Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days • Hacker News Board

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#211

Post by fsk » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 2:51 AM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #190

fsk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are those people getting CS degrees? Shouldn't they get flunked out? When schools allow students to do coding projects in groups, it's possible to graduate with ZERO ability, provided you can find someone competent to partner with.

Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying, I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Having a CS degree does not guarantee programming competence. Some people get CS degrees who shouldn't get CS degrees. Some students probably should get flunked out who don't flunk out. Some students graduate from perfectly fine colleges with good grades but zero ability. It happens, hence fizzbuzz. Some people are just naturally good…

Why are universities graduating people who can't pass programming 101? Why are they so grossly negligent? They diluted the value of my degree, by graduating too many clueless people.

I did lots of problem sets, homework, and coding projects in school. Why do I have to do it again FOR EACH JOB INTERVIEW? Especially since the projects are usually less on-topic than the ones I did in school.

I.e., I do a homework project for a class, and if I don't get an A, I usually get a reason why not. I do a coding interview project, it goes into a black hole and I never hear from them again.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#212

Post by bbcbasic » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 3:11 AM UTC

tomtang0514 wrote: post #120

geebee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this once. After a take home quiz that took about an hour, I had a 6-7 hour "homework" problem. I did it, and sent it in. It took the company a month to get back to me, though I did stay in contact with the recruiter. The final answer, delivered by the recruiter, was "we've decided not to more forward at this time." No other feedback. I have no idea if anyone even looked at it - I never did speak to a dev at th…

I've seen several companies giving out such homework to me or my friends back in college. And to be honest, none of the are among the "great culture company list" people are talking about. Beside all the issues you mentioned above, those tests don't have a clear PASS line. You spent hours on that and can be rejected for no reason. Back in college I've done a code challenge from Box and my solution ranked No.1 in thei…

I have had an interview where both the (x * 8) and (x << 3) would have been frowned upon, for using a "magic number".

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#213

Post by dj_doh » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 3:19 AM UTC

I've had mixed reaction to this take home exercise. I've done that some 4 times and 3 of them resulted in getting called in for an onsite (Amazon). If problem is interesting and there's something to learn. I tend to go for it. But couple of them were lame. Neither it was a good use of my time, nor it was an indicative of my skills.

In near future, I'll be requesting exercises that can be treated and used as a micro library. They are free to use it and I get to post it on github.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#214

Post by brudgers » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 3:22 AM UTC

Retra wrote: post #195

brudgers wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgeons are not number 10 heating oil commodities. The difference in quality between one surgeon and the next matters when it comes to an operation's outcome. Likewise - and this is the gist of my comment - licensing software engineers might raise the minimum bar, but it won't make hiring any easier because licensing doesn't establish relevant expertise or pertinent experience. Obstetricians not thoracic surgeons ar…

What do you mean licensing doesn't establish experience or expertise? That depends entirely on what you use to qualify people for licenses. Naturally, you won't hire a heart surgeon to do a brain transplant, but then you don't have a generic "surgeon" license, you have separate "brain surgeon" or "heart surgeon" licenses. You get a Cesarean from someone licensed to do it, and that won't be a thoracic surgeon. And it…

Again the license means a person is minimally qualified. It doesn't mean they are good at whatever they are licensed to do. As a licensed architect in real life, I am minimally qualified under the law to design a State Penitentiary. I lack the experience and expertise [and inclination] to do it well in accord with contemporary standards...i.e I'm not qualified to do that type of project beyond a general legal minimum for practicing architecture.

So when there's a new penitentiary in the works, there's an RFQ for design services.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#215

Post by technofiend » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 3:55 AM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #201

technofiend wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience last year applying for a major technology company. Although I still lightly code in the devops sense (process automation) and to do typical management data analysis my day job is managing people, processes and crises. If you have billion dollar trading systems and need a cool-headed guy who can talk to VPs or directors in one breath and SAs, DBAs, SAN, Network, etc guys in the next I'm your…

> at some point you have to rely on technical people to do their jobs. On one hand, I totally agree that technical tasks should be left to the technical people, preferably those who are actually working on the system. There's almost nothing worse than a manager trying to take technical decisions out of people's hands. > Am I wrong to think if I'm going to manage a 60-100 person organization across three timezones I d…

I hear you about having enough technical ability to understand what's going on and make sensible decisions. Certainly in a role like that and the one I have now a mix of technical and positional authority are required.

But at what point does it become ludicrous? When your CIO is yelling "No, No! You have to enable the EPEL repo or you'll patch to the wrong version!"?

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#216

Post by hadees » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 4:04 AM UTC

dfan wrote: post #99

protonfish wrote: post #6

It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…

My last company had a screening coding problem that was designed to take around a day (although it didn't have to; when I did it as a reference point, it took a couple of hours). I was always kind of astonished how many applicants were willing to do the whole thing, given, as you say, that they often already had a full-time job and/or were applying for multiple positions. We always gave really extensive feedback on i…

If you gave me a coding assignment that would take a day to complete I just wouldn't do it and move on to the next company. I want to work for a company that respects my time and knows that my code is worth money. A couple hours is all I would ever do.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#217

Post by oliverc2 » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 4:17 AM UTC

Another approach: http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-tester...

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#218

Post by fillskills » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 5:19 AM UTC

There are different kinds of jobs and different kinds of work environments. Grouping all of the situations together and trying to find just a single way of interviewing people flies in face of diversity in human nature. While this research is great and startups in this field are doing well, I see this huge gap that no one so far is trying to address.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#219

Post by developer1 » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 5:28 AM UTC

crdb wrote: post #204

geebee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this once. After a take home quiz that took about an hour, I had a 6-7 hour "homework" problem. I did it, and sent it in. It took the company a month to get back to me, though I did stay in contact with the recruiter. The final answer, delivered by the recruiter, was "we've decided not to more forward at this time." No other feedback. I have no idea if anyone even looked at it - I never did speak to a dev at th…

"these tests allow the company to burn a lot of a candidate's time, but not the other way around " Oh yes the other way around. At a previous employer, two of us took 3 full time months to review over 100 qualified candidates (i.e. that returned the task) to make 10 offers. We made an offer to anybody who met our standards - whilst management initially restricted our headcount, they allowed us to expand the team as g…

> the main restriction ended up being the maximum salary we were allowed to offer (which had us have to give up on half a dozen candidates)

Ugh. I've been in a similar position, assisting with pouring over candidates. The worst part about salary being the limiting factor is you've quite literally wasted your time weeding through the poor candidates to find the honest-to-goodness best to hire - only to not be allowed to have the cream of the crop. It's ridiculous how much time some companies are willing to invest in finding the best talent, only to turn them down because of an extra $10-30k/year. If you're not willing to hire the talent, don't spend the time searching for them. Just post your job ads with your salary expectations, and accept the first people through the door if that's how you're going to operate.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#220

Post by wyclif » Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

fsk wrote: post #211

mwfunk wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying, I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Having a CS degree does not guarantee programming competence. Some people get CS degrees who shouldn't get CS degrees. Some students probably should get flunked out who don't flunk out. Some students graduate from perfectly fine colleges with good grades but zero ability. It happens, hence fizzbuzz. Some people are just naturally good…

Why are universities graduating people who can't pass programming 101? Why are they so grossly negligent? They diluted the value of my degree, by graduating too many clueless people. I did lots of problem sets, homework, and coding projects in school. Why do I have to do it again FOR EACH JOB INTERVIEW? Especially since the projects are usually less on-topic than the ones I did in school. I.e., I do a homework projec…

I think it's because CS and software development are different things with some overlap if you Venn diagrammed it. It doesn't necessarily mean the university is negligent or incompetent. It means that what constitutes the content of a good CS education doesn't map to in-the-trenches software development. It also probably means the schools reward and incentivize different things than a software development firm does.