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The Hiring Post

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Re: The Hiring Post

#101

Post by dripton »

tptacek wrote: post #95
dripton wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I recently had two productive phone screens, as a candidate. The first one taught me a bit about the company and team, and gave me a good impression of the interviewer (the hiring manager), which then led to me doing a work sample. (Without the phone screen I don't know if I would have sunk several hours into the work sample.) I ended up getting an offer but not taking it. The second one also gave me a good impr…

There's a semantic gap getting in the way between us. Phone calls with candidates: very good. See "Warm up candidates" in the post we're commenting on for my thoughts about that. A phone screen is a call whose purpose is to select out candidates. It's a call whose outcome can be "stop talking to this developer". They're very common, and I think uniformly evil.

Understood. I know that at least my second example was a phone screen: if that interviewer didn't like me, the interviewing process would have ended.

I don't know how you avoid that. If you have 1000 candidates per open position, you probably can't afford to do in-person interviews with all of them, or even all the ones with decent-looking resumes. What's the alternative to phone screens? An automated remote work sample system, maybe?

Re: The Hiring Post

#102

Post by geebee »

bsdpython wrote: post #89

My biggest issue with the work sample tests is the companies that waste your time with them. I've had 3 cases over the years where I was asked to work on something, I did it quickly, with quality and exceeded the specs and I was still turned down at that point (I confirmed that the code was good in at least 2 of the cases). As a senior technical person at this point in my career I simply have very little stomach for…

Same for me. I did a 6-7 hour homework project. I have no idea how I did, the company didn't get back to me for a month, and then it was just a call from a recruiter. Never again.

Re: The Hiring Post

#103

Post by fitzwatermellow »

spacemaus wrote: post #86
fitzwatermellow wrote: post #55

So, who feels like building a cloud based "work-sample tests" platform with me?

Funny, last week I wrote some notes about doing just this :). It would be hard to build a general purpose platform, but I think if it focused on just replacing the initial technical phone screen, it could be both reliable and useful. There's a common set of skills that most any software engineer should have. I think those skills can probably be checked via a web tool, and in higher fidelity than you can get over the…

I envision something akin to the http pipeline in a web app the is composed of several "microservices".

One stage of the pipeline is left intentionally out. The candidate then is required to build an actual service. They can use any language they want. Even any cloud host they choose. All that's provided is the entry points, exit points, wire protocol, data encoding, and the spec to be implemented. After passing that, advanced topics like logging, telemetry and performance provide grounds for further discussion to assess development "philosophy".

But the real genius would be selling this work-sample platform-as-a-service to enterprise customers. Who could be prompted into building a catalog of microservices based upon their APIs and real data. And out of that hopefully some innovative, hackathon-esque mini-products could arise ;)

I definitely never thought I would become an "HR guy". But I really like this idea. Will include a contact email in my profile if anyone is interested in discussing it further off HN as well...

Re: The Hiring Post

#104

Post by dropit_sphere »

MichaelGG wrote: post #96
dropit_sphere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't at all . Yeah, sure, I can buzz your fizz with my eyes closed in brainfuck. But that's just measuring language facility. The real tests are more topical, and more complex: is there a way to make this code run faster? There are two types of good candidates that will get that question: 1) the kind who have run into the problem before and know the answer stone cold, and tell you instantly 2) the kind that have n…

What about kind 3, the ones that can derive the solution from scratch, in their heads? I thought that was the point of most of those questions. Like "given two linked lists, what's the fastest way to determine if they share any nodes (not values, but actual nodes)"? MS gave me that one in a phone screen and I'd never written a linked list before. But if you actually know what a linked list is, this should be simple f…

> But if you actually know what a linked list is, this should be simple for you to derive relatively quickly (not Googling for a day).

Actually I think this is the worst kind of question to ask, because it measures: can the candidate code under pressure? Not "we need to get this done by launch/before client meeting" pressure, but right now pressure.

If a company wants literal coding ninjas who can reason about computation while in the middle of lightsaber battles, sure. But in the much more likely event that they're hiring people to sit for days on end and work on a large project, then this is an unnecessary obstacle.

Re: The Hiring Post

#105

Post by bootload »

cableshaft wrote: post #60
msoad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you get the job? I have the interview next week. :S

No, they passed, but invited me to apply again in a year and a half. That was a couple years ago, and their recruiters have started emailing again, so I guess I didn't do too terrible. When they told me they passed they also told me that "some people get passed the first time and then study for the next 18 months and do amazing the next time!" and I just don't have the time for that. I already worked myself half to d…

"... I already worked myself half to death in my twenties for two startups, I'm not going to study for a test as a second job for a year just to get a job at Google, although I still think it'd be fun and clearly challenging. ..."

What's "good for google" right?

@cableshaft how would you rate @tptacek s observations on hiring with what you observed at google?

Re: The Hiring Post

#106

Post by tptacek »

dripton wrote: post #101
tptacek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a semantic gap getting in the way between us. Phone calls with candidates: very good. See "Warm up candidates" in the post we're commenting on for my thoughts about that. A phone screen is a call whose purpose is to select out candidates. It's a call whose outcome can be "stop talking to this developer". They're very common, and I think uniformly evil.

Understood. I know that at least my second example was a phone screen: if that interviewer didn't like me, the interviewing process would have ended. I don't know how you avoid that. If you have 1000 candidates per open position, you probably can't afford to do in-person interviews with all of them, or even all the ones with decent-looking resumes. What's the alternative to phone screens? An automated remote work sam…

The whole point of work-sample tests is to minimize time wasted on subjective interviews, and to collect objective facts instead. You definitely don't want to do thousands of in-person interviews! Interviews are terrible.

Re: The Hiring Post

#107

Post by Micaiah_Chang »

tptacek wrote: post #27

Author. I can talk in a pretty good amount of detail about how exactly our process worked, if anyone has any questions. And, to head off a concern a reviewer gave me: from 1997-2005, I was a full-time software developer; I shipped shrink-wrap boxed software on Windows and Unix in the 1990s, then appliances deployed at tier 1 ISPs. I'm a "software person" more than a "security person".

Have you ever read The Checklist Manifesto[0]? I may be reading too much into this post, but the lessons you learned from this interview process have frighteningly close parallels to the lessons in the books. I doubt the book had any influence on your interview process, seeing as it was published after the interviews were formalized, but the book seems like it might have new lessons.

For example, a good portion of doctors absolutely hated using checklists. Yet, when pressed, readily admitted that it prevents simple mistakes and that they would prefer to have them rather than not to. Another is that entries that address more human concerns, e.g. "Have everyone introduce themselves", have a place on good checklists.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/d...

Re: The Hiring Post

#108

Post by vehementi »

MichaelGG wrote: post #91
avalaunch wrote: post #80

The same kind of process works for pure dev jobs. So, you’re a Rails shop? Take a Rails application you’ve actually built and deployed. Carve out some functional areas from the application: remove the search feature, or the customer order updater. Bundle up the app with all its assets, so that a single “vagrant up” gives a candidate an app that runs. Have them add back the feature you removed. How would you compensat…

It sounds like the candidate gets to do this at their own pace, from home. If so, a good dev shouldn't have trouble learning enough Ruby/Rails to figure this out.

How then do you control for time pressure?

Re: The Hiring Post

#109

Post by [deleted] »

bsdpython wrote: post #89

My biggest issue with the work sample tests is the companies that waste your time with them. I've had 3 cases over the years where I was asked to work on something, I did it quickly, with quality and exceeded the specs and I was still turned down at that point (I confirmed that the code was good in at least 2 of the cases). As a senior technical person at this point in my career I simply have very little stomach for…

[deleted]

Re: The Hiring Post

#110

Post by korethr »

Reading this, I am filled with both hope and dread.

The hope that as more companies figure this out, there will be more and more companies with interesting, challenging and rewarding work as opposed to companies that are only a paycheck, and as soul-sucking one at that.

The dread is that I would never make the grade at the former kind of company.

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