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An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

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Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#201

Post by nilkn »

shkkmo wrote: post #189
nilkn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real world conditions like the one that you edited out of the sentence you quoted. The point is that neither exercise perfectly mimics the job the OP is being considered for, and they fail to do so in different ways.

> It asks for small algorithmic coding puzzles There is no mention of "working on a pre-existing codebase that they know nothing about" in the description of the HackerRank test... so I don't know how your point applies?

Sure, it's very hard to fully approximate that aspect of the job in a quick coding screen. Small algorithmic problems don't come close in the grand scheme of things. But they still put you in an environment and context where you don't have the advantage of being an expert ahead of time.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#202

Post by agentultra »

renegadesensei wrote: post #97
agentultra wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The employer wants to gauge your unscripted in the moment programming knowledge. I see the appeal of knowing this but I think I'd take a submission from the OP as-is in place of a "coding test." My thinking here is that I can't recall an instance where I needed to write code at a job with a timer ticking down and someone reviewing my work as I went. I usually have the luxury of doing some research and taking a few…

I'm a little biased as a devops guy and former SRE. When you're on call dealing with strict SLA's, your ability to make intelligent technical decisions quickly is important. I expect the guy I hire to not have to Google how to check CPU load or how to pipe tail output from log files into a grep function. At the very least a timed coding exercise tests their nerve. For other development jobs I generally agree with you…

The SRE team is infamous! I tried the interview for the SRE team to see what it was like. At the final interview I was asked to implement a K-NN algorithm, which I did, and then optimize it for k dimensions.

When it was over I asked the interviewer if there was ever a time when he had to implement such an algorithm on the job during a production outage event and his answer: No.

In my experience working within devops teams maintaining and developing public cloud infrastructure I don't think I've ever had the pleasure either.

In retrospect I don't think it was a bad experience. I think there are roles which exist in software that do require a higher level of rigor than others. I'm often amazed how easily many developers will dismiss performance concerns (premature optimization!) for example. I would expect a hiring process to be upfront and honest about such requirements and candidates should be aware of their own skills and background before applying.

But most software development jobs at ABC Corp are not the SRE Team at Google and they hire as if they were.

I think that's the risk we take with standardizing and automating hiring processes.

update: just markup.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#203

Post by organsnyder »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #184
organsnyder wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my observation. Tons of openings, but many companies lean toward denials, under the assumption that firing the wrong person is more costly than not hiring the right person. It also seems that many companies are looking for ready-to-go engineers, rather than being willing (or able) to build talent in-house. The only door open to many junior devs is the internship-to-hire funnel. This reminds me of this rec…

> ...assumption that firing the wrong person is more costly than not hiring the right person. I take it you've never had to hire or fire anyone. At mid-sized and large companies, it's a cumbersome process and, unless they're complete sociopaths, firing is also unpleasant for the firing manager and the team. It also means taking on the work and cost of doing a new candidate search and another new hire ramp-up. If easy…

Oh, the assumption is definitely warranted in many/most situations. Though there are often alternatives (such as contract-to-hire) to mitigate the risks.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#204

Post by [deleted] »

dahart wrote: post #196
bitL wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was about accomplished people getting the same treatment as newbies or wannabes that have no clue what they are doing. You don't see it in other industries. E.g. I wrote this new language/library everybody uses, but I am forced to solve some crappy puzzles I probably was solving when I was 14 and match the current mood/skills/tunnel vision of the interviewer. As a consequence, I rather start my own company and cha…

You do know there are a lot of "accomplished" people according to their own CV who can't actually code their way out of a paper bag, right? The more senior someone gets, the more expensive. It's worth the company's time to screen for basic aptitude, especially when someone claims greater expertise. > As a consequence, I rather start my own company By all means, you should definitely do that and stop worrying about jo…

[deleted]

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#205

Post by nilkn »

StavrosK wrote: post #160
dfabulich wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> useless tests These tests aren't useless. Tons of candidates have never seen a REPL before and are totally unable to solve even a trivial coding assignment. I suppose your company is too clever to waste their time on such useless tests? Who at your firm wastes hours interviewing candidates who have no ability to code?

If someone has never seen a REPL before, it'll take us less than 90 minutes to figure it out, so we don't tend to waste applicants' time with those. Going through someone's Github (or any other project they feel is worthy of sharing) and asking them questions about why they made the decisions they made has been orders of magnitude more illuminating than asking them to come up with an algorithm for solving the subset…

But now your process is heavily biased against folks whose work has primarily been for their current employer, and they don't have any reasonable side projects to walk you through.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#206

Post by dahart »

bitL wrote: post #197
dahart wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear examples of how to do it right, without taking all my time. I'm genuinely interested in how to hire people without wasting their time or mine. I'd love to screen people with a day of pair programming or a 2 week paid internship, or whatever other good ideas are floating around. I can't. You have just dismissed most tech companies. All the large ones (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) give codin…

> All the large ones (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) give coding puzzles as part of their interview process. They are considered the best and give above average compensation. Is your company considered the best, properly paying top talent, to employ the same schema? Those tests were done to distill the top end performers with the accepted risk of huge number of false negatives. Now every mom-and-dad shop is…

> Is your company considered the best, properly paying top talent, to employ the same schema?

Yes, this was true of every job I've ever had. Maybe I've been lucky.

I don't really understand why asking someone to do a small amount of programming for a programming job interview, when they claim to be an experienced programmer, is any sort of "extreme" practice.

You've expressed a lot of complaints about coding quizzes, some that many people here share, and some that I agree with.

I would urge you to spend your energy making a specific alternative proposal that companies can actually use. The OP's proposal isn't something companies can actually use for all candidates, even if they could use it for him.

I'm very interested in how to better screen and interview devs. I want to improve my process. But no process I've ever been exposed to is even close to perfect.

Make sure your proposal considers the company's perspective. The ideal process will benefit both the candidate and the company, but something that's pleasant for the candidate and unpleasant for the company will never get adopted no matter how good it sounds.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#207

Post by shkkmo »

nilkn wrote: post #201
shkkmo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It asks for small algorithmic coding puzzles There is no mention of "working on a pre-existing codebase that they know nothing about" in the description of the HackerRank test... so I don't know how your point applies?

Sure, it's very hard to fully approximate that aspect of the job in a quick coding screen. Small algorithmic problems don't come close in the grand scheme of things. But they still put you in an environment and context where you don't have the advantage of being an expert ahead of time.

> But they still put you in an environment and context where you don't have the advantage of being an expert ahead of time.

Yet by forbidding the use of external research and libraries they remove the two main tools I would want some to use "in an environment and context where you don't have the advantage of being an expert ahead of time"

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#208

Post by foo101 »

epicide wrote: post #199
foo101 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is really taking it to an extreme No more extreme than suggesting that someone who raises thoughtful questions on a broken hiring process must certainly be a bad fit for an organization. > Sorry, I don't want to work with a bunch of pedants. Now, this is taking it to an extreme!

If they are assuming they know more than everybody involved and making suggestions to a process they haven't even gone through 20% of, then yes, they are probably a bad fit. It's extremely hypocritical to criticize someone for the very thing you are doing (assuming the other person doesn't know how to do their job). Couple this with the fact that they are not asking for any advice on their hiring process, it's a pret…

If your company wants people to just do straightforward tasks without raising pertinent questions, your company sounds like a bad fit for many good engineers I know. For example, I personally, would never work for a company like yours.

I am quite lucky to have worked in companies where the peers and management encourage debates and arguments and do not take it as a sign of incompetence.

I had no idea there were companies that would take perfectly reasonable questions on a broken process as a sign of incompetence. Thank you for enlightening me. I now know to be careful enough to avoid such organizations in future.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#209

Post by Caveman_Coder »

bitL wrote: post #157
dahart wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think your approach would work if there was a shortage of jobs There is always a shortage of good jobs. You can fight the process all you want, if any job at all will do, and you don't care how long it takes to get it. > You are often asking accomplished individuals to waste their time on badly compensated job proposals What do you mean by badly compensated? Why would you assume someone else knows anything about…

Alright, imagine you worked for top engineering company, have github full of bleeding edge stuff anyone can observe, wrote books, have patents under your belt, do public speaking, teaching at universities etc. and some HR person comes in and wants you to do trivial HackerRank stuff. She basically interrupted you from working on something benefiting humanity just because she was lazy to check your CV and ignorant of t…

> "...working on something benefiting humanity..."

I think you forgot to add the "/s" to this statement.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#210

Post by bitL »

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #209
bitL wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, imagine you worked for top engineering company, have github full of bleeding edge stuff anyone can observe, wrote books, have patents under your belt, do public speaking, teaching at universities etc. and some HR person comes in and wants you to do trivial HackerRank stuff. She basically interrupted you from working on something benefiting humanity just because she was lazy to check your CV and ignorant of t…

> "...working on something benefiting humanity..." I think you forgot to add the "/s" to this statement.

Maybe you are idealistic and work for non-profit dealing with human trafficking in your spare time and have to cut it to take a silly HackerRank test?
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