Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Take-home interviews

blog.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 295 posts

Re: Take-home interviews

#121

Post by Harj »

joesmo wrote: post #111

So you do the test, but you're not guaranteed a position even if your code is amazing. Hell, in my experience you're not even guaranteed anyone will read it. This is just a bad idea in an industry full of irresponsible employers. I'm not saying that Triplebyte is in any way irresponsible, but the rest of the industry has already ruined this avenue.

Triplebyte co-founder here. We understand how frustrating it'd be to spend time on a project and then have no one read it, we won't be doing that. In our process, you schedule a time to talk with us about the code you've written. We'll go through it together and provide feedback.

We're not replacing talking to another person part of the interview, we're just trying to remove the awkwardness of having someone watch you code (for those programmers who want it).

Re: Take-home interviews

#122

Post by qwibbler »

sandworm101 wrote: post #75

But do you want someone who cannot handle an interview? Perhaps take-home testing works if you want a "code monkey" who can sit in a box churning out code according to specifications, but I cannot think of a company that doesn't want more. The ability to interact with others in sometimes stressful environments is, imho, an essential skill for all. There is also the danger that companies will turn these "tests" into w…

It seems as part of the take home that you spend 45 minutes discussing your implementation and defending your choices in person with the interviewer. This is a much more realistic "on the job" stressor than being able to code out loud / on a white board.

Re: Take-home interviews

#123

Post by joesmo »

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…

After three tries with this process, I've decided that "never" is too soon:

1x Take-home test didn't even get read (this was the nail in the coffin) 1x The interview failed because the salary wasn't competitive (should have asked beforehand about the salary, but didn't have the option; lesson learned) 1x Got an in person interview which led to an offer which was later rescinded (the trip was nice, so I'm not complaining)

Employers in this industry are just not responsible enough to even read through hours worth of work by prospective employees, so while a good idea on paper, the take-home test is a horrible idea in practice. Never again, indeed.

Re: Take-home interviews

#124

Post by danieltillett »

twright0 wrote: post #31
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…

> Offer $500 as a 1099 contractor to complete the assignment within the next 2 weeks or so. Just as an aside, I would actually be more willing to undertake this type of interview if you weren't paying me. I don't have any ethical qualms about interviewing while working a full-time engineering job, but I'm not entirely comfortable taking a contracting job under the table. It may be something of a symbolic gesture give…

Wouldn’t the solution be to ask the company to pay your favourite charity instead?

Re: Take-home interviews

#125

Post by Udo »

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…

> The problem with them is fundamental: "You will only get someone desperate enough to take your exam."

Lots of people do poorly in whiteboard situations. As an employer, you may assert that you don't want any of them, fine. But I don't see the problem in giving people the option of using an alternative testing process.

Re: Take-home interviews

#126

Post by matwood »

bbcbasic wrote: post #92
Nacraile wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 As far as I can tell, essentially all of them. Of course, many of them have no practical way to even attempt to assess competence, so they fall back on "situational" and "culture fit" bullshit. > I think this should stop. In it's place, developers c…

> Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work? Get them to talk about it in the interview > Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time... Not really - in one weekend you probably can create something interesting and good enough for showing off to an employer. Also it will probably draw you in and you spend mo…

Even trivial code is fine on Github. All I look for is that someone can actually write a bit of code, and a GH repo helps me quickly asses otherwise I have to do more digging. I've interviewed entirely too many people who are clueless and leave me wondering how they have ever had a job writing software.

> For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code.

In fact a great personal GH repo could be to implement FizzBuzz in a bunch of different languages. I think most companies would get an appreciate the joke.

Re: Take-home interviews

#127

Post by burger_moon »

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…

After doing a handful of these and rejecting several handful of these tests I'd like to add a little to you comment.

I agree that the time it takes is always muchuch longer than what they state.

Companies that offer these tests before doing an initial phone screen get that email deleted. Why would I as an applicant who is applying to 10+ jobs spend time doing this test when I have never even had a chance to interact with a human.

The tests are sometimes not even close to the actual job. As in the job description is for a front end developer and JavaScript knowledge needed and they ask you to write the test using a completely different language. one company (who adversities jobs on here all the time) asked to do some php command line scripting for a JavaScript front end position. How is that in anyway a useful judgement of someone's skills. So wasting people's time is a big deliminator.

An example of a company I experienced that did the take home 'right' did an initial phone screen a couple days after applying. Then did another tech screen which was just basic stuff. After that they asked me to do a take home exercise and while completing it they continued to move forward with the application process including setting up travel arrangements. The take home test was directly related to the job and was given open ended for some creativity if one chose. The onsite final interview was discussing the code, so it would do little good to cheat on it because you need to be able to talk through it.

I didn't even get the job with them but it was actually not a painful experience for once to do a take home test.

Just my two cents, but I believe there is a good way and a terrible way to do it.

Re: Take-home interviews

#128

Post by alain94040 »

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…

> Offer $500 as a 1099 contractor to complete the assignment within the next 2 weeks or so.

I like this, not for the money, but because it guarantees that the company is not giving this assignment to 100 different candidates ($500 x 100 is getting prohibitive for a hiring budget). I'm more willing to put the effort if I know I'm one of the "finalists" for the position.

Re: Take-home interviews

#129

Post by mixmastamyk »

jasonlotito wrote: post #59
giaour wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can snap a picture of a filled board with your cell phone.

And you put the picture in version control?

Not often, but I've taken a handwritten diagram and converted it to paths in inkscape, andd cleaned it up a bit.

The resulting svg or png can be then added to the docs folder of a project. Works well with sphinx, etc.

Re: Take-home interviews

#130

Post by [deleted] »

VLM wrote: post #70
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…

Software devs have extremely low social status, despite pretty good pay. Honestly I'm glad they don't watch "Survivor" and make us eat bugs or do weird obstacle courses. Seriously. You treat people like dirt, they're gonna resent it and complain on HN and some Stockholm Syndrome victims will back up the abusers. Another example of the low social status is those horrible open offices, like a call center. Ugh. Another…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN