Take-home interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Take-home interviews

#101

Post by nsfyn55 » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

seansmccullough wrote: post #91

nsfyn55 wrote: post #48

Take home interviews are a great indicator of a company's hubris. "Its so awesome to work here people are going to jump at the chance to do my 3 hour homework assignment". The problem with them is fundamental: "You will only get someone desperate enough to take your exam." If the person is qualified they will be swimming in opportunities and will likely throw your exam directly in the trash heap. If they aren't you p…

Ya I totally agree. Especially if a candidate already has a job, and is just casually looking, there is no way they will spend the time.

Also its more than a little disingenuous on the part of the company. It communicates "my time is more valuable than yours . Go do this thing async so if you don't work out I don't have to waste resources on you." It also drives a perverse incentive on the part of the interviewing organization. The only resources you've spent is the time to send them the test if you are unmotivated or are having second thoughts you don't even have to look at the candidates work. But the candidate might spend hours on this thing.

I prefer an interview system where the company and the candidate both care. Commitment is a requirement for everyone.

Re: Take-home interviews

#102

Post by bbcbasic » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:33 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #50

bbcbasic wrote: post #43

Software developers huh! What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with no syllabus. No 'past papers' etc. I think this should stop. In it's place, developers can have a pet open-source project, which they submit with their application. The point is that the same project can be submitted for a hundred applications if needed, savin…

Many other fields require competency tests. What other field requires you to do a potentially unbounded amount of free work in the open and give it away to everybody? Not everybody has any major projects on Github. The lack thereof does not signal lack of programming aptitude. If somebody has done a lot of great work, but it was all for employers and clients, that doesn't mean they would do poor work for you if you w…

Licensing should be up to the candidate, and it could be commercially licensed and not available to everybody.

You shouldn't have to write a OS Kernel or a modern browser in your spare time either. I'd say it would be about 4-8 hours work that shows off your skills.

But if you prefer to spend that same time on some inane made-up problem for one employer and code something that you will wont enjoy writing and never use again, then as I said in another reply that there should be the option for that too.

> Many other fields require competency tests

Is there a field that requires 4-8hr competency tests where each test is wildly different from the previous, with completely opaque criteria. At least with the provide your own project idea, if the employer has fucked up criteria the candidate has only wasted a few seconds of their time in sending the zip file.

Kind of analogous to 'show me your portfolio' for a photographer. The portfolio should be enough. Unfortunately this is not possible as a developer as the source from your previous jobs is likely to be closed, hence the need for a personal project.

Re: Take-home interviews

#103

Post by dpark » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

bjones22 wrote: post #45

totalrobe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. If you really care about being impartial, maybe have the 2 week period and a blind submission method in which the interviewer does not see when the assignment was completed.

But my rent is due the Friday after next and I need to know if I should send out another wave of resumes. It isn't but it strikes me we are looking very hard to find a new way to do things, when the old way was pretty damn good. Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. If I don't have the social skills to successfully do this (minority issue) I likely would not be able to communicate well with a tea…

> Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes.

This is an efficient way to hire a team of good bullshitters. I've interviewed people who did extremely well when we were "talking like professionals" but were unable to do even very simple coding problems.

My bar for coding is really not that high. I don't expect perfect syntax. I don't pick the language. I don't expect "the one answer". I expect people to write code that could work after syntax and small bugs are fixed, and most critically, I expect people to be able to discuss their code meaningfully.

Unfortunately, "ability to write basic code" and "ability to talk like professionals" are not tightly correlated. And I expect both of these things from dev candidates.

Re: Take-home interviews

#104

Post by balls187 » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

Is there data on the efficacy of non traditional coding interviews vs traditional ones?

I'm all for improving the process, but as someone who at times has struggled on a coding interview, I believe that the onus to improve should be on me the candidate.

Re: Take-home interviews

#105

Post by alanh » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

I hate take-home interviews and rarely finish them. Especially when a candidate has many options or places a high value on actually getting to meet possible future team members (as I do), a two or three-hour assignment take-home assignment is a lot to ask. I would rather get to show previous projects and explain context and what I might do differently now.

Re: Take-home interviews

#106

Post by robspychala » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

From the employees' perspective:

Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer.

You send it over, then the company says no or yes, only to move to new stage.

In the worst case you ruined your weekend and received a no. But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your application.

From the company's perspective:

I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. Not a good indicator at all even with a glowing submission.

Re: Take-home interviews

#107

Post by Udo » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

robspychala wrote: post #106

From the employees' perspective: Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. You send it over, then the company says no or yes, only to move to new stage. In the worst case you ruined your weekend and received a no. But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your…

> I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. Not a good indicator at all even with a glowing submission.

That's why they use the homework as the basis for the interview. In my opinion, of all things they could test you on during the interview, your own work is potentially one of the more pleasant subjects.

Re: Take-home interviews

#108

Post by alanh » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

ammon wrote: post #55

geebee wrote: post #46

I thought Gayle Laakman McDowell, who wrote "Cracking the Coding Interview", wrote a good article about the problems of take-home interviews. http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand... At the core of the problem is that this approach can be used to burn a lot of a candidate's time without an equivalent investment from the company. I've mentioned this before - I applied (maybe 5 years ago) to a co…

This only applies if the take-home interview is obligatory. I agree that obligatory take-home interviews are unfair (I feel the same about trial periods). They work (they're probably more accurate than a standard interview), but they take too much time from the applicant (and will thus scare away many of the best people). As an option, however, I totally disagree. There's a significant percentage of good programmers…

Yes, that is a very good point. Part of being good at hiring is becoming able to work with different kinds of people with different needs and preferences.

Re: Take-home interviews

#109

Post by tomsun » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

robspychala wrote: post #106

From the employees' perspective: Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. You send it over, then the company says no or yes, only to move to new stage. In the worst case you ruined your weekend and received a no. But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your…

Also a lot of the take home interviews are time limited. So you would only have a certain amount of time to implement a solution.

Re: Take-home interviews

#110

Post by matwood » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 9:42 PM UTC

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #22

brianwawok wrote: post #4

Seems good, I like the choice. In discussions on this topic I see a lot of: "Programming on the spot is hard, let people program at home"! But then other people say "Why should I program for free at home, my resume clearly shows I am already a skilled programmer. All this will do is cater to young people without families, or those fresh out of school". I am not looking to hire devs right now, but I am thinking about…

I recently graduated from college and started looking for my first programming jobs. I ran into a ton of these "take home" interviews and they were some of the most stressful things I've ever done. The first one, they asked me to solve an incredibly complex math problem that I had no idea about so I struggled with it for 5 or so hours before giving up. Probably good that they didn't give me the job; if they were expe…

Wow on the take homes. We have given taken homes that are just slightly more advanced than FizzBuzz. The problem would prompt the candidate to setup a basic build system (at the time in java) and then solve a problem using a couple basic patterns like observer and strategy. There was no real time limit other than we will not have you in for an in person interview until it is completed.

Like FizzBuzz I think the take home worked well as another data point. It easily filtered out people who couldn't follow basic instructions, people who were clueless about Java even though their resume said different, and people who simply didn't care. The problem also gave us something to talk about when the candidate came in for the in person interview.

Overall the problem was dead simple for anyone we would actually want to hire.