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We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

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Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#171

Post by irf1 »

GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #158
morelisp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you do you, but it's a total farce to call this paying people for their time. You're paying people who win your little contest, which is what hiring already is before your startup tries to insert itself as a middleman.

I don't see how it isn't fraud to claim that.

did you read the blog post though? :)

Kevin Hale at Wufoo (YC W06) did contract work for a month instead of interviews. Is that not "give candidates real work & pay them for their time"?

Thomas paid every engineer who did a 'Ride Along' (a day on the job with the Cloudthread team) regardless of his final hiring decision, and he did it with a bunch of folks.

Elliot paid every PR he received for his screening bounties on Algora regardless of his final hiring decision.

I think the title for the blog post checks out.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#172

Post by fuzzythinker »

alexyang21 wrote: post #129
d23 wrote: post #110

These are great in theory. In practice, I've regretted the handful of times I've done them. It seems like some companies use this as a way to "waste" less of their interviewers' time. One particular dysfunctional company that everyone here would recognized gave me the feedback: you're one of the candidates out of nearly 200 that did this [7-10 hour take home test] and passed! Then they ghosted me for a month before a…

That's awful! I'm sorry you had to go through that. The intent isn't usually malicious, but some teams (esp larger ones) are really disorganized and don't value candidates' time enough. My team is doing our best to create the "perfect" take-home experience and reduce the frequency of these horror stories.

Sorry to break this to you. If you believe there's "perfect" take-home, you will be wasting your time. The perfect take-home is no take-home. Take-homes may make some sense for engineer with little experience.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#173

Post by Aeolun »

mellavora wrote: post #29
noisenotsignal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this certainly sounds like reasonable criteria for rating a take home, does this truly account for general candidate reluctance to do take homes due to the time commitment? Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, and many may rather use that time to interview with 2-4 companies instead of just one. I recently interviewed with Ramp and enjoyed their model of practical pr…

> Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, Hard disagree on this one. Unless your day-to-day work includes many leetcode style problems, you need to put in significant time training on leetcode if you want to pass the interview. You should be able to complete a take-home based on your current skill set. Yes, it may take 4-6 hours (or 8-10), and yes, that is a big ask of a cand…

I honestly hate spending 4-6 hours of my time on a pointless take-home, but I suck at leetcode and I absolutely refuse to spend any time on learning it, so they’re the lesser of two evils.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#174

Post by Aeolun »

noisenotsignal wrote: post #161
mellavora wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, Hard disagree on this one. Unless your day-to-day work includes many leetcode style problems, you need to put in significant time training on leetcode if you want to pass the interview. You should be able to complete a take-home based on your current skill set. Yes, it may take 4-6 hours (or 8-10), and yes, that is a big ask of a cand…

I hard disagree with your disagree :) 1. Some candidates only need to brush up to be in interview shape. 2. To mitigate the need to spend time to prepare, simply use initial assessments to get back in shape. That is, apply to and interview at companies you don’t want to work at first to get more practice problems. If you pass, you get the added benefit of more leverage when negotiating your compensation! 3. As anothe…

> That is, apply to and interview at companies you don’t want to work at first to get more practice problems.

If you have enormous amounts of time to waste you might as well do a take-home.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#175

Post by itsdrewmiller »

thisiswrongggg wrote: post #156
alexyang21 wrote: post #2

Studies [1] show that a work sample test is the best predictor of candidate performance on the job, which is why many software engineering teams use take-home tests as one step in their hiring process. But designing an effective test is difficult and time-consuming. For example, candidates are reluctant to complete tests that are too long or not engaging enough. But make them too short and teams won’t get the signal…

From the paper you link: "This article summarizes the practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research in personnel selection. On the basis of meta-analytic findings, this article presents the validity of 19 selection procedures for predicting job performance and training performance and the validity of paired combinations of general mental ability (GMA) and the 18 other selection procedures. Overall, t…

Re: 3 - if you read the full paper you'll see that on its own a work sample test has (barely) the highest predictive value (but a lower confidence in that than GMA which is more heavily studied). This quote I think does more to demonstrate that GMA and integrity are less correlated than GMA and work product testing or structured interviews, which is intuitive.

Re: 4 - I'm not sure why you would consider a take home test less valid as a work sample test and then prefer a whiteboard test. Certainly the latter is less representative of real working conditions. (I probably would not want to work in a place where whiteboarding is more representative, at least!)

Your other two points are reasonable threats to validity but I don't think especially strong ones. The research covers many different professions so I think the onus would be on you to explain why software engineering is so different.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#176

Post by porknubbins »

Just a nitpick but when I see engineering without software in front of it I think EE or mech. This is a useful resource I almost skipped over. I realize certain industry segments are probably so steeped in the jargon that its obvious to people on the inside.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#177

Post by porknubbins »

Just a nitpick but when I see engineering without software in front of it I think EE or mech. This is a useful resource I almost skipped over. I realize certain industry segments are probably so steeped in the jargon that its obvious to people on the inside but its not to everyone.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#178

Post by thaumasiotes »

ghaff wrote: post #163
thaumasiotes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can get help of course but that's going to be the case absent effectively a remote proctored assignment. And now you're back to effectively in-person. I would vastly prefer an "in-person" interview in which I wasn't expected to speak to the interviewer to the in-person interviews we actually have. There is a world of difference.

You don't want to ask questions?

Why would I want that?

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#179

Post by bogomipz »

ghaff wrote: post #66
mellavora wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, Hard disagree on this one. Unless your day-to-day work includes many leetcode style problems, you need to put in significant time training on leetcode if you want to pass the interview. You should be able to complete a take-home based on your current skill set. Yes, it may take 4-6 hours (or 8-10), and yes, that is a big ask of a cand…

Is there literally any other field where there's an expectation to essentially do fairly intense studying to pass interviews that apparently have very little to do with day to day jobs? Maybe they exist I've never encountered them. The limit of my "studying" for an interview is to just learn a bit about the company, their strategy, etc. either by online research or by talking to people I know connected with them. ADD…

Is there literally any other field where there's an expectation that you will work for free 4 hours in order to be considered for the job?
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