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a16z Programming Test

hackerrank.com

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Re: a16z Programming Test

#51

Post by abalone »

balajis wrote: post #12
abalone wrote: post #8

I wonder if this could act as a negative filter for good programmers. Who worth their salt is going to invest 3 hours of their time just to submit a resume? Wouldn't you want to talk to the employer first to see if they're a good fit? In a tight labor market, people willing to do this are more desperate than others. So it's going to filter for desperate developers who passed a 3 hour basic skills test. Old fashioned…

Well, empirically we're getting quite a lot of people attempting it! :) Three hours is pretty lenient (you could blaze through it in less time), though the last question is challenging. We think the questions are kind of fun as well. Without something like this we'd just have 100s-1000s of unstructured resumes in different formats to rank against each other. This process is more fair and (IMO) allows someone without…

> Well, empirically we're getting quite a lot of people attempting it!

I think you missed my point. It's that the people submitting to a multi-hour exam just to submit a resume are more desperate / value their time less than those that can stand on their experience.

The fact that there a "quite a lot" of submissions only worsens the probability that the multi-hour effort will be wasted.

Re: a16z Programming Test

#52

Post by dlss »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #10
tpae wrote: post #3

I seriously hope this doesn't become a norm. I hate timed tests.

As an employer, I would seriously hope this does become the norm. If some employers want to implement recruiting processes that require developers to complete tasks that don't reflect real-world development, it makes it that much easier for other employers to differentiate themselves and attract competent developers who aren't interested or desperate enough to play these games. Frankly, in today's market I feel sorry…

This was too awesome a comment to pass up, so I ended up browsing your thread history / googling you. I found a lot of great posts as well as the hilarious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967671... but sadly no real name / business name.

What company do you run? Are you in the Bay Area? Can I buy you coffee? I have a feeling you could teach me things that are both true and that hackernews would downvote... And that there's a reasonable chance I could return the favor.

Background so you can filter me more easily: I'm a very good programmer (7 years experience coding on small teams made of up jQuery core, rails core, and MIT AI Lab alums. Several offers from YC companies. 4 papers & patents. Currently doing machine learning for the Scripps Institute of Oceanography). I'm also an avid reader of psychology (cognitive biases mostly), marketing (Joe Sugarman is amazing), and business books (I'm a raging Munger and Deming fan).

So I'm guessing if we did meet for coffee you at least wouldn't find it boring.

Email me? dls@lithp.org

Re: a16z Programming Test

#53

Post by nostromo »

numair wrote: post #34

This doesn't quite make sense to me. Or, it makes sense, but not for the reasons presented on the surface. If you're Andreesen Horowitz, you have access to a nearly-unlimited supply of capital. You also have incredible access to information and dealflow throughout the industry. In situations in which you are not capital constrained, the most efficient way to establish a workforce is to acquire it from somewhere else;…

I think you're reading too much into this. Sometimes a programming test is just a programming test.

If I were to guess, they're building an internal dashboard and DWH to crunch numbers on their investments (or perhaps potential investments). This test appears to focus on that skill set.

Yeah, they could probably buy a company, but that would be overkill. They're VCs, they're supposed to be selling companies at a premium, not paying premiums. ;)

Re: a16z Programming Test

#54

Post by numair »

gcb0 wrote: post #40
numair wrote: post #34

This doesn't quite make sense to me. Or, it makes sense, but not for the reasons presented on the surface. If you're Andreesen Horowitz, you have access to a nearly-unlimited supply of capital. You also have incredible access to information and dealflow throughout the industry. In situations in which you are not capital constrained, the most efficient way to establish a workforce is to acquire it from somewhere else;…

Rich people are cheap. Why acquihire someone who knows how much they can ask if you can pay close to nothing to that test website (it's a genetic service) and get a clueless buy competent nerd that will be glad to work alone on a project for peanuts? That's why we're poor and they have "unlimited capital"

There are a lot of stupid rich people in this world, it's true. It's also somewhat of a dirty little secret that some of Silicon Valley's most successful VCs are stupid rich people.

The team at Andreesen Horowitz, however, are not among these stupid rich people. If anything, they have disrupted the standard operating procedure among their peers by outsmarting them, and the nature of how they have outsmarted their peers is strongly connected to an appetite for attaching high valuations to small groups of really smart people. Their organizational M.O. has been the exact opposite of bargain-bin talent hunting, which is why this whole Hacker Rank thing comes off so weird to me.

I want to be clear that I don't think A16Z is up to anything evil. Just something sneaky (which is fun!). These are smart people, and for them to publicly engage with the hacker community in this manner is indicative of some sort of really smart hypothesis being tested.

Re: a16z Programming Test

#56

Post by [deleted] »

numair wrote: post #54
gcb0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people are cheap. Why acquihire someone who knows how much they can ask if you can pay close to nothing to that test website (it's a genetic service) and get a clueless buy competent nerd that will be glad to work alone on a project for peanuts? That's why we're poor and they have "unlimited capital"

There are a lot of stupid rich people in this world, it's true. It's also somewhat of a dirty little secret that some of Silicon Valley's most successful VCs are stupid rich people. The team at Andreesen Horowitz, however, are not among these stupid rich people. If anything, they have disrupted the standard operating procedure among their peers by outsmarting them, and the nature of how they have outsmarted their pee…

[deleted]

Re: a16z Programming Test

#57

Post by balajis »

jheriko wrote: post #44

aside from the fact that tests generally don't work i find this hilarious. "the most important requirement is significant independent programming experience as demonstrated by your GitHub account" a great way to find newbie hipsters and not experienced and seasoned devs. or at least limiting yourself to one community

Hmm. In all fairness, the full quote is:

  A BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or the equivalent is nice 
  to have, but the most important requirement is significant 
  independent programming experience as demonstrated by your 
  GitHub account, personal projects, academic publications, 
  or startup success. Your accomplishments are much more 
  important than your paper credentials.

Re: a16z Programming Test

#58

Post by balajis »

numair wrote: post #34

This doesn't quite make sense to me. Or, it makes sense, but not for the reasons presented on the surface. If you're Andreesen Horowitz, you have access to a nearly-unlimited supply of capital. You also have incredible access to information and dealflow throughout the industry. In situations in which you are not capital constrained, the most efficient way to establish a workforce is to acquire it from somewhere else;…

:) I assure you that we are going to be hiring engineers through this process.

Re: a16z Programming Test

#59

Post by neil_s »

nilsbunger wrote: post #2

Cool, but... Why is A16z building an engineering team?

My guess would be a team to provide a data-centric approach to investment. Crunch a whole lot of numbers to identify industry trends and specific firms that are promising, and see if those can replicate human performance.

Or they're simply handling recruitment for a stealth portfolio startup.

Re: a16z Programming Test

#60

Post by ig1 »

dang wrote: post #29

HN policy for years has been to allow two kinds of job ad: (1) job posts by YC startups, and (2) the Who's Hiring threads. We kill job ads that are neither of these. (Incidentally, PG designed the /jobs posts to be the one privilege that YC startups get on HN. Other than that, the site policy is to treat them the same way as everybody else.) It's not uncommon for posts to be in a grey area between job ad and story. A…

Can an actual list of policies be posted somewhere ? - I don't ever recall there ever being a discussion of such a policy before. Certainly there have been highly voted non-HN job posts in the past (e.g. Khan Academy)
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