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An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

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Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#101

Post by sleepychu »

nine_k wrote: post #41

> unnatural conditions including (1) time limits, (2) forbidding research on Wikipedia or StackOverflow, (3) forbidding collaboration, and (4) forbidding the use of libraries The above indeed does not make sense, unless you're hiring a solve-puzzles-as-sports person. I don't think it's enforced by HackerRank, though. It must be the employer's requirement. If so, their hiring process does have problems.

I think this is enforced by HackerRank, colleague recently griped that they couldn't set the time limit higher or get rid of the messages forbidding x,y,z.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#102

Post by bitL »

Arubis wrote: post #88
bitL wrote: post #82

Many recruitment agencies won't even talk to you until you pass some FizzBuzz test on HackerRank or similar. Even Facebook strongly suggest you to take their own training based off similar platform and Google does something similar. So it seems that even entry level jobs these days require Googlesque excellence just to get your foot in the door. It's similar to law firms requiring you to take parts of bar exam during…

If "Googlesque excellence" is passing FizzBuzz then I am severely undercompensated.

FizzBuzz is a bit of understatement, most of those tests are alike once you practice a bit and sink into trivial category; some companies actually give you way more difficult questions than what you get at Google/FB etc. and after you pass that terror then present you with an offer where you don't know if you have to laugh or cry. I haven't seen a single company doing that outside top 5 to compensate you properly for it. Everybody wants the best, everybody thinks they are the next Google (well, they are far from it), and everybody thinks coders are stupid and don't value their craft (which they don't it seems).

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#103

Post by ElatedOwl »

jzwinck wrote: post #66
ElatedOwl wrote: post #31

As someone responsible for hiring developers, these quizzes seem like an absolute waste of time. As an applicant it's almost insulting. I've been a part of two great alternatives: a pair programming session with the lead dev and adding some features/refactoring a sample project. I'd be curious if anyone here is responsible for hiring devs and finds hackerrank type tests useful.

I am responsible for hiring developers, and I do find online programming tests very useful. They serve as a relatively simple early-stage screen for applications from people we've never met. Ours costs each candidate 1-2 hours. But we do not require cover letters, which in the good old days might have taken about half that time, and been thrown in the bin. Some may think no CS graduate would fail a test that let you…

If you don't mind sharing, what size company and how often do you hire devs?

>Some may think no CS graduate would fail a test that let you choose any popular language to implement some basic string parsing.

I don't see anything wrong with basic screeners like that, but I have experienced some really silly stuff. Recently I was given a test that asked ~10 questions (some trivia, some paragraph type response), a few small simple questions (reverse a string, etc.), create a class to handle card games (poker, blackjack, etc.), and create a user repository... in 30 minutes. I felt like a dog at a dog show.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#104

Post by swampangel »

tty7 wrote: post #64
chii wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a homogenous culture of a large corporation, where each dev is a cog in the system, yes, i would agree that this person will not fit. If i had a start-up, i would definitely give this person a good old try, because i can tell that he/she is capable enough to churn out rather advanced projects with complexity higher than just CRUD. Programmers of this type is what i'd call 10x, and one should never dismiss a 10x!

I would be even more hesitant to hire for a startup! can this person grow with the startup? what happens when we have 10, 20, 30+ engineers - how will they work with the team - will they second guess everything? will everything be an argument? I'm not doubting this persons ability - I'm only responding my opinion of this person based solely on this email.

I might agree if the author hadn't clearly listed their (very reasonable) objections to HackerRank near the start of the email.

I wish I had more teammates who could write as effectively.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#105

Post by s3nnyy »

Programmer and owner of a technical recruitment agency here. I forked and rewrote the whole thing: https://gist.github.com/iwangu/b0d8b8e140afdd4e30bb7e401babc.... I made it more generic so more people can use it and removed things that make no sense to me as a recruiter. Also, I deleted all the patronizing parts and made the English simpler. If you start quoting authors and even think I am going to read articles linked in footnotes, you're wrong. I think many HR people will just ignore you if you e-mail this. They won't want to talk to you because you signal that you will be hard to work with and you clearly don't value time of others. Your e-mail is way too long. Seven paragraphs with bullet-points, are you kidding? RIGHT NOW, I have 197 other e-mail conversations in my inbox that are easier to read than this essay.

This is one of the things where just shoot yourself in the foot by being too demanding too early in the process. (You can be demanding ONLY AFTER they told you that they want to hire you, but not before)

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#106

Post by iabacu »

chii wrote: post #30
tty7 wrote: post #8

You want a personalized interview, styled exactly for you ? I would be a 'no' if i were interviewing me. You obviously can program but this makes you appear to be someone who would be difficult to work with.

For a homogenous culture of a large corporation, where each dev is a cog in the system, yes, i would agree that this person will not fit. If i had a start-up, i would definitely give this person a good old try, because i can tell that he/she is capable enough to churn out rather advanced projects with complexity higher than just CRUD. Programmers of this type is what i'd call 10x, and one should never dismiss a 10x!

I expect a 10x to be effective, and to know when to pick a fight or not.

In this case, it definitively shows a bent for the innovative and smarts, but shows lack of judgement / wisdom.

For a 10x, merely completing the test is a lot faster and more effective than trying to go change the process from the outside.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#107

Post by iwangulenko »

Programmer and owner of a technical recruitment agency here. I forked and rewrote the thing to make it more appealing to recruiters: https://gist.github.com/iwangu/b0d8b8e140afdd4e30bb7e401babc... I mainly removed things that sound patronising to me.

I think many HR people will just ignore you if you e-mail what OP posted. Once, I wrote a blogpost why programmers don't get jobs due to random factors ("Why software engineers don’t get jobs: Four horror stories" https://goo.gl/v4PUWV), but being patronising and "explaining programming to HR" is one of the things where you just shoot yourself in the foot by being too demanding too early in the process. You can be demanding ONLY AFTER they told you that they want to hire you, but not before.

A tip for e-mailing HR and business e-mails in general: Try to never signal that you will be hard to work with. Always be kind and even a little bit submissive. Don't try to teach people something, don't quote authors and don't do footnotes. Imagine the person will take a maximum of 3 seconds per paragraph and 10 seconds in total to read your e-mail. There is a chance the reader is listening to an audiobook or is watching Youtube while answering e-mails in a cubicle. If you need to discuss something critical, invite the person for a phone call. Salary, negotiating or deviating from a standard process (like here) should be discussed in person/in a call.

Hope that helps to get some insight from "the other side".

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#108

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

nilkn wrote: post #67
fredley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...If "Tells me when I'm doing something in a way that could potentially be improved, in a polite, validated way" falls under your definition of "Difficult to work with", then perhaps he wouldn't want to work with you anyway. However if you want to hire people to just complete tickets as fast as possible, maybe that's a valid reason to reject the candidate.

"Difficult to work with" is perhaps too harsh a statement. But the candidate is asking for a completely custom treatment at the earliest possible stage of the interview process. The candidate is also assuming that the interviewers aren't aware of the caveats mentioned about standard coding screens/HackerRank exercises. The candidate's proposal also doesn't mirror real-world conditions, because I doubt the job consist…

You're asking the same of the candidate, though. You want them to write a unique solution to your silly puzzle tailored to your company. It's a two-way street.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#110

Post by gedy »

mpetrovich wrote: post #58

From both sides as a hiring manager and candidate, I’ve found that a take-home coding challenge that’s tailored to the company is a far better indicator of fit. With a tailored take-home, the company has a chance to evaluate candidates based on more realistic, holistic challenges than “solve this academic comp sci problem that you won’t actually encounter on the job”. And candidates can get a better sense of the type…

I very much agree after adding similar at my last company, it was a great way to screen the best-fit hires. Ironically the on-site recruiters didn't like it because it gave better results than their phone screens.
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