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

171–180 of 295 posts

Re: Take-home interviews

#171

Post by bhntr3 »

darklajid wrote: post #154
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…

That topic ("People do stuff at home for an interview") is a topic that comes up again and again. My last reply [1] is about a month old and feels still valid. Don't state that 'take home tests are the worst'. That is - failing to find better words - crap. If that is the ONLY option, I understand that this might be not for you. But - that's not the case here as far as I can tell. You, as a person interested to interv…

Unfortunately, most companies aren't comfortable replacing an onsite with a work sample (or take home.) So, it's just additive.

It's not "the worst" in relation to other interview options. It's the worst because it's usually in addition to other interview options. I just stopped doing take homes on my last round of interviewing. Just not worth it. It was always just added work. It never replaced a stage of the process.

If you think about it, it makes sense though. Very few companies would hire people directly based on the strength of their github account or their topcoder rank. So, if they won't do that, then what extra information does a take home really provide?

Companies seem to recognize that they want to hire people who do good work and that good work isn't done in an interview setting. But very few companies are willing to just analyze the candidate's work. They want to subjectively judge the person.

Re: Take-home interviews

#172

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bjones22 wrote: post #20
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…

Its good in theory, but it leaves a lot of ambiguity for the interviewee to parse through. For instance, if given a two week window would it look better for me to do it tonight? Would it show ambition? Or would it seem like I'm desperate, and lead to a lower amount of compensation being offered to me? Should I spend far longer then five hours on the assignment, and turn in superior work while making it seem like I on…

> Bring me into your professional office. Let's talk like professionals. Allow me to demonstrate my professional skills. Call me back with a professional yes or a professional no, all within a professional time frame. That's it.

What if your professional skills are such that it's not possible to demonstrate them in an hour or two at someone else's office--either because of the nature of the skills, or because you're one of the many excellent programmers whose work suffers when there's someone actively staring at you, like the guy in the article?

Let's be honest. Programming as a discipline attracts a disproportionate number of people for whom social skills do not come easily. Granted, you don't want to hire a grumbling misanthrope who refuses to take direction, but you also don't want to turn away a perfectly good team player who lacks the largely irrelevant skill of gladhanding under pressure.

I think a lot of the comments in discussions like this come from programmers who do have solid social skills, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that, but an interview process that gives you personally a fair evaluation is not necessarily the most reliable one for programmers in general.

Re: Take-home interviews

#173

Post by kwi »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #166
Udo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I logged into my TripleByte account and selected it as an option. The UI is still broken, but yes: it's an option. It's a separate track you can choose to be on.

If its an option and they don't exhibit any bias towards candidates that prefer a traditional interview then thats fine, but they should make it clear in the article.

Founder here. We definitely don't and the outcome of both tracks will be treated exactly the same way. As Ammon wrote it: "Anyone who passes our take-home project assessment will get exactly the same service from us as people who do the regular interviews. We'll work hard to find several YC startups they'd be a great fit for, fast track them through the hiring processes, and handle all logistics of flights/accommodations/scheduling."

Re: Take-home interviews

#174

Post by pbrb »

burger_moon wrote: post #127
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…

I agree. I've done really good ones and really bad ones. A good test started in the office with the hiring manager. Really them just watching me write a simple CRUD app in asp.net when it was all the rage. This was for an entry level gig and was actually a really good test. At the end they had an additional feature for you to add from home. It took a couple hrs and ended up being a great test to find decent entry level ppl.

The bad one was about 2 yrs ago. I walked into a conference room for the final round, was sat down at a mac, and asked to write some code in their proprietary DSL without any documentation or anything. It was maddening. I almost walked out, but the salary was stupid high. Didn't get the job. Thinking back on it, maybe it was just a test and they did want me to say it was ridiculous.

Re: Take-home interviews

#175

Post by darklajid »

bhntr3 wrote: post #171
darklajid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That topic ("People do stuff at home for an interview") is a topic that comes up again and again. My last reply [1] is about a month old and feels still valid. Don't state that 'take home tests are the worst'. That is - failing to find better words - crap. If that is the ONLY option, I understand that this might be not for you. But - that's not the case here as far as I can tell. You, as a person interested to interv…

Unfortunately, most companies aren't comfortable replacing an onsite with a work sample (or take home.) So, it's just additive. It's not "the worst" in relation to other interview options. It's the worst because it's usually in addition to other interview options. I just stopped doing take homes on my last round of interviewing. Just not worth it. It was always just added work. It never replaced a stage of the proces…

Agreed (and see the linked comment please): If it's not a replacement for whiteboard bullshit, then GTFO. That's insane and maybe 'the worst'.

But it's important to remember that a take home exercise cannot fully replace an interview. It can replace the coding part, the whiteboard "and now we ask useless trivia questions" part. But there's no way for this work to replace the "would you fit the team" interview.

Others already discuss this in different subthreads here, but basically I'd expect the company to clearly show how their process works and - ideally - filter by ~social~ criterias first ("You might fit the team, if you can code"). Doing work for free with potentially no feedback or a 'fail' in a later discussion is crap, of course.

Re: Take-home interviews

#177

Post by codeshaman »

robinson7d wrote: post #162
codeshaman wrote: post #114

This seems like a wonderful idea. I hate coding interviews, because I freeze up and I look like a total idiot and cannot do even the simplest things. Same thing at exams in school or university - my mind just went blank and into a noisy self-rumination loop. I guess it's called anxiety. I interviewed with Google last week and bombed it, even though the problem was quite simple and I would have solved it wonderfully w…

As others have mentioned, the trade-offs can be pretty complicated. Perhaps the take-home is always better for you, I won't try to argue against your personal preferences, I'm simply going to list a few reasons why it turns out worse for a lot of people. For one thing, as expected, the take-home questions are typically far larger than in-person interview questions. When you go into the office you're generally asked,…

There's a lot of truth in what you write and I definetely see the problem.

One solution is to have the take home interview as the final step in the process - after having screened the candidate and discussed general technology/framework/concepts without coding.

When I did interviews, I found that just by discussing things like thread synchronization and let them explain the projects that they've worked on would weed out most of the candidates which weren't a fit with the position. Then the take-home problem would make a lot more sense for both the employer and employee.

Or another method: You take home a problem, implement it, then present the solution to multiple potential employers. The problem would have to be unique (so that there are no ready made solutions online) and trusted by the participating employers.

And I think this is exactly what OP is doing, and that's why it's great.

Re: Take-home interviews

#178

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Take-home interviews

#179

Post by philbarr »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #167
monksy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a few take home projects that weren't so bad. But the last one I did... A junior just basically shat all over the project and claimed a lot of things. [The submission was to write a few sample sort functions for a library... the recruiter asked for an app, the paper asked for a library.. I did both... what did I get shat upon for? The user interface/cli that wasn't required.. another thing.. Why did I have 6…

yuck! why did you have 66 commits?

What's wrong with having 66 commits?

Re: Take-home interviews

#180

Post by darklajid »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #170
darklajid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That topic ("People do stuff at home for an interview") is a topic that comes up again and again. My last reply [1] is about a month old and feels still valid. Don't state that 'take home tests are the worst'. That is - failing to find better words - crap. If that is the ONLY option, I understand that this might be not for you. But - that's not the case here as far as I can tell. You, as a person interested to interv…

Oh as a number of people have indicated its bad for the company because the candidate can work with someone else and produce a glowing submission. I have helped a number of people do these some that have gotten the job. its bad for the interviewee. They may spend 10-15 hours on this and get rejected for no reason at all. Do you think the person reviewing the submission is putting multiple hours into it. Doubtful. If…

If you were able to explain your 'cheated' solution to someone and they could reliably cheat the interviewer, I'd say you .. taught them. GJ!

The interviewee (the vowel count makes me dizzy) can choose what he/she prefers. So that argument is weird. Maybe (if that's your point) it might be beneficial to go for the face to face interview, for direct feedback? But .. some people just _cannot_ do that. You're not talking "Ah, they didn't respond. If you'd just had visited them on-site..." here. It's "opt for the home project or don't apply". Which is empowering the candidate.

Post reply on HN