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I don’t have time for coding challenges

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Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#141

Post by shajznnckfke »

geebee wrote: post #111
shajznnckfke wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Shortage” is an economic term of art, so I won’t use it here. But it’s likely true that there is lot of valuable, economic-growth-producing work that could be profitable if a software engineer costs $100k/year instead of $500k/year. Businesses that lie on the margin of profitability are likely to feel that it’s hard to find good talent. Of course, it’s bad for us existing software engineers if the supply increases a…

You just said that there's lots of valuable work that could be done, but your example of work that could be done is work isn't valuable enough to do unless software engineers get paid (in the SF Bay Area) notably less than a dental hygienist. I like having clean teeth. If someone can make more as a dental hygienist, why on earth would it be valuable to society if they instead worked as a software engineer for less mo…

I didn’t say anything about the SF Bay Area.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#142

Post by shajznnckfke »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #128
shajznnckfke wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Shortage” is an economic term of art, so I won’t use it here. But it’s likely true that there is lot of valuable, economic-growth-producing work that could be profitable if a software engineer costs $100k/year instead of $500k/year. Businesses that lie on the margin of profitability are likely to feel that it’s hard to find good talent. Of course, it’s bad for us existing software engineers if the supply increases a…

That makes no sense. A voluntary pay reduction is like a subsidy leading to market distortion (more supply than the market can bear) and windfall gains (employers might just keep the extra profits) - only that this subsidy is coming from your and my paycheck lol . The idea is an employer-side argument to counter the labour-side demand for higher wages: Don't have the wages to high, otherwise we go bankrupt and can't…

I didn’t say anything about a voluntary reduction in pay. Any reduction in pay would be a result of market forces in response to increased supply.

> Look at construction. Did cheap immigrant labour make rents feel low in many areas? No, market forces drive up prices and owners keep the profit.

In areas that aren’t constrained by density limits, homes are actually very cheap. In terms of square footage of home per population, the US is doing great. Problems are with inequality, in terms of geography and wealth.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#143

Post by rsweeney21 »

_qulr wrote: post #138
rsweeney21 wrote: post #124

Work sample tests have been proven repeatedly to be the best predictor of future job success.[1] The next best predictor is general mental ability. It's not unreasonable to ask someone to demonstrate their capabilities. Just make it interesting, relevant to the job and most importantly: short. Whatever time work sample testing requires should replace interview time, not add on to it. 2 hours is a reasonable ask. Oh,…

Tech Sector Job Interviews Assess Anxiety, Not Software Skills https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848039

The sample size in that study was pretty small.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#144

Post by salt-licker »

_qulr wrote: post #115
nogabebop23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use a coding challenge as well but I like your addition of "auditing" the coding part and using existing open source or side project work. Bonus points if it uses some of the target technologies too! The author doesn't appear to understand the economics of the hiring company; it's about time & effort to filter and the cost of making a bad hire. I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resu…

> I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resumes. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of hiring, that out of some misguided notion of "fairness" or "objectivity" you have to treat every candidate exactly the same. In theory it seems like a good principle, but the road to hell is paved in good intentions. In practice, this results in arbitrarily designed standard tests which are only s…

Generally you don’t get all the resumes at once, this is literally the secretary problem. Unfortunately you need some objective standard of measurement across candidates that is static over at least months, and ideally takes a minimum of you and your candidates’ time. Though imperfect, real-time technical questions are a pretty good solution to this problem, especially since a lot of the best engineers prefer them to take-homes.

Also, anecdotally after interviewing hundreds of candidates, I’ve found resumes to have a relatively high false positive rate. Surprising numbers of engineers look great on paper but can’t write working code for semi-complex problems when tested, even accounting for interview anxiety.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#145

Post by swader999 »

_qulr wrote: post #115
nogabebop23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use a coding challenge as well but I like your addition of "auditing" the coding part and using existing open source or side project work. Bonus points if it uses some of the target technologies too! The author doesn't appear to understand the economics of the hiring company; it's about time & effort to filter and the cost of making a bad hire. I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resu…

> I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resumes. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of hiring, that out of some misguided notion of "fairness" or "objectivity" you have to treat every candidate exactly the same. In theory it seems like a good principle, but the road to hell is paved in good intentions. In practice, this results in arbitrarily designed standard tests which are only s…

Agree with this for most companies. When at an airport we were government and had to be 'fair' it was about ten solid days of work to hire for one position.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#146

Post by geebee »

luckylion wrote: post #93
Viliam1234 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of large companies are competing for talent, and if you can't pay bank salaries, you're going to have a hard time. Sounds like Economics 101. The curves of supply and demand meet at some point. Some customers can't buy (enough of) the thing because the price at the intersection of the curves is too high for them. Yes, that's how free market works. There are things I can't buy, because they are too expensive fo…

That's all well and good, but that's not the point I was trying to make. Companies aren't having a hard time finding talent because developers are so annoyed by coding interviews, they're having a hard time finding talent because they can't/don't want to pay high salaries. So developers go to work on finance and ad-tech, and not on normal, boring, only-making-three-times-the-national-average-salary stuff. And those c…

I disagree with this, somewhat. Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations, reminds us that there are a lot of factors that go into determining the desirability of a certain job, and that wages reflect this. The butcher earns more than the baker, Smith reasons, in part because most people would prefer the work of the baker. You have to pay someone enough more to convince them to be a butcher.

There are a lot of jobs that pay less than software engineer, but would be more desirable provided the pay isn't too much less. For example, someone might prefer to be a dental hygienist, figuring that the work is flexible, steady, and there's less of a possibility of age discrimination later in life. This person would become a software engineer for twice the dental hygienist salary, but not for 10% more.

In a free market society, it's not up to us to make that decision. If you want to get software engineers for in San Francisco for 10% more than a dental hygienist's salary, and you can't get any, that's the market's answer.

Corporate capitalists have discovered that if you don't like the market's answer, have the government ask for you.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#147

Post by wolco »

_qulr wrote: post #115
nogabebop23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use a coding challenge as well but I like your addition of "auditing" the coding part and using existing open source or side project work. Bonus points if it uses some of the target technologies too! The author doesn't appear to understand the economics of the hiring company; it's about time & effort to filter and the cost of making a bad hire. I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resu…

> I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resumes. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of hiring, that out of some misguided notion of "fairness" or "objectivity" you have to treat every candidate exactly the same. In theory it seems like a good principle, but the road to hell is paved in good intentions. In practice, this results in arbitrarily designed standard tests which are only s…

This only makes sense if they want top talent. Usually they want cheap/easy to push around talent and for that you need a screener that filters out the best and whoever remains will have the strength to deal with bully managers or lack of requirements

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#148

Post by _qulr »

salt-licker wrote: post #144
_qulr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot give every application 1-2 hours of review if I get 100+ resumes. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of hiring, that out of some misguided notion of "fairness" or "objectivity" you have to treat every candidate exactly the same. In theory it seems like a good principle, but the road to hell is paved in good intentions. In practice, this results in arbitrarily designed standard tests which are only s…

Generally you don’t get all the resumes at once, this is literally the secretary problem. Unfortunately you need some objective standard of measurement across candidates that is static over at least months, and ideally takes a minimum of you and your candidates’ time. Though imperfect, real-time technical questions are a pretty good solution to this problem, especially since a lot of the best engineers prefer them to…

> Surprising numbers of engineers look great on paper but can’t write working code when tested, even accounting for interview anxiety.

How have you accounted for interview anxiety?

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#149

Post by johnfn »

autarch wrote: post #50

> "I’m writing this as an interviewee, having never been on the other side of the interview table ..." > ... > "Most candidates will have side-projects or work they’ve done for previous employers." As someone who has actually done a lot of interviewing, I can say with great confidence that this is simply wrong. At my current employer, we have a "homework assignment" as part of the interview process. We tell candidate…

Them: "We've got a coding challenge for you..."

Me: "I've got this repo on Github with millions of downloads and 10k stars. It's at least 20k lines of my own code. Would that be good to demonstrate my coding ability?"

Them: "Haha, no, that'd be too much work for us. Please do the test instead."

Me: "Fine."

Then they rejected me because I used GET instead of POST. Clearly that shows I have no idea how to code.

That was a large (1000+ employee) YC company, by the way.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#150

Post by zebnyc »

JackC wrote: post #87

I like the coding challenge we designed for hiring where I work. A few things about it that work: - It's designed to take about the same time as the round of interviews it replaces (half a day), and we clearly communicate how polished and complete we're expecting it to (not) be in that time. - It's a lot like the actual work; if you enjoy it / are good at it, there's a good chance you'll enjoy / be good at the job. I…

a) Do you compensate folks who take these challenges. Otherwise it is half a day of unpaid labor. Also most take home tests take way longer even though they are advertised as "only a couple of hours". Do you have empirical evidence that it can be completed in the given time slot? Have you given the test to your own colleagues who may not know the background / domain knowledge / environment setup required?

b) Do you make it clear what you consider as "good design"? OOP/Imperative or Functional coding style? Even in OOP, is it sufficient if the candidate just does SOLID or do they have to implement GoF patterns? This is very subjective and never made clear in these tests.

c) Is there a guarantee that an actual person will review the submitted code and provide feedback? AFAIK, most companies won't give candidates any feedback / validation of submitted work

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