351–360 of 470 posts
I'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.
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I do think that take home tasks are the best way to hire somebody (or letting somebody bring their existing, recent code and talk about that). At the same time, I think companies should pay applications if this take home task takes more than 1-2 hours. I'm not saying you need to pay a lot, I think it's more a symbolic gesture of respect. Those costs are negligible for a company compared to the money and resources the…
I'd challenge you to consider that take home tasks are better for some interviewees, but others would do better to have that task done as part of the interview (in-person, video). Offering an option (maybe even ahead of time) allows the individual to play to their strengths and situation, and properly designed (and with good questions/exercises to ensure people who are just good interviewees don't BS their way throug…
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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 candi…
>I think there is a big middle ground between no skill assessments/casual chat and onerous skill assessments [...] Hiring managers need to actually spend time constructing a process that has questions (and if needed, exercises) The problem is you're using your own perspective of "reasonable middle ground" and thinking that other candidates would agree with you. Many would not. Here's an example of "you shouldn't have…
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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…
> I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts. I think it has to do with people the weird phenomenon of people that are working as "programmers" that don't know how to program. I've seen a few. I've seen people write C on their resume and I gave them an hour for an easy assignment with the language of their choice, and they couldn't even get anything to compile.…
This absolutely isn't unique to software. There's plenty of incompetent workers in other fields, like construction workers, bureaucrats, pretty much anything.
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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…
> 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 "d…
My fiancee is a high school guidance counselor, and she essentially did a demo session with some current students during her interview.
I don't like the situation we are in, but I think your examples actually help illustrate why things are the way they are: we don't have a gating mechanism into our field. Most of your other examples do.
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>I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts. Because nearly every other industry is credentialed, so proving your 3-8 years of university grind is enough to get hired. Outside of tech, any other white collar interview is basically a 15-60 minute coffee or lunch with the boss (the culture fit interview basically) and then, unless you showed some red flags, you g…
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…
Local governments impose licensing requirements on some professions. This is not something the professions just voluntarily impose on themselves. (If they did impose it on themselves, there might even be antitrust problems as a result.) This is mainly (or at least purportedly) for the protection of public health and safety, not to make it easier on potential employers interviewing job candidates.
It actually has nothing to do with job interviews, because every such professional needs a license in order to practice their profession, even if the professional is a self-employed entrepreneur.
So to be clear, when someone asks for software engineer licensing, in effect what they're asking is for local governments to regulate the ability to practice software development, even for self-employed programmers.
And then you can expect a visit from the government software inspector.
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I'd challenge you to consider that take home tasks are better for some interviewees, but others would do better to have that task done as part of the interview (in-person, video). Offering an option (maybe even ahead of time) allows the individual to play to their strengths and situation, and properly designed (and with good questions/exercises to ensure people who are just good interviewees don't BS their way throug…
Sure, why not offer an option. But I'm convinced that take home tasks are generally better because that's much closer to the way you actually work as a programmer. People who don't get nervous during live coding might like take home tasks because it's more of a time sink, but I'd wager that they still do good on them.
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> 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 "d…
Doctors, lawyers and CPAs are instructive examples, as they have far stricter credentialing than software engineers. Doctors probably being the most strict, lawyers next, then CPAs. Particularly with doctors, the total amount is tightly controlled by the number of seats in medical schools. My fiancee is a high school guidance counselor, and she essentially did a demo session with some current students during her inte…
Teachers also have fairly strict licensing and educational requirements (and get paid squat).
I know a lot of finance people. These are not the most stable or reliable people on Earth, but they have to pass their Series 7s, in order to work. They tend to be kind of a scruffy lot, otherwise, but they make a lot of money.
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>Take-home assignment That's fine, pay me. >pair-programming Again, that's fine, pay me. >go through an existing project of theirs, discuss it, and extend it together The SaaS's I own and operate are closed-source and I'm not looking to take on any contractors at this time, but I'll let you know if anything opens up.
Think about the systemic problems that would arise if it were customary to pay applicants for the interview. You'd immediately have application farms spamming out fake resumes. They'd bomb the actual interview but collect $100+ each time.
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Good luck hiring and then firing incompentent people (and there are many such "programmers") at scale. At least by making interviews hard you're not putting families at risk which you would by hiring people to fire them with pretty high odds.
> you're not putting families at risk which you would by hiring people to fire them with pretty high odds. I'm not sure what you mean by putting families at risk?