Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

Post by macksd » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #230

macksd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically describing HackerRank, and I've worked with some pretty terrible engineers who were very proud of their HackerRank credentials. Write such a test. Give it to all the engineers whose work you know well, and see if it can accurately predict what they brought to your team. I would be very surprised if you could both spot good talent and dead weights reliably.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be better than the tech part of the current interview system. I very much doubt that whiteboard interviews can accurately predict what people bring to a team; they're not even designed to assess that. This system wouldn't replace the personality interviews, etc., but only measure technical abilities.

Post by hawk_ » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 7:37 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #365

yCombLinks wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting fired from a job when you are providing for a family is a very precarious situation to be in. You're family is put at risk when you are fired.

I was tring to give hawk_ the benefit of the doubt by not assuming that's what was meant, because it seems like a very bizarre concern to me, given that hawk_ was talking about "incompetent people". Incompetent people put their own families at risk by trying to work in an industry where they're incompetent. It's not the responsibility of employers in that industry to provide for the families of people who can't do th…

Post by xboxnolifes » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

wikfwikf wrote: post #108

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…

'The HN gestalt' seems to mean that you have taken comments by completely different people with different preferences and synthesized them as though they were all said by the same person?

Post by mariusor » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #408

risyachka wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most devs have a shit ton of projects, code etc to show. This is way more than enough to estimate skill level and bypass leetcode memorization performances and 90% of other tech elements of interview. Corps basically just offload this work on the candidate as this is obviously cheaper and more convenient, instead of spending time and looking into his profile.

>Most devs have a shit ton of projects, code etc to show. I question how true that is. In any case, GitHub as resume basically tells applicants that if you don't work in open source for your day job and don't have the time/inclination to do coding as a hobby, don't bother applying. Which is going to be pretty discriminatory against a number of demographics. It's fine if someone wants to show off some project, but it…

Post by antisthenes » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #228

morelisp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We put a shibboleth in our test for this reason, there's ~20 solutions up on GitHub and 80% of them are wrong. Feel free to copy them, it makes it so much easier for me to grade.

you're also filtering out people with the skills but who don't want to do bs unpaid busy-work for you (maybe what you're after). ethical action goes both ways