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

231–240 of 295 posts

Re: Take-home interviews

#231

Post by monksy »

bjones22 wrote: post #219
nilkn wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what you mean. We don't know what the task was that he had to solve. I was providing an example of a situation in which 66 commits could be seen as a bad thing. For a typical whiteboard coding problem, I also wouldn't want to see 60+ commits.

I remember when I first got started with git I committed at an absurd frequency. I don't think it's that unreasonable for someone straight out of college to be relatively new to git, and thus do the same thing. I remember later on I wrote a script that listened to git hooks and rebuilt my project on a remote server. I was still testing manually at that time, as we all do in the beginning, which resulted in a large nu…

Well I can't say too much without exposing the problem.

But there were about 16 files in total. All of the comparators that were written had multiple tests. (I shot for nearly 100% coverage..although I wasn't going to force stdin emulation, and mock out system.exits) All of the commits that were performed were done in small amounts. (Also, a few were just for transferring work space to other computers) The task in hand would have represented approximately 4 tickets at the bare minimum.

Besides, the number of commits: That problem is resolved by merging a branch back down.

The feedback was written in a way "How do you consider that reasonable in a professional environment?"

(Another thing... I wasn't required to submit via a git repo I was required to submit via a zip file, but I did because I hoped it'd give me a leg up.... Turns out: You're better off not trying)

Re: Take-home interviews

#232

Post by eru »

twright0 wrote: post #31
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…

> Offer $500 as a 1099 contractor to complete the assignment within the next 2 weeks or so. Just as an aside, I would actually be more willing to undertake this type of interview if you weren't paying me. I don't have any ethical qualms about interviewing while working a full-time engineering job, but I'm not entirely comfortable taking a contracting job under the table. It may be something of a symbolic gesture give…

Just give candidates the option to specify a charity of their choice to receive the $500 in their stead.

Re: Take-home interviews

#234

Post by btilly »

darklajid wrote: post #175
bhntr3 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a reason that nobody filters by social first.

One of the biggest challenges in hiring is that it takes a ton of time to go through many bad candidates before you see any good ones. And time is the one thing you don't have. You're hiring because you don't have enough resources to do the work you already have.

Therefore the name of the game is efficiently rejecting candidates while using up the least amount of your existing people's time. Which means that the most expensive filters should be done last. And the most expensive one is social because judging it takes time from EVERYONE.

Re: Take-home interviews

#235

Post by skatenerd »

mkozlows wrote: post #117
munchbunny wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much true. We do take-home interview questions where they bring the output to the interview and we talk through their solution in person. We'll ask how long they took as a way to normalize expectations and also adjust the interview question to take more/less time in future instances. This does two things. In the long run, the time required converges towards where we want it to be (ASSUMING honest answers…

Tip: If you want honest answers about how long it took, ask them after they've been hired and working there for a few weeks. Otherwise they will absolutely lie. "That? Oh, it was no big, probably 20-30 minutes."

Or look at the git log, if it's available...

Re: Take-home interviews

#236

Post by monksy »

nilkn wrote: post #210
pd1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a fair comparison though. It would be more like a typical "whiteboard coding" problem needing a couple commits.

I'm not really sure what you mean. We don't know what the task was that he had to solve. I was providing an example of a situation in which 66 commits could be seen as a bad thing. For a typical whiteboard coding problem, I also wouldn't want to see 60+ commits.

For a whiteboard coding problem, you're really not going to see more than a function. So I completely agree with you.

Re: Take-home interviews

#237

Post by monksy »

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?

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973172

Re: Take-home interviews

#238

Post by AdieuToLogic »

viraptor wrote: post #157
Bahamut wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$500 is too low - good developers will often charge $200+/hour freelancing, there is little incentive for them to deal with a take home test for that price with all of the time & stress that come with take home tests. A choice is better than no choice though, but too many companies fumble through handling take home tests to make it worthwhile to a quality developer with any sense of value.

Yes, they charge $200+/h - when they actually do the work. This is my pet peeve lately when I see people throwing that number around. You're not actually working 24h. You likely don't work on the weekends. You take time to organise new work in between. Neither of the breaks are actually paid. You get paid that much as a freelancer when you produce value for the company. So by doing an extra assignment, especially one…

> Yes, they charge $200+/h - when they actually do the work.

Agreed.

Annual billable hours for consultants, be they developers, management, lawyers, et al, are considered huge if near 1500. That roughly works out to just under 30 billable hours per work week when vacations/holidays and non-billable time are taken into account.

As you surmise, just because someone _can_ bill X/hour doesn't mean that each hour they breathe commands the same remuneration.

Re: Take-home interviews

#239

Post by vonmoltke »

dpark wrote: post #103
bjones22 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my rent is due the Friday after next and I need to know if I should send out another wave of resumes. It isn't but it strikes me we are looking very hard to find a new way to do things, when the old way was pretty damn good. Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. If I don't have the social skills to successfully do this (minority issue) I likely would not be able to communicate well with a tea…

> Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. This is an efficient way to hire a team of good bullshitters. I've interviewed people who did extremely well when we were "talking like professionals" but were unable to do even very simple coding problems. My bar for coding is really not that high. I don't expect perfect syntax. I don't pick the language. I don't expect "the one answer". I expect people to…

I disagree. I have yet to meet anyone who is faking it and cannot be cracked in 5-10 minutes of carefully-directed prodding. In fact, I don't see how it is possible to do extremely well on the "talk like a professional" part and not be able to write basic programs, unless you and I have very different concepts of what "talk like a professional" means.

Re: Take-home interviews

#240

Post by monksy »

bbcbasic wrote: post #43

Software developers huh! What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with no syllabus. No 'past papers' etc. I think this should stop. In it's place, developers can have a pet open-source project, which they submit with their application. The point is that the same project can be submitted for a hundred applications if needed, savin…

> What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview).

I know of a place in Chicago that does that for a dev job.

Post reply on HN