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Please stop the coding challenges

blackentropy.bearblog.dev

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191–200 of 493 posts

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#191

Post by darioush »

bluedevilzn wrote: post #57
factotum wrote: post #8

I'm fine with tests, but only if companies pay a standard fee (say, $100) for a dev's time. If a company doesn't respect your time during the interview process, it probably won't while you're on the job.

I think you a missed a 0 there. $100 is insultingly low for a 4 hour assignment.

Agree, IMO even interviews should be compensated. Most software companies want to schedule 3-4 interviews each 2 hrs long so they should minimally compensate 1 day pay.

If we assume 15 days off that leaves roughly 245 workdays per year and with a salary of $200k that would be close to $800.

A fair amount of compensation to spend half a weekend on a project would be $400.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#193

Post by that_guy_iain »

I once ended a job interview at a company because of their coding challenges at the end of a 2-3 hour interview. It was a job for a PHP developer working in a DDD environment. They were asking people to do algorithms, the last one just took the cake because it was completely unnecessary.

The question made sense: how do you add to very large numbers together? I assumed the key knowledge they wanted was that the numbers had to be represented as strings and you should use bc_math to compute them. So I answered that, and they said, "Yeah, great. Now write a function to do that." I sat there for a few moments thinking about it and realized it was just nuts. So I asked if I could just end the interview process. They were clearly shocked, I doubt many people end an interview process on the last question. I said that this wasn't realistic and that if I did that for real it would get code-reviewed to hell. One of them kept saying but it's to see how you would do it if bc_math wasn't installed. I simply stated "I would have them install it" to which one of the interviewers instinctively nodded since that's the real-world answer.

It seemed like it would have been a good place to work up to that point. I didn't like my current job at the time, it paid considerably more, had more public holidays due to weird German reasons, etc.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#194

Post by itake »

teeray wrote: post #70
itake wrote: post #15

> What companies often ignore is the extra time candidates invest beyond the “suggested time” for these tests. This is a feature not a bug. Companies are testing if you can focus and complete a hard uncomfortable challenging task, because at your job you’re expected to do things you don’t want to do, but will be rewarded for doing.

Companies are backhandedly selecting for those who can invest the most time beyond the suggested time (read: single, childless people in their early 20s who live at home) and those who are willing to work insane hours. It's a pledge of fealty before you are graced with an interview. 15 pieces of flair is the minimum, but it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum.

I knew one person that used sick leave (for mental health) to take time off to prep for job interviews due to the toxic work environment.

That is an option if you have higher personal obligations and are struggling mentally.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#195

Post by fishtoaster »

I recently ran an interview process for a relatively senior eng role at a tiny startup. Because I believe different interview methods work better for different people, I offered everyone a choice:

1. Do a takehome test, targeted to take about 4 hours but with no actual time limit. This was a non-algorithmic project that was just a stripped-down version of what I'd spent the last month on in actual work.

2. Do an onsite pairing exercise in 2 hours. This would be a version of #1, but more of "see how far we get in 2 hours."

3. Submit a code sample of pre-existing work.

Based on the ire I've seen takehome tests get, I figured we'd get a good spread between all three, but amazingly, ~90-95% of candidates chose the takehome test. That matches my preference as a candidate as well.

I don't know if this generalizes beyond this company/role, but it was an interesting datapoint - I was very surprised to find that most people preferred it!

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#196

Post by sanderjd »

paxys wrote: post #77
CharlieDigital wrote: post #72

A small anecdote. A partner of a friend quit their job earlier this year. They then took 4-6 weeks to prepare for each interview with Big Tech companies (4-6 weeks for Meta, 4-6 weeks for Stripe, etc.). Along the way, they also took random interviews just to practice and build muscle memory. They would grind leetcode several hours a day after researching which questions were likely to be encountered at each Big Tech.…

Sounds like the system worked exactly as intended then. A seemingly smart person got a good job. What's the problem with this story exactly?

It took forever. Literally tens of thousands of dollars of opportunity cost, with a lot of risk of having nothing to show for it.

The bummer is that you're right, it actually is worth even this much investment, because these companies do pay extremely well. But it's still horrendously inefficient, because the companies are getting a very small improvement to their signal to noise ratio, at this great cost (which, notably, they don't bear).

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#197

Post by tqi »

> Hiring processes should focus on problem-solving, collaboration, and growth in relevant areas. Unrealistic expectations don’t attract the best talent – they just exhaust and discourage it. If companies want adaptable developers, they should focus on the long-term ability to learn, not how fast someone can tackle an arbitrary test. Dropping these absurd assignments and focusing on what really counts could foster a better, more inclusive tech culture.

Sure, how? There are no perfect processes, only drawbacks that you can live with.

I also find the idea that interviewing is somehow exploitative of the interviewee ("feel like working unpaid shifts for a job they don’t even have yet") to be somewhat bewildering. It's not like your coding challenge is useful work for company that you are doing for free, in most cases interviewing is also a huge time sink for the company as well. Not every interaction should be quid pro quo...

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#198

Post by lupire »

pmg101 wrote: post #89
paxys wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the system worked exactly as intended then. A seemingly smart person got a good job. What's the problem with this story exactly?

A moderately smart person was selected for a good job perhaps over many many better possible hires simply because that person had the leisure to learn the game. Inefficient. But nice for that individual, naturally.

I don't suppose you got a good job because you had the leisure to spend 4 years in college? Or 4 years in high school?

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#199

Post by lupire »

sanderjd wrote: post #196
paxys wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the system worked exactly as intended then. A seemingly smart person got a good job. What's the problem with this story exactly?

It took forever. Literally tens of thousands of dollars of opportunity cost, with a lot of risk of having nothing to show for it. The bummer is that you're right, it actually is worth even this much investment, because these companies do pay extremely well. But it's still horrendously inefficient, because the companies are getting a very small improvement to their signal to noise ratio, at this great cost (which, not…

Yeah that's how education works.

Someone working at billion dollar VC funded outfit should understand the cause of making smart but speculative bets.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#200

Post by zimpenfish »

agentultra wrote: post #154

> When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team? All the time. 300-400k SLOC in C++. Legacy in the sense that there were no tests of any kind. Little-to-no documentation. Solo developer at the tiny company. Fix bugs and add features while keeping the system available to the tens of thousands of users. A more recent example: here’s a patch for a critical feature…

+1 for "all the time". Today I have been debugging a critical piece of the system which is written in Python (none of the rest of the system is) and largely hasn't been updated since 2020 and, you'll not be surprised, has no comments, no documentation, and a fucked up deployment system which makes me cry every time I have to think about it.

Last week I was debugging some similarly uncommented, undocumented, Go code from 2020 written by lunatics that is also a critical piece of the system.

It hurts.

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