121–130 of 524 posts
I like Jeff Atwoods approach[0], hire the candidate for a short project (2-3 weeks) let the candidate a feel for the product and team while getting paid. And at the same time let the team get to know the candidate. I would love to go through a hiring process like that :) [0] http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-hire-the-best-just-like-ever...
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No former employer is going to say "this guy can't program, don't hire him" for fear of getting sued. Co-workers might be friends who are covering for you, or just genuinely have no idea of your actual ability. Taking up hours of a candidate's time is excessive, but it seems reasonable to ask for some demonstration of your ability, when so many candidates simply cannot code.
> Taking up hours of a candidate's time is excessive, but it seems reasonable to ask for some demonstration of your ability, when so many candidates simply cannot code. So why not simply ask technical questions during an interview? I'd think you'd be able to determine whether or not someone know what he is talking about by simply asking him a few questions on the matter.
A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…
> ... and even told me he thought I was a better programmer than him. Probably that's exactly why you were ignored. The guy was scared of competition. (Maybe they were looking for a tech lead and he felt threatened by your expertise.)
When we hire, after a few phone interviews we give the programmer an in person coding exercise that is very basic. Open a file and parse data, etc... They can use the internet. It's very basic. 80% of the candidates cannot do that. I'm not exaggerating. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it's pretty astonishing to me.
Sure, you would think that would be a trivial task for a professional coder. But it is amazing how much you can accomplish without ever having to do anything other than model some data, write some business logic and security around it, and build a front end. Frameworks FTW. The downside is that they don't know how to code without the frameworks.
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Right with you buddy. I no longer accept coding challenges or even interviews that go over 30 min. I tell them my services are $150/hour. If you want me to do a 4-8 hour exercise for the privilege of interviewing further then make it worth my time...just like any other consulting gig I do.
I should add that no company has taken me up on my offer. I'm too busy with work to care anyway.
But asking to be paid during the interview seems too much, even though you could have spent 3 days of your life, traveling each way plus the interview day.
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> For a company like Google Inc who is more selecitve than Harvard University Nitpick, but I'd love to see a citation on that. Google, like every technology company on the planet (modulo a small error value) goes to great lengths to recruit and hires lots and lots of people.
See my previous footnote about them receiving 1 million resumes to fill 1,000 slots. If that's true, it is more selective than any Ivy League university. Here's another one showing 75,000 resumes received in one week : http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-gets-record-75... When you have the luxury to pick the best, from the best of the best, you don't have to follow the advice given by HN armchair quarterbac…
And engineer headcount costs are a huge component of their business --- so much so that they've been accused of breaking the law to collude with other companies to avoid competition in hiring!
Google is succeeding in spite of the waste and unreliability of their hiring processes, not because of them.
I like Jeff Atwoods approach[0], hire the candidate for a short project (2-3 weeks) let the candidate a feel for the product and team while getting paid. And at the same time let the team get to know the candidate. I would love to go through a hiring process like that :) [0] http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-hire-the-best-just-like-ever...
A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…
I would have asked them to look at that code and ask me any question they have about it. If they are not willing to do that I wouldn't have bothered continuing the conversation with them.
> the mid 20-something lead developer
Okay I am going to do something I don't like to do which is judge somebody on their age but a "lead developer" at around 25? Sorry but unless that person is some rockstar programmer (conceived with a copy of K&R in the womb) I find it very hard to believe somebody 3-4 years out of uni has the experience to be a "lead" at very much.
> told me he thought I was a better programmer than him.
Well that is something I guess, at least he didn't think he was God's gift to the programming world!
> Now, what do you suppose happened next? I never heard from them again and all of my attempts at communication were ignored.
Yes drives me insane. It is so fucking rude.
> I'm starting to think my age is becoming a factor (mid 30s)
Could be, hopefully not but a company that puts a mid-20-something as the "lead" developer might only be interested in getting young and therefore cheap employees.
> and also these kids have no sense of respect and professional courtesy.
Very true. That is partly why I don't think a mid-20s person can be a "lead" for much as they don't have the professional experience to lead. A lead developer isn't just a great programmer but also a great leader. Somebody for the regular staff to look up to and rely on for mentorship.
> I'd like to say this was an isolated incident, but that would be a lie.
It happens to us all. Some companies (IT and other) are shit. It is just the way of the world. Don't dwell on it too much, it is just more mental energy wasted and they already wasted a whole Saturday of your life yet were not even respectful enough to call and say "you were great but we prefer this other person". I mostly hate having that conversation (giving and receiving) but it has to be done, it is about respecting that persons time and even though you are not offering them a job you can offer them feedback so they do not walk away from the process empty handed. Sometimes that feedback is all they need to better themselves in the future.
> Stupid me just spent his Saturday doing another such project, though at least this one presented a more interesting problem.
Live and learn. In the future if you already have demonstrations of your work then ask them to look at that first and if they want to continue the process then you look at doing something specific for them. At least you seem to have found a small positive from it in that the problem was interesting :)
> The fact that so many employers treat candidates like this tells me that the whole "it's hard to find good developers" line is a lie.
A lot of the problems with finding a good dev is just finding a good employee for the company as a whole. You might have a good developer who is an asshole and will only cause issues.
Anyway just move on and forget about them. It is cliché relationship advice but you deserve better than them.
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> (ie, work sample tests), I do not understand why any tech company does developer hiring in any other way. Because every method of hiring has its own biases and tradeoffs. Requiring work samples biases against programmers who aren't interested in doing a "homework assignment". For example, I don't enjoy whiteboard interviews but I'd rather write some fragments in front of the interviewer and "think out loud" instead…
The "no homework" thing is such a red herring. Companies that do work samples minimize on-site coding interviews , because the whole point of offsite work sample testing is that most candidates can't provide an accurate picture of their aptitude in an on-site coding interview. No interviewing software developer prefers an extra 6 hours of on-site interview to an off-site coding challenge. The problem developers have…
Sure, Google/Microsoft have the legendary "6 hour" marathon interviews with multiple teams with lunch in the middle but for smaller scale of companies, they don't have bandwidth to mess around with all-day interviews. It's ~2 hours. In this thread, it shows I'm not the only one who prefers onsite whiteboard over homework projects so the "no developer prefers" claim is too absolutist.
>The problem developers have with "homework problems" is really a problem with bullshit companies that won't provide timely feedback on their submission.
Regardless if the feedback is received within 10 minutes or 10 days of submission, if I apply to 4 companies, I don't want to do 4 homework projects. I simply don't. At least with 4 onsite interviews, I see glimpses of the office and meet the interviewers.
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I, for one, am tired of processes that don't respect my time.
Would you rather Some Co. just hire you and try you out for a few months simply based on your resume?
The way a company signals their respect for my time is by either compensating me for the time I spent on them instead of literally anything else, or by demonstrating that they are spending an equivalent amount of time on me rather than anything else.
If I am doing a project that takes me 8 hours, that company should either be writing me a check (for somewhere between $100 and $500, probably) or planning the mother of all individual sales pitches to convince me to not just work there, but also to go the entire distance through their interview process.
No company has ever done this for me. Every last one of them has expected the candidates to spend as much of their own time (and even money) as necessary. Several (all of them in Denver, possibly by coincidence) have even reneged on paying travel expenses. Tyler Tech in Lakewood, CO, tried to get out of paying for my hotel room, declined to spring for a rental car, and remains to this day the most hostile interview I have ever suffered through.