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How to Ace a Phone Screen

engineering.zenefits.com

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Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#11

Post by hobs »

Yhippa wrote: post #8
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree... http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...

This is the kind of stuff that haunts companies when prospective employees are doing research on where to work. Not easy to get rid of either.

Yep, I wouldn't work at a company that was unhappy I didn't drink the koolaid before I even began working there.

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#12

Post by x0x0 »

dvt wrote: post #10
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree... http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...

Came in here to post exactly this. Publicly rescinding an employee offer by a CEO is amateur hour and shows a clear sign of immaturity. Caveat emptor.

If you read the complaint, the potential employee essentially worries that zenefits won't be technically challenging and it won't be a name brand place that opens doors by having it on your resume. And if we're honest, the 2nd bit is definitely important for your career.

A ceo who isn't a prick might have said we understand your concerns: here's [blah blah blah] reasons that our work is more technically challenging than it may appear from the outside or from your limited time interviewing here, and it's a personal and/or company goal to be recognized for the quality of our technical achievements as a peer of google.

I happen to think that zenefits is not particularly technically challenging and is mostly wiring together integrations with 3rd party systems, but I'm open to being wrong. Nonetheless, this might have won them the employee without being a dick.

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#13

Post by untog »

x0x0 wrote: post #5

Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree... http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...

While I agree that the CEO was an idiot there, I also don't have a huge amount of respect for anyone who judges where they work by whether it is a "buzzword like Uber".

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#14

Post by logfromblammo »

The CSS hummingbird is cool. It shows off the awesome ability of the software professional to take a half dozen stupid, illogical constraints and somehow end up with something that works anyway. The problem is that companies would not need to select for this quality if they could avoid imposing stupid, illogical constraints in the first place.

So the obvious followup question I would ask first would have been, "Why did you choose to do this with CSS rather than with a language designed for vector graphics, like SVG?"

Shall we also hire all the other people who can make their cats bark and their dogs meow?

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#16

Post by existencebox »

untog wrote: post #13
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree... http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...

While I agree that the CEO was an idiot there, I also don't have a huge amount of respect for anyone who judges where they work by whether it is a "buzzword like Uber".

I'm going to be unusually blunt here: I don't buy that name recognition isn't part of your equation (even if only a small or subconscious part). I could be totally ass-backwards wrong. You could have a mental discipline to make these sort of decisions in a far more principled fashion than myself or any engineer I've ever met; but that statement makes me set my Bayesian prior where I set it. At the end of the day, we all know that name recognition _is_ a component to how future opportunities may play out, like it or not, and as engineers trained (hopefully) in the art of considering the possible outcomes and impact of our actions, it would be going against our nature to pretend that having "Google" or "Microsoft" on your resume will not open doors.

College is a prime example of this. Why are certain schools (Ivys, primarily) so highly recognized? Do they universally have better programs? Sometimes, sure, but so much of their cache comes exclusively from the institution itself being a signaling mechanism of exclusivity, and as was put, "buzzwordyness".

In my view, it would be irresponsible to NOT consider any potential added value of positions when comparing them. You are not doing a disservice to either company or your own integrity as an engineer as long as the work you do is sound, and to suggest that you should put your own best interests aside because a given metric isn't "tasteful" seems shortsighted. (I do not mean to suggest that hopping companies to ride trends is something to be looked up to, but that when you make a decision, the more data that helps you obtain a positive outcome the better.)

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#17

Post by cyan_atrus »

untog wrote: post #13
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Just make sure not to publicly discuss your deal/doubts about the company or the ceo will tantrum and revoke it. And then, in a bold stand for integrity, edit his answer to remove the offer revokation. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree... http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...

While I agree that the CEO was an idiot there, I also don't have a huge amount of respect for anyone who judges where they work by whether it is a "buzzword like Uber".

it's a kid fresh out of college, though -- how is he supposed to know any better? working for a name brand makes the decision a safer decision; i'd put the onus on those advising him to point out why that's not the best metric for making this decision.

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#18

Post by wf »

Interesting, I didn't know Zenefits did phone screens, they sent me a ~3 hour coding challenge to do over... I can't recall the services name atm.

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#19

Post by puranjay »

mikestew wrote: post #2

I don't think "make a hummingbird with CSS" is really a universal way to ace a phone screen. A more appropriate article title might be "how I aced a phone screen at zenfits.com ".

"How I aced a front-end engineering phone screen at Zenefits.com" more like it

Re: How to Ace a Phone Screen

#20

Post by hellbanner »

JoelSutherland wrote: post #4

This is not really the attitude a company should have when they manage benefits: On the flip side, with so many people contributing code mistakes are bound to happen. That’s normal – after all we’re all just people, and people make mistakes. One thing that I’ve found particularly admirable about our team here is that people own up right away, and strive to fix things as fast as possible. No one wants to ship buggy co…

When working for a devshop a while back, one of our programmers discovered a SQL injection by using some non-alphabet characters in their health insurance password...

We informed them. Never checked to see if it was fixed :)

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