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According to the HN gestalt, you shouldn't do a whiteboard interview because that's too unrealistic because nobody programs on a whiteboard, you shouldn't expect programmers to code with their laptop in an interview because that's too much pressure and also unrealistic, you shouldn't expect programmers to be willing to do a take home exam because that's too much work without money (and if people did pay, the complain…
There should be some kind of test that would be recognized by the industry, that you could attempt once every six months for example, and that would positively assess your ability to code. You would get a score that you could show to recruiters (if you wished to). Some recruiters would accept only 95/100, others 90/100, etc. There could be language assessments as well.
I don't understand why this doesn't exist. Or maybe it does exist and is simply ignored? What would it take for companies to trust such a system?
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At least with live-coding, the company is investing at least as many person-hours as you are -- in my experience 2x as much, since there are normally 2 people doing the evaluation.
Preparation for live-coding, leetcode style interviews takes way longer than any take home. Kids on Blind are doing 200+ leetcode problems before starting their interview loops. How many hours is that? You’re basically just choosing to forget about all the prep needed to ace a DP problem on the spot.
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You seem to have rapidly skipped over the exact thing no-one complains about -- a take-home piece of work paid at a reasonable rate. You just claimed people would complain. I've done exactly this, and everyone seemed happy.
Many states in the US don’t have the moonlighting protections that California does. A paid assignment outside of their main employer will very frequently will be basis for dismissal, or at least will demand prior notification.
I've been in both sides, and what they did to you was horrible. Just last week I had a call with someone who did the take home assigment very badly, but I wanted to give him some feedback and showed him a better solution. Nonetheless, I can't think of a better solution for this. Hiring someone is a big commitment (for both parts), so I want to be completely sure that I am hiring the right person. How do you that? How…
The original fizz buzz type test was to weed out the fakers. It is something most people with a bit of skill can pull off. But as an industry we did what engineers do. We over think it. We blow it way out of the bounds of what it should do. We ended up with enterprise style fizz buzz testing as a filter. Honestly, at this point you really can not expect more. But can they bash out any code, can they read code (and understand it), are they cool with your 'culture'. There are 2 things you do not want on your team, a jerk (they can usually hide it in a few hours of interview), or someone who does not 'get it' (they can become help vampires). But I will take a dozen help vampires over a jerk every day of the week.
It is not like most people are going to 'hit the ground running'. In many places it takes a few weeks just to figure out who to talk to so you can check in code, or get your computer setup correctly. I have yet to come into a job and not have to wait on getting a computer (first day), then a few days of getting access to everything. Let alone beginning to comprehend the problem they are trying to solve.
What I DO HATE about take homes, is if you complete one, clearly put time into it, and then are refused feedback when you are rejected. If I put 2-10 hours into writing something for you, I at least deserve three sentences on why it wasn't accepted. I know these people are busy, but so am I. Most of us also have jobs, and even if we don't we want to know how to improve.
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You’re setting up a gigantic straw man. There are camps on HN who dislike all of those things individually—you can’t just take the union of everything someone here dislikes and call it the HN gestalt. >do something unfun to get hired I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts. I personally don’t mind putting together a portfolio the way most other creative indu…
"You’re setting up a gigantic straw man." And called it the HN gestalt. Pretty sure I labelled it with what it is right up front. Nevertheless, I do think there are quite a few individuals who have an unexamined (in the philosophical sense) assumption that they just shouldn't have to do anything to get hired. I bet most of them, if they examined it, would realize that it's not a sensible assumption. I think it sneaks…
You can’t take the union of everyone’s food dislikes and say “according to the Earth gestalt, no food is edible.”
According to the HN gestalt, you shouldn't do a whiteboard interview because that's too unrealistic because nobody programs on a whiteboard, you shouldn't expect programmers to code with their laptop in an interview because that's too much pressure and also unrealistic, you shouldn't expect programmers to be willing to do a take home exam because that's too much work without money (and if people did pay, the complain…
The tactic I’ve employed at my company when vetting a candidate is to give them a link to a small code sample (usually a single class or service for backend, some JS/CSS for front end) to review the day before the interview. The code itself will include some obvious issues, some less obvious issues, some language specific opportunities for improvement, etc. We then walk through their notes (if they made any), and the…
The guy also asked me a few relatively simple technical questions, then said "Okay I know you can handle the job, let's see what you really know," asked me some really difficult questions, when I said "I don't know" to some he actually spent a few minutes teaching me the concepts.
That same guy was the lead programmer on some famous arcade games, btw. Did a lot of assembly programming back in the day. He had serious technical chops.
Got a job offer the next day. 1 interview, 1 interviewer, a little over 30 minutes spent.
Best interview experience I ever had. If more interviews were like that I wouldn't feel dread every time I felt the urge to switch jobs.
Also if that's all someone of his caliber needed to determine applicant quality, I don't see why everyone else feels the need to go through all this other bullshit.
According to the HN gestalt, you shouldn't do a whiteboard interview because that's too unrealistic because nobody programs on a whiteboard, you shouldn't expect programmers to code with their laptop in an interview because that's too much pressure and also unrealistic, you shouldn't expect programmers to be willing to do a take home exam because that's too much work without money (and if people did pay, the complain…
You seem to have rapidly skipped over the exact thing no-one complains about -- a take-home piece of work paid at a reasonable rate. You just claimed people would complain. I've done exactly this, and everyone seemed happy.
It took up a lot of my week, though, and I know it would be tricky to be interviewing at multiple places at the same time like that. Others have mentioned portfolios, which is an idea I think makes a whole lot of sense.