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

I don’t have time for coding challenges

css-irl.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 243 posts

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#191

Post by srtjstjsj »

johnfn wrote: post #149
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 wa…

Seems like you are a brilliant programmer but lack domain knowledge for that specific job.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#192

Post by itsdrewmiller »

zapt02 wrote: post #158
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…

This is on-point! I've been involved in the recruitment process at my current employer for years and 95% of people that make it past the initial recruiter meet-and-greet have absolutely nothing to show in terms of open-source contributions or personal projects. Most of them just do the homework assignment so that you can at least talk about something during the interview. You can always say it's because the company d…

fyi the author is female - https://css-irl.info/about/.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#193

Post by ergocoder »

tomp wrote: post #186
ergocoder wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

720k TC is hard to attain but possible. Any decent engineer joining Facebook in 2012 and sticking there until now would earn 60k a month.

Isn't that because of the stock which just happened to appreciate that much, not because Facebook wants to pay them 60k / month?

Yes, that's correct.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#194

Post by cameronh90 »

johnfn wrote: post #187
golergka wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then they rejected me because I used GET instead of POST. OK, I'm honestly curious here. What was the request, and why did you make such a decision? Do you think it is the right approach in this case, or that it's an insignificant mistake that does not represent a person's understanding of HTTP protocol? I remember hearing about at least one story where using GET instead of POST lead to disastrous consequences, as…

I was definitely in the wrong about GET/POST. The company I had previously worked for simply didn't really care too much about getting the verbs right, so I didn't really fret about them. And the company I'm currently at (multiple thousands of employees, strong engineering culture if I dare say so myself) just does everything as a POST. So it really is somewhat cultural whether you care about GET/POST or not. But, IM…

For E2E encrypted APIs, one could well argue that worrying about HTTP verbs is just wasting time for no good reason. POST (consistently) lets you attach a body too.

Just using POST for everything is a pattern I've seen becoming more popular recently.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#195

Post by adamvalve »

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…

Came here to share the same exact points. He’s making a lot of assumptions never being on the other side and actually interviewing lots of candidates. Most of the time I get half assed projects with bugs that are obvious and they haven’t ever made contributions to open source software as an alternative to the take home project.

I think the at home project is the most lenient way to test someone because they aren’t pressured to solve a problem on the spot, instead they are in the comfort of their own home and can reference whatever documentation they would need, just like they would in a real position.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#196

Post by fractionalhare »

ergocoder wrote: post #180
fractionalhare wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, each of FAANG will do exactly that (as will other tech companies!). To be charitable to the parent commenter's point, they probably mean articulate in two senses: 1. Speaking perfect English, both fluently and without a heavy accent. 2. Talking about technical topics or other shibboleths with the same cultural affect an American would, as opposed to a foreigner. For example, many Indians will call a phone screen…

Thank you for being charitable. I speak English well enough to fare in FAANG as senior engineer. But I always notice how a native English speaker almost always speak perfect English. They pick the right word to use and many other small things that make their English superb.

No worries :) You speak English well enough that I agree you shouldn't have any problems communicating in a technical discussion. Personally I find thick accents to be a bigger obstacle to communication than stumbles in grammar. But realistically most engineers will be professional and charitable enough to work around either issue as long as you're earnest.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#197

Post by mayoff »

lhorie wrote: post #100
mayoff wrote: post #94

You're complaining that, to get a job, you have to demonstrate your ability to do the job, in a standardized way so the employer can compare you to other candidates with the merest hint of objectivity. For a little (imperfect) contrast, here's a quote from an article about auditioning for the Baltimore Symphony: > In the audition I took in October of 2014 for the Baltimore Symphony, I began preparing the required aud…

> so the employer can compare And why do we think this is objective? Ostensibly, the first one to clear some threshold of competence ought to be good enough to be hired (in fact there's even extensively studied algorithms[1] for this stuff). In the vast majority of cases, it's highly unlikely that you're going to find an underpriced genius via some misguided notion of test standardization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.or…

I think it's objective because I can weed out candidates based solely on objective questions about their solution to the coding problem. Of course there's still lots of subjectivity in the process, but I did say “the merest hint of objectivity”.

Here's my real world case study.

I wrote a programming problem for RGM Advisors. The company was sold and so its web site no longer exists. Here's someone's solution to that problem:

https://github.com/perrye2/LimitOrderBook

My original problem statement is in the PDF in that repo.

Here are some of the objective ways we evaluated submissions:

    - Does the submission parse/compile?
    - Does the submission run and not crash?
    - Does the submission follow the specification for how it should be invoked?
    - Does the submission produce the correct output?
    - Did the candidate submit answers to the time/space complexity questions given in the problem statement?
    - Do those answers correctly characterize the submission?

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#198

Post by Clubber »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #79
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…

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 can't hire easy and then fire easy.

Why not? Maybe you should address that problem. It would certainly make things a lot easier.

Re: I don’t have time for coding challenges

#199

Post by dizzle90210 »

The fact is, that without some demonstration of a candidate’s usefulness (their code) I cannot hire them. We used to use HR, now it is the head of engineering who runs our technical hiring. The process is very simple, complete a task, and if it is done correctly we start looking at soft skills. If you can’t do it in a manner that suggests you can hit the ground running, you are cut.

Reality is harsh, and unpleasant. In an environment where resources are tightened by rapid growth, we cannot afford the trappings of these supposedly “superior and modern” hiring techniques. We need talent, not mediocrity.

Post reply on HN