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On asking job candidates to code

philcalcado.com

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Re: On asking job candidates to code

#181

Post by autotune »

vblord wrote: post #158
autotune wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you require them to do it in a specific language or let them choose which one they are most comfortable with? How do you decide which programmers to bring onsite? Have you considered giving them different options in the from of doing a take home test or coming in and coding inperson instead?

We require a specific language... the language we use for the job. The phone interview asks technical questions, a few design questions, and some personality geared questions. The technical questions are basic and cover some of the basic concepts of the language and basics of OO. We haven't considered doing a take home test for 2 reasons. 1) We want to see how well the person can get around windows/keyboard. I believ…

Valid points as far as the language goes, but I'm not sure I agree with your points about workflow... the primary goal should be to see if they can reach the solution using the tools required for the job over how the tools are used in my opinion, and how much guidance they require to do so. I am thinking that the in-person coding might make them nervous. As a personal example for my specific line of work coding is more of a secondary requirement over having knowledge of how systems work, and despite having contributed code to some widely used open source projects and having enough knowledge to get by given language given enough documentation, I would likely freeze up in an interview if asked to code.

If I were you I would look for candidates that actually have some projects they can showcase that proves they know how to code, and offer them the chance to either do an easier in-person test or a take-home project. During the job search I personally jumped at the chance to do take-home projects since I view them as learning experiences, but for more experienced people I can see them being viewed as tedious. Most truly passionate entry level programmers looking for their first job and some direction I hope would jump at that chance to get some more directed experience as well.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#182

Post by mordocai »

dominotw wrote: post #167
jcadam wrote: post #89

A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…

I've noticed that your github profile doesn't even get looked at until you jump through all the standard phonescreen/homework hoops. Even after than many interviewers look at your resume like 10 minutes before the interview there is no chance that they would read through your code on github. github as your resume is overrated. I am curious to know if people hire or get hired purely based on their github profile witho…

We literally never hire someone without a technical interview, but we do look at github/bitbucket/gitlab/whatever code we can find the day or so before the interview. If there's something interesting we'll ask questions about it during the interview.

So far, there hasn't been one candidate that had anything resembling a portfolio online, but we don't hire all that often and i've only been doing it for a bit over a year.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#183

Post by jsprogrammer »

drubio wrote: post #141
jcadam wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm in Florida. The local market isn't that great (though I am presently employed) so I've been interviewing for remote jobs.

Remote is insanity now a days, it was a reasonable market a few years ago but not anymore. There's a glut on both the supply and demand sides. Many years ago there was a limited demand for remote work, which probably tapered the supply, but in my experience from every 3 leads you followed (granted you had the experience), 2 were promising and 1 was almost always an offer. Now a days it's more like you need to follow…

>Try to gauge how much they are invested in the hiring process, if they are asking you for hours or days on end while they appear to invest a couple of minutes of 'human time' RUN!

Alternatively, give them your hourly rate and expectation that you will be paid for all work performed, including "hiring homework". That should weed out much of the illegitimate prospective employers.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#184

Post by logfromblammo »

robodale wrote: post #63
hnrodey wrote: post #41

I'm going through the interview process this week at two different companies. One of the companies I found through an ad on Stack Overflow whereby they publish two programming "exercises/puzzles" with the opportunity to earn $100 for a correct answer to each puzzle ($200 total for two correct answers). While I spent more than eight hours on both puzzles, I found them to be thought provoking and I learned stuff in the…

This. I like this. Other companies wondering why they cannot find good devs need to do something like this.

And realize that spending only $200 per candidate is a lot better deal than they would ever get from spammy, scummy recruiters.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#185

Post by estefan »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #170

Weird. I've created from scratch: new CRDT data-types for geospatial problems, new highly-available transaction patterns that provide useful causal history and atomic visibility, large-scale messaging platforms (400k ops/sec), high-throughput machine learning pipelines, lock-free lightweight-process mailbox implementations, and an end-to-end build pipeline for generating bare-metal rumpkernels to be parallel deployed…

Because there are a lot of shit candidates. You might know you're worth talking to, but try hiring and you'll see why people want to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#186

Post by kafkaesq »

nialo wrote: post #64
Tunabrain wrote: post #9

> As brain-dead as I was after eight hours at my project, [..] Is giving out an 8+ hour programming project as part of the application process really considered good hiring practice? If you apply to five jobs, you're expected to spend an entire unpaid work week writing code that doesn't benefit anyone? If a company receives 20 applicants, their ideal candidate selection wastes a collective work month? I don't really…

I'd rather spend 8 hours programming than burn a full day on 5 whiteboard interviews the way Google does. More generally, I think the target should be to make the work sample test take a similar amount of time to the in person interview you'd have to do instead.

The point is, they never wrote back.

That's just shabby and disrespectful, regardless of how many other candidates they're talking to, or how they evaluated this particular candidate.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#187

Post by vonmoltke »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #169
vonmoltke wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, some validation that my interpretation of their process is not insane. One thing that really rustles my jimmies is the constant assertion that "false negatives are (effectively) free". I think Google and the companies who hire like them seriously underestimate how much this costs them, both the direct costs of spending so much to ultimately reject people and the indirect costs from the work that is not getti…

The root issue is that, the costs of bad hiring are even higher than that. For a rapidly-growing company bad hires can snowball into a bad organization.

Apparently this is where I will disagree with Tom, because I think the costs of a bad hire are often overstated. Part of it is loss aversion, and part of it is inability to quantify risk. In fact, it seems like the industry is at a point right now where they would rather repeat this mantra than put effort into understanding the scope of the problem.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#188

Post by estefan »

orng wrote: post #108
mikeash wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No former employer is going to say "this guy can't program, don't hire him" for fear of getting sued. Co-workers might be friends who are covering for you, or just genuinely have no idea of your actual ability. Taking up hours of a candidate's time is excessive, but it seems reasonable to ask for some demonstration of your ability, when so many candidates simply cannot code.

> Taking up hours of a candidate's time is excessive, but it seems reasonable to ask for some demonstration of your ability, when so many candidates simply cannot code. So why not simply ask technical questions during an interview? I'd think you'd be able to determine whether or not someone know what he is talking about by simply asking him a few questions on the matter.

A picture paints a thousand words.

How do you know what level to pitch the interview at if you don't know what language features someone understands and how they code?

Where I work we now set a small simple test which is very representative of what colleagues do because we've had so many time wasters. I'm looking to see their style, the fact that they can actually read a simple spec (apparently over half can't), and that they can explain why they approached the solution how they did. If their test is no good, we don't waste each others' time.

If someone has a decent GH account I'll look at that too - if it's sufficiently comprehensive (very rare to see anyone with a GH account at all, let alone their own projects in it) they won't need to do the homework (should take about an hour, less if they're good). This just saves us wasted time.

Remember - you might know you're good. How do you expect strangers to?

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#189

Post by Kluny »

rcurry wrote: post #154
jcadam wrote: post #89

A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…

"I never heard from them again and all of my attempts at communication were ignored." Unfortunately, this seems to be par for the course these days - I have a lot of friends who complain about the same thing. It's just indicative of a total lack of professional courtesy, and you should consider yourself lucky that you didn't end up working with people like that.

Lucky, sure, but I wish there were some kind of consequences for behaving that way. Seems like there's no incentive to act professionally and businesses know they can get away with it, so "ghosting" is now standard business practice.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#190

Post by aprdm »

jetcata wrote: post #157

I am in the midst of my job search, fortunately I'm not currently working (due to an international move) so I have more time. So far, I have completed around 12 1 hour phone coding tests, the same amount of 30 min chats with recruiters, I have 8x 5 hour on-sites scheduled, have spent about 4 long days on one take-home assignment, 6-8 hours on another, and have two more assignments to complete, both of which I estimat…

yep, I am there with you. Completely exhausting. Have missed a few weekends + reading some stupid how to do interview books and stuff like that... a real shame.
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