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Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

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Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#271

Post by ebrenes »

jacalata wrote: post #258
NAFV_P wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"filter out (gently fire) the ones that aren't as good." If the employee finds out you "hire more than you need of the top performers", you end up with a potential court case. If I found this out about a former employer, I would have pursued them to the end of hell.

how is that breaking any law?

IANAL, and I'm just taking a stab in the dark here... But might it have to do with the work contract not being made in good faith?

That is in my basic understanding of contracts it is assumed as part of the contract that there is good will between both parties to fulfill what is set out in the contract. Practices such as these would indicate that the company has no actual intention of hiring the employee and is using the hire as an additional filter.

I suppose if the contract stipulated that there was a trial period or some such it might be a way to wiggle out of it. From a quick google search it seems you can either sue for Fraud (they advertised a permanent position and that wasn't the case, or they didn't make it explicit that the position was temporary) or Breach of Contract if they didn't specify that you were in a trial period.

Would love to hear from someone with better grasp of the situation.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#272

Post by tokenadult »

rhizome wrote: post #248
tokenadult wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The currency of upvotes suggests that many readers have appreciated my comment, perhaps because it provided them new information about an important set of issues. That set of issues has been discussed in many of the comments here, and was discussed in the original article. The currency of actual cash money, which is not provided in our information-sharing environment here on Hacker News, would free up time for me to…

Quite the glib and misanthropic response, not to mention the value you measure is based upon imagination and a strawman. If you're not interested in engaging the community except in terms of price, why participate? Most of the time one's hopes are not as valuable outside that person's head as they are inside.

Thank you for letting me know your opinion.

If you're not interested in engaging the community except in terms of price, why participate?

I was interested in sharing information, did, was evidently appreciated for sharing the information, but also still criticized for how I did so. Fine. But I will go on sharing information here in a manner that fits my work schedule and other personal responsibilities. If all I dislike about somebody's comment is the MANNER in which it was written, when the content is accurate and helpful, my own style is not to complain about that.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#273

Post by LukeShu »

jacalata wrote: post #258
NAFV_P wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"filter out (gently fire) the ones that aren't as good." If the employee finds out you "hire more than you need of the top performers", you end up with a potential court case. If I found this out about a former employer, I would have pursued them to the end of hell.

how is that breaking any law?

I can't provide any specific laws, but the general objection is that they were hired in bad faith. If I hire 15 people with the intention of firing 5 of them (and don't tell them that), that's a dick move. I misrepresented their opportunity at my company.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#274

Post by pmiller2 »

pjungwir wrote: post #213
tokenadult wrote: post #150

There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. Company hiring procedures and their effectiveness is a heavily researched topic, but most hiring managers and most job applicants haven't looked up much of the research. After reading the blog post kindly submitted here and some of its comments, and then reading most of the comments here on HN that came in while I was asleep in my time zone, it lo…

After reading the OP I immediately thought of your standard hiring advice and wondered if the folks asking math questions aren't on the right track after all. (Thank you for your persistence posting it, btw.) At least half of my daily work requires learning new things on-the-fly, and I bet in 5 years most of my technical knowledge is turned over anyway--except the math and CS fundamentals. In programming aptitude mat…

Are you hiring now? ;) Contact me if so.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#275

Post by wpietri »

tommorris wrote: post #120

Here's the test I've used in the past: Before the interview, I ask them to write some code to access an HTTP endpoint that contains exchange rate data (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY etc.) in XML and to parse and load said data into a relational database. Then to build a very simple HTML form based front-end that lets you input a currency and convert it into another currency. I ask them to send me either a link to a repository (…

I'm with you on this. I always do pair programming interviews when I'm hiring. People may be able to bullshit me when I'm asking questions about their resume, but they cannot fool me, the compiler, and the unit tests when we're coding together.

Smartness is great, I like smart. But I agree that it's probably the fifth- or sixth-highest-weight factor in my list.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#276

Post by wpietri »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #181
alinajaf wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked him why the PHP code he sent me didn't have any comments. "I don't believe in comments because they slow the PHP interpreter down." Sorry, he can be smarter than Einstein but I ain't letting him near production code. This one wasn't smarter than Einstein. It's been a while since I've been near a live PHP installation, but IIRC running with an opcode cache like APC probably means the comments will be parsed…

This true - but without the opcode cache the slowdown would be minimal since all the comments are ignored. Plus, the comments are there for future developers to use as a reference. Nothing worse than having something break, cracking open a file and have to spend hours having to untie someone else's code. I'd rather have copious amounts of comments, then a minimal speed gain due to not having them at all.

Amen, brother. As Martin Fowler writes, "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."

If Mr. not-Einstein had actually measured some production issue that could be traced back to commenting, he could always have written a filter that stripped them before production. My guess, though, is even he didn't believe this excuse; it was just a glib thing to say in hopes of wiggling out of trouble for being a negligent coder.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#277

Post by wpietri »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #186
jaredmcateer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some bizzare reason, a lot of P̶H̶P̶ devs obsess over mini benchmarks and tiny speed issues while ignoring massive latency factors (like the DB). This sort of behaviour isn't unique to PHP Devs, not even close.

True. Reminds me of all the roadies (road cyclists) who would come into our bike shop and demand the lightest components to put on their bikes, then rave about how they cut 10 GRAMS off of their bike weight. Totally ignoring the fact they're pushing almost 220lbs themselves.

Hah! I have this discussion every time somebody tries to upsell me at the bike shop. I tell them that if I'm going to try to take 5 pounds off the me+bike combo, I'm not starting with the bike.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#278

Post by anigbrowl »

tokenadult wrote: post #237
bradleyjg wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems awfully rude to cut and paste this gigantic comment, which is now virtually pinned to the top of a discussion thread of a blog post to which it barely responds. There's nothing in this that indicates it is at all customized for the article it is attached to. Especially given that you and the author seem to have some things in common (connection to small-town Minnesota & love of mathematics) it seems like you…

The currency of upvotes suggests that many readers have appreciated my comment, perhaps because it provided them new information about an important set of issues. That set of issues has been discussed in many of the comments here, and was discussed in the original article. The currency of actual cash money, which is not provided in our information-sharing environment here on Hacker News, would free up time for me to…

A comment of this size that's not specific to the article might be better hosted on a blog and incorporated by reference, or a link to the previous discussion on HN. It's great material, but I have to agree with the GP that you post substantially the same comment every few months. It does rather swamp other contributions while being somewhat generic.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#279

Post by gridspy »

axc123 wrote: post #249
mcphilip wrote: post #74

After much experimentation giving interviews for server side positions, I've come to favor questions that involve routine real world problems that can be handled in increasingly sophisticated ways. One example I use is getting the candidate to write crud, list, and search controller actions for a simple category data structure. Given a basic category data model (e.g. Name, Parent), the candidate starts with the crud…

I am not able to understand any of the questions because the jargon used is unfamiliar although the concepts look simple. Are all these terms specific to a particular framework ? Genuine question, thanks.

No, from what I see they are not. CRUD relates to "Create, Remove, Update, Delete" which is the most common set of actions when dealing with database records.

Then the GP goes into detail about a tree-like structure of categories and their parents. If you're not familiar with trees and graph algorithms this might be quite daunting.

Do some googling on the terms I mentioned and please ask about specific things you do not understand.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#280

Post by tommorris »

wpietri wrote: post #276
at-fates-hands wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This true - but without the opcode cache the slowdown would be minimal since all the comments are ignored. Plus, the comments are there for future developers to use as a reference. Nothing worse than having something break, cracking open a file and have to spend hours having to untie someone else's code. I'd rather have copious amounts of comments, then a minimal speed gain due to not having them at all.

Amen, brother. As Martin Fowler writes, "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." If Mr. not-Einstein had actually measured some production issue that could be traced back to commenting, he could always have written a filter that stripped them before production. My guess, though, is even he didn't believe this excuse; it was just a glib thing to…

That's the thing: if he'd said "I was cranking this code out quickly, but, yes, it could do with some comments", I'd have been fine with that. The excuse is worse than what he's trying to excuse!
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