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

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

countaleph.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 354 posts

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

#291

Post by betenoire »

JanezStupar wrote: post #290
wiredfool wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back when, I did a small study (4 cyclists, 5 reps). The question: Could the rider tell which was heavier between a water bottle filled with lead shot, and one with glass beads. (2.5kg vs ~ 1kg). 1 rider managed to get more than half right. And he was a frame builder riding his own bike.

Not all weight loss on a bike is bad. Sure most road bikes are pretty much light enough. Thus one should prefer an efficient bike over a light one. But there nothing wrong with having light wheels for keeping the rotational and sprung mass as low as possible on a full suspension mountain bike.

And there's nothing wrong with having optimized code. This seems to be a discussion about having the right priorities, not on the virtues of the optimizations themselves.

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

#292

Post by aestra »

morgante wrote: post #53
robryan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if all your most relevant work is owned by previous employers? Restricting hires to people with decent personal projects and/ or extensive open source contributions isn't ideal either.

I'm fine with only hiring people who have done some work outside their workplace. If they're really great at programming, they have the drive to try new things outside work. Indeed, a couple good personal projects is probably the best predictor of skill you could find. (Skill and interest tend to be highly correlated.)

This is crazy stupid and naive.

I like spending time with my friends and family, some of which I have to travel far to see, for one.

I spend 40+ hours a week in front of a computer, when I get a chance to go out in the world, I want to GO OUT.

None of these things don't mean I don't love software (I do) or I'm not interested in it (I am). I just have varied interests.

Disregarding that, I used to work for a Big Nameless Faceless Corporation, and the legalize in employment agreement said basically that because I was a software engineer for them, they owned all the software I wrote while employed, even if I wrote it on my own time and with my own computer.

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

#293

Post by btilly »

LukeShu wrote: post #273
jacalata wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends what you tell them. If you said, "I'm hiring you" and you expected to fire 5, that's a horrible move. But if you told them, "We have a contract for you now, and might have more work later." Now the fact that you're intending to give 10 of them full time jobs is a very nice move!

The difference is not just semantics either. If they have other work already, the odds that they accept your first contract will depend on what you told them at the start.

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

#294

Post by raganwald »

aestra wrote: post #282
ebrenes wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IANAL or a legal scholar. In the US, generally people are employed at will ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment ) which means an employee can be dismissed by an employer for pretty much any reason and an employee can leave their job for any reason, without any notice. There's some exceptions (for example, discrimination) but you're free to take a job in bad faith too.

A job being at-will doesn't affect whether you can offer a job in bad faith. "At will" says you have the right to fire me for any reason. "Bad faith" means you shouldn't offer me the job in the first place unless you mean it. They affect two different actions.

Let's make an extreme example: I interview Anderson, Beth, and Charlee. I like Anderson and Beth, but Beth is a better fit for the team. Charlee is terrible.

Meanwhile, All three are interviewing with my competition. So... I give jobs to Anderson and Beth. I offer Anderson a very good salary just to make sure he doesn't go to the competition. They hire Charlee, and that's a win for me. Now I fire Anderson.

I suggest that if this was my plan all along, I wronged Anderson when I offered him a job in bad faith. I may not have wronged him when I used the "at will" provision to fire him, but I wronged him when I fraudulently offered him a job that I had zero intention of letting him earn the right to keep.

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

#295

Post by crazygringo »

NAFV_P wrote: post #254
mattjaynes wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm this works in my own experience of trial-and-error interviewing over 2000 applicants and hiring over 200 for my clients and myself (since ~2006). Nearly 100% of the applicants were remote, so I think that helped me from falling into traps of poor "traditional" hiring practices. The point of hiring these remote folks was to help accelerate whatever team I was on. It can be a great way to scale your exist…

"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.

Isn't this what the up-or-out policy at major consulting firms and investment banks is all about? I mean, it's not identical, but it's a similar idea. I assume that if sure that if firms like McKinsey are hiring/firing like this, it's not illegal.

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

#296

Post by jasonlotito »

kelnos wrote: post #85
morgante wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with only hiring people who have done some work outside their workplace. If they're really great at programming, they have the drive to try new things outside work. Indeed, a couple good personal projects is probably the best predictor of skill you could find. (Skill and interest tend to be highly correlated.)

I used to believe that as well. Now I'm not so sure, mainly through my own personal experience. For 5.5 years (2004-2009), I was a core developer and maintainer over at Xfce. Over that span of time I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code, perhaps more. I did this in addition to my job, which morphed from engineering project management to programming tasks that I didn't find very challenging. After I left that job,…

Minor nit-pick.

> So I'd easily fail the GitHub test.

The github test isn't about your what you have on github. It's about what code you can show, out in the public. Github just happens to be the common way to do that now.

If a company requires Github specifically, than it's just a stupid company you wouldn't want to work for anyways, so it saves you the trouble.

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

#297

Post by plaguuuuuu »

aestra wrote: post #282
ebrenes wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IANAL or a legal scholar. In the US, generally people are employed at will ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment ) which means an employee can be dismissed by an employer for pretty much any reason and an employee can leave their job for any reason, without any notice. There's some exceptions (for example, discrimination) but you're free to take a job in bad faith too.

In Australia we have strong job protection including unfair dismissal laws which would obviously cover this scenario.

It's part of the balance between keeping a good economy and recognising that jobs aren't just profit generation for employers, but also the means by which people support themselves and their families.

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

#298

Post by jasonlotito »

morgante wrote: post #17
deluxaran wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of IQ tests? Math thinking? Language? Other? These tests are kinda old and don't prove anything besides the fact that the person has a certain level of intelligence but that doesn't mean they can code.

> What kind of IQ tests? Math thinking? Language? Other? Both. They're not perfect, but I'm going to be picky and look for people who can generally reason well (both mathematically and verbally). > but that doesn't mean they can code. That's why you pair it with work samples. The ideal hire would be an impressive GitHub + evidence of intellect. The GitHub shows they have coding chops, while an IQ test usually means t…

I'm curious to know how many employees you currently have.

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

#299

Post by Daniel_Newby »

tokenadult wrote: post #194
danielweber wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just say that education requirements are legally risky? That is brand new to me. I would love it to be true, but I've never encountered it in reality.

Did you just say that education requirements are legally risky? Yes, I did say that. I was surprised to find, upon a close reading of the Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case,[1] that the Supreme Court held in that case that not only was an IQ test an illegal hiring requirement, in the circumstances of that case, but so was a high school diploma requirement. The usual headline description of that case menti…

The Duke Power decision was unconstitutional, and it involved total racial segregation and galling defiance of the courts. It has very little applicability to highly-educated employees, if for no other reason than there are virtually no Africans capable of doing the jobs.

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

#300

Post by rpedela »

chris_mahan wrote: post #261
evacuationdrill wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop sending paychecks, they figure it out eventually.

That is so wrong. They may have performed work for you, and they might not have gotten paid. You open yourself to so much liability it's not funny. A judge would look very unkindly to such practice.

Go watch Office Space.
Post reply on HN