Earlier quoted context omitted.
Name and shame. This is disgusting.
May be an NDA issue
What kind of NDA prohibits mentioning the company name and the fact that no offer was extended?
Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
171–179 of 179 posts
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Where are you from? In the US, nobody even knows about side jobs unless you tell them.
In the US most companies have some sort of "non-moonlighting" condition(s) as part of their employee agreement. If they found out you could get in trouble, depending on the situation.
Yeah, I had one find out once. I got a "talking to" by a VP, early in my career, about my outside activities and promised to wind down the side work. I had told a coworker about all the extra cash I was bringing in. I didn't actually wind down anything though. The VP got moved to a different job, and I eventually left a couple years later anyway.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#173Ok, so let's summarize: no homework assignments, no whiteboard interviews, no "trick" questions, no "personality fit" questions, no work-sample exercises (could be interpreted as unpaid work), no relying on credentials. How are we supposed to hire anyone ?
How about "here is our simple sample project and documentation, please study them and during interview we will fix a few simple books and discuss how to implement a bigger change or how to refactor the existing code". Fair for both sides and much more closer to actual work setting.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps, but totally unenforceable... It's a non-issue. Developers are not slaves, and you cannot prevent them from doing outside work while looking for other jobs.
I totally agree, but I also think it's unprofessional behaviour to ask or expect someone to break the terms of an existing contract. Especially at the start of a new business relationship where building trust is really important.
I've had people submit code samples from their existing employer, with copyrights, "do not disclose" notices, and everything. I thought that was a red flag...
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder where they're getting those numbers from, as I didn't spend anywhere near that long preparing o_O If it was rephrased as "successful candidates will have spent an average of 10-15 hours writing code over the past week" (ie, just working your regular day job counts as "preparation", since you're flexing your coding muscles), that sounds more believable...
If what they meant, then they’re not saying anything meaningful. Anyone working full time as a software engineer who isn’t slacking off to an unimaginable extent is spending 10-15 hours writing code in the course of a week.
For software engineering positions I'd expect you're right - for my own role (production engineering) it's a meaningful metric as we're often hiring sysadmins who have used their coding skills to automate themselves out of a job, while filtering out the sysadmins who have only ever used off-the-shelf tools without looking under the hood :)
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really think that all technical interview questions should be "open-book". Whether that's doing a homework assignment or simply telling the candidate what technical issues to study up on for the whiteboard. For the brief stint that I did interviewing, I had candidates whiteboard after doing a homework assignment, but all I had them do was step through the very algorithm they had implemented in the homework using a…
Why not go all the way and make it “open internet”? Literally googling stuff takes up a substantial portion of any software engineer’s day. I would seriously doubt anyone who says otherwise.
I agree, though in context I assumed that using the internet was implied by my statement.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
May be an NDA issue
What kind of NDA prohibits mentioning the company name and the fact that no offer was extended?
Shitty ones that many devs might sign anyway (i'll admit to not thoroughly reading the NDA's i've signed when interviewing at big companies)
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#178Ok, so let's summarize: no homework assignments, no whiteboard interviews, no "trick" questions, no "personality fit" questions, no work-sample exercises (could be interpreted as unpaid work), no relying on credentials. How are we supposed to hire anyone ?
You could ask them about their experience and let them talk about the challenges that they have faced and maybe some of the things that they are proud of having accomplished / coded.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is clear: homework is the best approach from the perspective of company time. That this practice is widespread should be interpreted as a lopsided labor market with a glut of supply (workers) and limited demand (companies).
The insight regarding supply and demand in the job market did occur to me, but I still think companies have an ethical responsibility to respect applicants' time and effort. In particular, time should be taken for a thorough and objective review of every single "homework assignment" that is given out, and the company should attach an appropriate weight to it as a hiring signal. e.g. If my thousand lines of code are b…
I'd argue that any company who'd judge me based on the colour of my tie, or (hypothetically) the Pride entry wristband I forgot to take off -- is probably not one I'd want to work at long-term.
(Experience bears this out, though I didn't find out until much later into my tenure)
I think of jobs more in terms of relationships -- if we don't mesh, if we don't get on, then neither party will get value from the relationship and it's better to find out sooner than later.