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

Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 470 posts

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#241

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

I think if you give someone a take home assignment, especially a junior, and they complete it you owe them the offer of a call to talk through some feedback or a detailed text breakdown of what they could improve and where you think they may be lacking in knowledge. If they don't know where they're going wrong it's going to be quite hard for them to figure out how to improve it.

As far as ghosting is concerned it's a bit baffling to me, seems far more in a company's interest to promote the notion of not ghosting so that they actually stand some chance at all of applicants letting them know when they've dropped out.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#243

Post by onion2k »

jerf wrote: post #76

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…

But in the end, you're going to have to do something unfun to get hired.

It could be an interview. Or a series of interviews. Just like every other job.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#244

Post by LocalPCGuy »

BossingAround wrote: post #165
jeremymcanally wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone with a sensible position on this. Interviewing sucks, but the people on the other side of the table don't know you or your skillset. You have to give them some sort of objective information to work with. The position I really don't understand are those who think as a "senior" (whatever that means) engineer you should be able to walk in, answer a few questions, and then be hired just because you have…

You can't control for all edge cases in an interview. Having an interview process exactly like Google won't give your company Google-like engineers.

Most smaller companies also don't want Google-like engineers, I would posit.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#245

Post by Semaphor »

morelisp wrote: post #118
sarchertech wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know any other trade that so thoroughly rejects apprenticeships, licensure, and formal certifications.

Apprenticeships (called Fachinformatiker) and formal certifications (university, university of applied science, or the Fachinformatikerausbildung) are all important in Germany.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#246

Post by ed312 »

mathverse wrote: post #214
jerf wrote: post #76

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…

I had to take a deep breath when I read this comment. As others have mentioned this is a huge strawman. My post was not meant to imply that home assignments are a wrong tool to filter out candidates. It's how it is conducted that makes it a toxic practice. Not providing any meaningful feedback or not paying for a work that takes too much time is what makes it not acceptable.

Re the "no meaningful feedback" - this may be laziness or negligence, but in my experience is almost certainly related to liability. "Takes too much time" as a value probably varies widely between engineers. I personally like a system with a take home designed to take 1 hour (we've said so explicitly) but we don't actually cap the time. There is an entirely other camp of engineers who don't want _any_ time limits so they can approach the problem in whatever way they want. At the end of the day you have to make a call re the most efficient use of your team's time to find new folks.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#247

Post by euphetar »

I have found the following strategy to work well: pick your battles. Some employers use test tasks to keep you busy so that you can't apply elsewhere. Other employers genuinely test your skills, but even among them there are some with unrealistic expectations. You can't be doing all the test tasks, period. But you can avoid most of them without walking away.

I am assuming an active job search where you have more than one potential employers.

If the test task is simple and you have the time: do it. If the test task is interesting and you really want into this company: do it perfectly. If the test task is simple, but you don't have the time: write an email explaining how you have a full time job with lots of interviews, tell them your CV clearly demonstrates you have enough experience, ask to forgo the test task. If the test task is hard and you don't have the time: explain how you would do the task, ask to forgo the task as above, walk away if they don't agree.

You would be surprised how often people will skip steps of the interview process if you ask nicely. This way I skipped tedious home assignments, psych tests and leetcode home assignment (not even hard, just told the company I don't want to rehearse dynamic programming with so many interviews lined up).

In my recent job search I had two good offers and incidentally both were the ones where I did the test tasks 150% because they were interesting. So do them if they are worth it.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#248

Post by ghaff »

sarchertech wrote: post #111
jerf wrote: post #76

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’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…

And if you've been working on proprietary things for those 20 years and don't work on your own open projects at home--as would be considered utterly unremarkable if you were a chemical engineer for example--you wouldn't have a portfolio. Yes, if you're a photographer I'd expect to see a portfolio. But that's not true for basically the majority of technical, scientific, and business fields.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#249

Post by sarchertech »

saxonww wrote: post #227
sarchertech wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labeling it it as a the HN gestalt doesn’t mean that it’s not a straw man. You can’t take the union of everyone’s food dislikes and say “according to the Earth gestalt, no food is edible.”

Sure you can. They are not trying to make the point that no food is edible, they are trying to make a point that depending on who you ask, you will end up hearing that any and every type of food is inedible. I get what they are saying. If you read the comment threads here on interview experiences, you're going to encounter groups that dislike or want to forbid every kind of technical screening technique. It's easy to…

That’s not the point they are are making at all. They further expanded on this by talking about the straw man hacker news user who doesn’t think they should have to do anything to get hired.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#250

Post by hotpotamus »

conformist wrote: post #229
jerf wrote: post #76

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…

Somewhat off-topic: I'm a native German speaker and I'm really struggling to understand what "Gestalt" is supposed to mean in contemporary English usage. Like, "Zeitgeist" seems to be used like I would in German (although far more frequently). What am I missing? Is there some subtle difference in meaning via Yiddish or similar?

In contemporary American English (the only language I claim to be somewhat familiar with), they mean the exact same thing - I would say a sort of collective, unspoken understanding of a subject. English is kind of a crazy language I think.
Post reply on HN