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Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

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Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#131

Post by lewisl9029 »

raverbashing wrote: post #68
nine_k wrote: post #13

Went through this a couple times lately. No pain. And the battery of automated tests helpfully written for you saves a lot of time. If the companies you interview with choose problems you don't find relevant, it may be their fault, not HackerRank's. Or even not a fault: they have to screen out a number of applicants who are good at boasting but can't actually code. You obviously can. It can be a bit boring, bit it ge…

Yes, the test itself is fine, however the issues I've seen: - Hidden tests/metrics that also get evaluated - Companies with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and unrealistic expectation of results This is a test, you don't have the feedback that you have on a company (code reviews/talking to a colleague/better understanding of the conditions/real data tests/etc). Don't expect me to guess your conditions. Also,…

I feel the time limit is usually the most ridiculous part.

I enjoy solving hard problems as much as any other engineer, or I wouldn't be in this field. But if you want to judge me on code quality, expressiveness, architecture, and test coverage, in addition to performance and correctness, you should really give me enough time to review, refactor and test my code to cover all of those criteria. You know, time that any responsible engineer would spend on any piece of code they write before sending it off to production.

If the position does actually involve writing production-ready solutions to hard algorithms problems within ridiculous time limits like 1 hour, let me know beforehand so I have the chance disqualify myself from it, and we can both avoid wasting any more time with each other.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#132

Post by jedmeyers »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #87
ori_b wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that unless you are coding in Java, volatile is not a memory barrier, and both the CPU and compiler may reorder things around them.

Yes - perhaps I should have written that as "volatile AND memory barriers". Either way, worth mentioning, as it's a common misunderstanding. Further complicating matters is the fact that Microsoft's compilers will treat volatile as a memory barrier - for x86 code. But not for ARM! https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj204392.aspx

Same thing might be with jvm. On x86 'concrete machine' volatile might be a memory barrier, but this behavior is not guaranteed by the definitions of Java 'abstract machine'.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#133

Post by spitfire »

thedufer wrote: post #125
spitfire wrote: post #74

I'll post to this thread because this is very relevant for the hiring companies. Hunter and Schmidt did a meta-study of 85 years of research on hiring criteria. [1] There are three attributes you need to select for to identify performing employees in intellectual fields. - General mental ability (Are they generally smart) Use WAIS or if there are artifacts of GMA(Complex work they've done themselves) available use th…

> Using IQ is effectively illegal[2] in the US, so you'll have to find a test that acts as a good proxy. You've posted this before and been called out on it. Please stop spreading misinformation. There is nothing special about IQ tests specifically. Any proxy test will have exactly the same legal ramifications. As long as you can show that the results of that test are relevant to job performance, it is fine. Whether…

Put plainly, the callout and yourself are wrong. To muddy the waters about this may put small companies at risk.

I've spoken with an lawyer about this. There is case law directly concerning IQ tests.

The bar for acceptance to prove the use of IQ in hiring in a discrimination case is unattainable by most software companies. Hence, it is effectively illegal.

NB: I would desperately love to use IQ tests in the US myself. I want to be on your side and use IQ tests, but wouldn't risk my supper for it.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#134

Post by [deleted] »

bunderbunder wrote: post #42
tony wrote: post #31

For their own expedience. It's an employer's market. It costs 2.5k/yr to keep an SO posting up and get thousands of resumes in your inbox. I'd also say a fair share of those in Who's Hiring on HN aren't in dire need of filling seats, but just trying to see how far people with fling themselves through the mazes. Blissfully unaware they're not the only startup and have no way of offering the stability of a large compan…

"Come freelance with us for a week" seems even worse to me. For starters, there is a very small and fairly specific subset of the population that can afford to carve out a whole week for an extended interview, even if you do pay them for their time.

[deleted]

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#136

Post by greenyoda »

0xmohit wrote: post #64
EliRivers wrote: post #11

As an aside, I also dislike hackerrank; for me, it's the sheer ham-fisted ineptitude of some of the alleged learning exercises. Look at this mess: https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/preprocessor-solution This purports to be teaching use of the preprocessor. It's horrific. It's someone's amusing "look at how you can create your own programming language by abusing the preprocessor" mess; fair enough, it's always fun…

One day I'll have to work with people who learned from this (and others like it), and it will be a long painful road to help them unlearn. Quoting from the link you've mentioned: #define add(a, b) a + b I couldn't agree with you more. -- To elaborate: add(1, 8) * add(5, 1) wouldn't yield 9 * 6 = 54, but 1 + 8 * 5 + 1 which is 42. One might say that it's correct, since it's the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life,…

Which is why anyone who has experience programming in C would instead write:

  #define add(a, b) ((a) + (b))

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#137

Post by StreamBright »

Our hiring process uses only homework. We give you a problem to solve, a single Java file to do code review on and some database problems that you have to solve with MongoDB. Based on how well you do we go for a phone interview and if it goes well we bring you in for an onsite interview. I tried HackerRank a while back but it does not give us too much value. The competition going on it can be fun for programmers who like challenges like that but it has almost zero indication how well you are going to do in a production environment working on a mission critical system with a team and where your code is running on any infrastructure. Using it as a hiring tool is fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#138

Post by jsonau »

@OP: You sound almost exactly like me. I have not done any interviews for a bit more than 5 years. I think the what really can be improved is to test us in a more familiar and friendly environment. I have to spend time on handling time-pressure, and fix/adapt with my thinking habits.

## Coding Problems:

I do think coding challenges(algorithmic) has merits, but I think there are two factor that really hinders a interviewee's performances:

- time limit

- require an unfamiliar algorithm

Time limit is obviously needed in a test, but problem solving in real life is never instant unless it's done before. Nevertheless everyone have their own pace. I have to dedicate hours each day to train myself to adjust my brain to act quicker yet calm for these algorithmic questions. Sometimes my initial solution in my mind turns out to be the best, but I discard it. Nevertheless if one is stuck, the time limit just makes it worst. I'm also known to be the slowest in turn-based board game -- I have high win rates though!

## Possible Solution?

* Allow interviewee pick from a pool of equally-difficult-challenges to solve (within a minute or two). This can solves the "obscure algorithm" or "trick" question. This also helps the time-limit problem as the interviewee WILL interpret the question twice in two different VIBES (with and without time pressure)

Even choosing 1 out of 2 would dramatically reduce nervousness and time pressure.

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#139

Post by greenyoda »

jacques_chester wrote: post #46

Here's how I was assessed for my job at Pivotal: 1. I did a simple tech screen (the RPI). 1 hour. My interviewer had a laptop and asked me questions about what to do next in the scenario. 2. Hey, come pair with this engineer on this real code on a real project on a real task. 3. How about lunch? 4. Hey, let's have you pair with this other engineer on real code on a real project on a real task. 5. Get offered a job on…

"Hey, come pair with this engineer on this real code on a real project on a real task."

I don't understand how I could pair-program effectively on a code base that I'm seeing for the first time and don't know the first thing about. What would you expect me to be able to contribute?

Re: Rant HN: I hate hackerrank

#140

Post by maxaf »

eastindex wrote: post #126
maxaf wrote: post #22

I hire engineers for a living, and find intellectually dishonest any interview practice I wouldn't enjoy myself. Paper coding, whiteboard coding, brain teasers, and algorithmic beatdowns are out. Representative take-home work samples and conversational problem solving are in. My candidates are told throughout the process that what we're looking for is a demonstration of how technical collaboration might work if we we…

Full stack engineer here. Are you currently hiring ?

Yes - e-mail address is in my profile. You can also have a look at our careers page. https://canary.is/careers/
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