1000 lines of highly tested, security hardened code. I have yet to meet them though.
The closest I've seen is people who could write Lisp macros. But even those people wouldn't recommend writing code at the rate of 1000 lines per hour.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#537I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…
In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all, just a generic response. This has to do with how law is structured here: giving feedback gives an attack surface to candidates that could sue you for the feedback you gave (because they do not agree with it). So this is it, companies do not do this because they're evil, they do this because nobody wants legal consequences.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#538One time we gave feedback on request and the candidate contested the feedback, then went out on a social media rampage. So yeah, we stopped after that. It only takes one bad candidate to make it not worth the effort.
Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage. What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more p…
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exactly, if you provide the laundry list its easy to validate your assignment against it. There is no laundry list. There is an expectation that a senior engineer writes codes like a senior engineer. > You submitted code which doesn't have things in my laundry list. Noticeably your db calls aren't surrounded by try/except. You have written no documentation. You didn't ship the code with git repo. No unit or functio…
>>There is no laundry list. Followed immediately by. >>There is an expectation that a senior engineer writes codes like a senior engineer. You have no written list, but an imaginary checklist running in your brain about how a senior engineer writes code. Other engineers have theirs. I ran some of it and guess what, in that list absence of basic documentation, unit test cases, basic exception handling, code with types…
[1] There is a lot wrong with your "improvements". db calls aren't randomly placed in try/catch - that will be absurd. And the None checks aren't there because of something which you can very clearly see in the sample code but you also very clearly don't understand.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between a take home project and an on site interview is that a take home costs the hiring company nothing, whereas an on site costs them hours of engineer time. With that being true, they can make a lot more candidates do take home tests then on sites for the same cost, meaning it’s a lot less efficient use of a candidates time.
Sorry, but this isn't true. We take a lot of time going over a candidates test. The point of the take home is so that we can get a feel for the candidates level of coding competence, ability to commit to a deadline, ability to read and follow instructions and it also helps to generate questions for an on-site interview. Not bothering to read the test through properly would be a waste of our own time, as we'd not achi…
Also, I've conducted a number of interviews in my career and have been responsible for a number of hires and I've never needed to rely on a take home project to access a candidates worthiness of the position. Maybe it's because I was interviewing/hiring for positions which I was intimately familiar of the required tasks and I knew the right questions to ask.