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Number 2: No One Believes Anyone Can Actually Code It's surprising to see the number of people who interview for lead technical roles that cannot code, or whose work is exceptionally sloppy. Incompetence is more commonplace than the author believes, even at the highest level.
Unless you meant “lead software engineering role” in which case yes, you are right.
Last twice I've looked for a developer job, I got offered a position and was hired within 2 weeks.
> No one believes that anyone can actually code.
Quite rightly, most devs can't code.
> Extensive homework is now normal. Not been my experience, I've done some homework assignments but none were ever more than 1 hours work (and then even the standard of the tests were so low they were really 15 mins work..)
> You’ll never really know why you weren’t hired.
This bothers me too.
> Outsourced hiring “services” are very much in vogue
I hate this. Almost all recruiting I see is done via recruiters who are at best case flakey and worst case self serving liars who will try to pressure you into going to interviews you don't want to go and to take job offers you don't want to take. Sometimes flat out lying to you about the role only for you to find out at the interview. I had one interview that I went to expecting it to be C#, the interview was all Javascript (which I don't do at all). Or the recruiter will tell you that you have to decide right now this minute, when you don't.
I had one job offer where the recruiter said you've been offered the job but you have to tell them now if you are accepting it. It was funny how after telling the recruiter that I want to think about it over the weekend and if that's not an option than I would like to decline the offer, well now all of a sudden the company were completely willing to let me think over it for a couple of days...
I hate recruiters.
Weird thing. JobHound Sign Up Works, but the login link takes out of outside the page.
So the author is complaining about coding tests and being doubted for knowing how to code... yet converted 15 technicals into only 2 onsites.
Part of the problem is that companies keep getting more applicants than they can handle, no matter how hostile their interview process becomes.
> When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying? That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. Everybody who's ever hired engineers knows from experience that a simple Fizzbuzz test is still, unfortunately, a very usable candidate filter. A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out?
What do they do on their 'real work'?
"does it work? no."
>googling...
>copy code block
"does it work? kinda..."
>googling...
Add to the hurdles:
* Salary negotiation
* Contract review/negotiation
* Reference check
* Background check
* Getting a work visa
There's still lots of work to do once you complete the onsite interview!
> When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying? That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. Everybody who's ever hired engineers knows from experience that a simple Fizzbuzz test is still, unfortunately, a very usable candidate filter. A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out?
> When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying? That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. Everybody who's ever hired engineers knows from experience that a simple Fizzbuzz test is still, unfortunately, a very usable candidate filter. A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out?
It was in a language that I had been using for 5+ years at that point, using a framework that I had just finished architecting a whole application for, had multiple open-source projects in, and the challenge itself was something that I genuinely felt should have been extremely easy, but I miserably bombed it.
I'm almost positive to them I looked like a giant fraud, and to be honest I felt like one too, but after some thinking I really feel that it was just a bad day combined with being uncomfortable without my editor/tools that I use in my day-to-day job that ended with me getting stuck and failing horribly.
I don't know a perfect solution, but when I was later in a position to hire new devs, I avoided coding challenges because of that experience. I feel that you can get MUCH more insight into a developer by just having them talk about what they have done, go into details about problems that they solved, or how they would approach problem X without any writing of code anywhere except maybe some drawings on a whiteboard if necessary.
Coding Challenges to me test 50% "knowing the syntax and not making mistakes" and 50% "knowing how to solve the problem". We have tools and compilers and linters and syntax highlighting and good editors to solve the former in most cases, it's the latter that I'm looking for in a good developer, so why would I use a test that evaluates both of them equally?
> Number 1: It Takes Longer than Ever to Get Hired Last twice I've looked for a developer job, I got offered a position and was hired within 2 weeks. > No one believes that anyone can actually code. Quite rightly, most devs can't code. > Extensive homework is now normal. Not been my experience, I've done some homework assignments but none were ever more than 1 hours work (and then even the standard of the tests were…