I was asked to code a sudoku solver from scratch during an hour long tech screen. I got maybe 60% there. A few days later they called me up and said they liked my work but wanted someone faster. At the time I was bummed, but a decade later I’m glad I didn’t get that job.
Please stop the coding challenges
201–210 of 493 posts
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#202A 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.…
Your absolutely right about the "system design" interview but people act like it's an amazing type of interview.
People generally don't even want you to go deep on anything, but you're can't stay to shallow.
It's just bsing, yes your absolutely right, it feels like memorizing a script and saying the right words at the right time
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#203[deleted]
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#204Pretty common artifact that take-home challenges are being more widespread now that the labor pool is oversupplied with tech talent looking for jobs. Companies need new ways to filter for candidates that are willing to do whatever it takes and work the hardest. The easiest way to do so is give them a "three hour" take-home assignment and see if they are willing to do it.
Doesn't this approach self-select for people who
- value their time less,
- don't have other things to do (family, hobbies, side-projects),
- unemployed people
It's one thing where companies are applying this to 1000 applicants for an entry level position, but they also use this tactic when they reach out to you and tell you how excited they are about your background and resume.
In reality they didn't evaluate your background or resume and are just cold-calling you to fill some portion of their "funnel", then ignore all their excitement and reasons they reached out to you and have you jump through random hoops.
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#205A recent related post with proposed solutions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948474
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#206At most places I know, a coding challenge is not "the way" to get accepted, it is a way to get rejected.
The hiring manager might hd really liked a candidate and conclude that a coding challenge just shows that the new hire would need extra time to ramp up.
Yet, ignoring money, you could excel in the coding part and the hiring manager might not like you because you lack "X" (e.g. "communication skills", "team culture", etc), which in reality is a way to put they just didn't like you or there were not really looking for someone to deliver, example, they were looking for someone to play politics or that might benefit the hiring manager more in the long term.
Not always the more technically capable candidate gets the job.
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#207They're just encrypted IQ tests, working around the Duke Power supreme court ban on IQ testing employees.
You're being tested on your general intelligence, not because anybody cares about binary trees or reversing linked lists or whatever.
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#208> A “4-hour” assignment can quickly turn into 8, 10, or even more, just to ensure it’s in great shape.
The fun part of take-home assignments is that there's a moral hazard incentive to spend extra amounts of time on an assignment even if they say "only spend X amount of hours on it," even lying amount the amount of time spent if the interviewing company asks.
More than once I have completed a take-home assignment with emphasis on sticking in the timeframe they recommend but still solving the problem adequately, and then I get chewed out in the followup interview "why didn't you implement X?"
Relatedly, a massively open-ended take-home assignment is a bad take-home assignment since it favors those who have more free time to be thorough. (shoutout to the take-home data science assignments which ask for the final deliverable to be a PowerPoint presentation)
Re: Please stop the coding challenges
#209I 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 onsi…
Why would you even do any of that for a senior role? I wouldn't waste my time with it, and it shows you don't know how to interview/evaluate for a senior position.