I really think these unpaid home assignments are just to rule out people with kids. You are expecting people wake up, get kids ready, work a 8+ hour day, commute (?), pick up kids, feed kids, and then after all of this be functional for some assignment that realistically has nothing to do the job I am applying for since it has been water down to fit into a "small" time frame.
Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
261–270 of 470 posts
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#262Up front, ghosting is not okay in general. But, a few counterpoints: It seems very unlikely they expected or wanted it to take you 6 hours. Possible, but certainly an outlier (and obviously bad actor) if so. If they expected you to spent 1.5-2 hours on it - a reasonable amount of time IMO - but when got it back you clearly spent an entire day working on it, that's enough to fail because you didn't follow the directio…
> “…software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing.” FYI—Graphic Designers have been “bent out of shape” over spec work in hiring for ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_work
LeetCode is not spec work.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#263According 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 real issue here that nobody talks about: there are just too many people wanting to become programmers. And I mean this in the most sincere way: we need to understand most developers aren't seeking to do programming for intrinsic fun or to create something that helps other people, they do them to earn a livable wage. Programming jobs are the only type of technical job left that actually pays shit (well enough to b…
>Programming jobs are the only type of technical job left that actually pays shit (well enough to buy a house and start a family),
Meh, in the Midwest plenty of jobs pay enough for that, 6-figure tech jobs put you at 3-4x the median income (31k here in Indiana), but plenty of other jobs absolutely pay enough to buy a house (teaching - my wife makes just shy of double median income as a high school teacher, nursing, law enforcement, fire fighting, all sorts of trades, etc).
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#264In order to get a $40k/year job, no. (This isn't your case) In order to get a $250k/yr job, probably yes.
Putting an hour limit on them makes sense.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except they aren’t. Most working engineers don’t even bother with a PE. Think of all the marketing, sales, Human Resources jobs etc…
To me, PE means either pulmonary embolism or private equity (and I have a hard time trying to decide with one I'd rather have to deal with). Which is to say there are too many initialisms these days and I have no idea what you mean even in context, and I wish people would take the time to write out words.
I understand, but it also shows your (in)competence.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. The popularity of coding bootcamps is another factor. Software engineers don't like the concept of formal credentials. Fine. But you'll have to demonstrate your skills at one of the interview stages. Or we could create something like the American Academy of Software Engineers, or the Society of Software Engineers, or the Software Engineering Institute, which would be tasked with accrediting schools and programs…
The vast majority of working engineers don’t bother with PE certifications.
But most of them do have to pass the FE to work under the title of engineer. Simply graduating isn’t usually enough.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#267According 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…
> I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts.
Shirley, you jest.
Doctors are asked to perform "demo surgeries," all the time.
Lawyers are asked to argue "demo cases" in court all the time.
Social workers are expected to help patients through trauma, in "demo therapy sessions," all the time.
CEOs are asked to do "demo IPOs," all the time.
CPAs are asked to do "demo audits," all the time.
In case no one realizes, that was all a joke. Of course, none of these happen, IRL.
I can see people with no track record (like just coming out of school), needing to do this kind of thing, but, once we have some accomplishments under our belts, we can have some track record.
Some of us may even have significant portfolios. Mine is so complete, that you can easily tell what I can (and can't) do, without ever even contacting me.
Designers live and die by their portfolios. Any first-time designer is expected to have a portfolio to show the prospective employer. Once the designer has been working for a while, they can point to their track record.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#268I've had the same experience. Submitted a working code test and crickets. I left it up on my GitHub named "{company name} coding test" and a couple of months later they asked me to take it down beacuse other people were plagiarizing it. Like them, I was concerned with the legal ramifications of providing any sort of contact, so I took no action and didn't respond.
A baffling response at many levels. Both by the company (isn't this a great signal not to hire someone for their coding ability? Maybe everyone should put up a decoy solution) and the plagiarists (do they think the company hasn't seen the task before?).
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Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#269Everyone's different, but I would happily take 6h of working at my own pace with full access to all of my normal tooling in a low pressure environment over 1-2h of high pressure speed coding using "tools" (web editors...ugh) I'm unfamiliar with. It sucks that you were ghosted, and I would view that more as an indictment on that company rather than the practice of a home assignment. To me there's no easier evaluation of skills you could ask for.
Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>no-one complains about -- a take-home piece of work paid at a reasonable rate. I've seen multiple comments in past HN threads of programmers complaining about any after-hours coding homework (even if paid) because "they have kids and don't have time or energy for that" . Probably the only suggested interview method that gets the fewest complaints from candidates is the "let's have a casual chat and just shoot the br…
I think there is a big middle ground between no skill assessments/casual chat and onerous skill assessments that gatekeep the profession to those that can spend hours of their own time after-hours, one that the vast majority of devs interviewing likely fall into.
Hiring managers need to actually spend time constructing a process that has questions (and if needed, exercises) that specifically determine whether a candidate has the specific skills needed for the job at hand. But that is actually fairly hard to do right, and it's easy to just grab some semi-random "take home exercise" and hand it off and call it a proper assessment. A proper technical interview will have increasingly specific questions that will both assess skill level and a person's ability to communicate with the team. If there is an exercise, it should reflect the specific skills the person will be expected to use in the job at hand. And bonus points for flexibly adjusting between in-person or take-home depending on the interviewee's strengths and wishes in that regard.