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For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

blog.hackerrank.com

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Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#271

Post by cellularmitosis »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #204
lostcolony wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't go into the interview saying "we'll never hire this person, we're just talking to them for the practice". It's fine to interview at multiple companies that you might consider taking an offer from, but interviewing at a place you know you'll say no to strikes me as, yes, wasting their time (and money, as we usually have a few people interviewing one candidate at the same time).

I believe companies certainly do interview people they don't intend to hire, to get a feel for things like what the field is like, or what the expected salary for prospects with certain skills are. I've heard there are situations where they have a person in mind for a position, but because of corporate policies they're required to post the job and interview people.

I've seen these sorts of shenanigans happen at a public university, where they already know whom they want to hire, and even create a new position specifically for them, but are required to post the job opening to their public-facing jobs website, and are forced to interview at least X number of the people whom apply.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#272

Post by p4wnc6 »

frcknfrckn wrote: post #270
p4wnc6 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerRank-like lazy, commodity evaluation is not remotely close to "put[ting] some effort in to find the right job." It's very critical that we don't allow people to make the false comparison between actual interview effort and daft HackerRank time-wasting. In fact, doing the emotionally difficult task of rejecting an employer who tries the HackerRank commodity nonsense represents putting in more legitimate effort t…

Ha ha! Wow, that does sound difficult. You're a real trooper.

There's no need to be insincere or intentionally hurtful. Trust me, when you need a job and you've got a lot of life and family pressures building up, but you can clearly see how dysfunctional an employer is and how bad your life will be if you agree to work for them, it can be extremely hard to make the choice to do the right thing and reject them. It's even worse when you get to the stage of an actual job offer and an employer starts revealing how dysfunctional they are when they won't negotiate on basic features that are necessary for minimally acceptable worker health and quality of life.

It seems you really desire to deride me simply because you disagree with me. I don't take it personally, but I will say that the attitude you've displayed throughout these comments defending HackerRank-like evaluations is exactly the kind of attitude that would be indicative of a badly dysfunctional employer, and it's often exactly the kind of dysfunction that HackerRank requests are indicative of. Especially the parts where you try to turn it around and assert that a candidate standing up for minimally acceptable, reasonable treatment is equivalent (for you) to having a "bad attitude." It's quite alarming that you feel entitled to declare candidates as having "bad attitudes" for doing something that simply makes common sense from the point of view of avoiding employers who will waste their time. Contrary to suggesting that the candidate has a bad attitude, it highly suggests that the employer has a bad attitude, bordering on feeling like they are entitled to candidate labor, instead of privileged to have that labor, and somewhat whiny about it too. Definitely a bad signal when coming from someone involved in the hiring process.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#273

Post by frcknfrckn »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #272
frcknfrckn wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha ha! Wow, that does sound difficult. You're a real trooper.

There's no need to be insincere or intentionally hurtful. Trust me, when you need a job and you've got a lot of life and family pressures building up, but you can clearly see how dysfunctional an employer is and how bad your life will be if you agree to work for them, it can be extremely hard to make the choice to do the right thing and reject them. It's even worse when you get to the stage of an actual job offer and…

Was the sarcasm a bit much? Yeah, probably. But really, everyone makes hard decisions when it comes to jobs. I just find it somewhat amusing that someone would reject a company entirely because they disagree with one single facet of a multi-step interview process.

While we're at it, I don't particularly appreciate many of the insinuations people have made about my team and my employers based simply on the fact that I see a role for automated coding tests in the interview process. But like you said, I don't take it personally either.

Coding tests are just one tool in an interviewing toolbox. Like any tool, they can be - and are - abused. You feel that any use of that tool is indicative of some unredeemable flaw in the company as a whole. I feel that the tool has a genuine role in the initial candidate screening process. We obviously disagree, and are spinning our tires trying to convince each other, so there's really no point in continuing the discussion.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#274

Post by busterarm »

emodendroket wrote: post #255
busterarm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the trend I'm starting to see in my peer group of (non-asian) minority developers having difficulty finding work at their skill level or with appropriate compensation combined with the number of white developers I know who get turned down and told things "well, you just don't look like a developer" because they aren't frat-bro/hipster enough, I think that matching culture fit at the end instead of the beginning…

> (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?). After reading this a few times I think you meant to say "you're a big open-source advocate; are they an open-source shop?" or something similar.

Huh?

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#275

Post by emodendroket »

busterarm wrote: post #274
emodendroket wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?). After reading this a few times I think you meant to say "you're a big open-source advocate; are they an open-source shop?" or something similar.

Huh?

On another inspection I was probably confused by the use of "they" and figured "you" was supposed to be the applicant and not the company.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#276

Post by crispyambulance »

logfromblammo wrote: post #258
crispyambulance wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had plenty of them remark "you are the only candidate that has answered that question correctly" and then never speak to me again. Stop right there :-) I think that's where you need to do some deep introspection. There's A LOT more to a job than technical aptitude. It appears that you're excelling in one aspect of the evaluation but failing in another. There's a reason WHY they're not following up. Find out wh…

I'm pretty sure that if a company cuts off all contact after an interview, there is at least one problem on their end that I cannot fix, no matter how hard I try. Believe me, I have tried to find out why they vanished from the face of my planet. But there's only so much effort I can put into throwing politeness and courtesy into the void of unimaginable rudeness. You have to do mock interviews to get real feedback. R…

Yes, a serious problem but not insurmountable. It is something that you can at least address with yourself if you understand what it is.

It is true that you can't expect actionable feedback in a real job interview. Mock interviews when done with the right person really help. Of course it means that you have to be open to criticism and handle it with grace. Some folks have reported success with a career coach for this stuff, but that will cost you.

There's also another way to get some feedback. If you develop some rapport with a 3rd party recruiter who sets up interviews with their client, you _might_ be able to get debrief on how it went and what your strengths/weaknesses were.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#277

Post by p4wnc6 »

frcknfrckn wrote: post #273
p4wnc6 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to be insincere or intentionally hurtful. Trust me, when you need a job and you've got a lot of life and family pressures building up, but you can clearly see how dysfunctional an employer is and how bad your life will be if you agree to work for them, it can be extremely hard to make the choice to do the right thing and reject them. It's even worse when you get to the stage of an actual job offer and…

Was the sarcasm a bit much? Yeah, probably. But really, everyone makes hard decisions when it comes to jobs. I just find it somewhat amusing that someone would reject a company entirely because they disagree with one single facet of a multi-step interview process. While we're at it, I don't particularly appreciate many of the insinuations people have made about my team and my employers based simply on the fact that I…

> You feel that any use of that tool is indicative of some unredeemable flaw in the company as a whole.

This is a good summary of my position, except that it's not unredeemable. They could just stop using short, standardized, timed tests as a candidate evaluation, and instead they could acknowledge that there is no effective substitute for actually speaking with candidates, probing them about their experiences, and developing more nuanced understanding. Doing so would be time consuming and expensive ... that's life. Papering over the reality of the situation by pretending like automated, timed, standardized tests can measure the thing you need to measure won't make reality go away.

If a company is verifiably an excellent place to work and has excellent technology culture, and this can be verified ahead of time, then they do have the negotiation power to respectfully require completing code trivia (although most of the firms that actually are excellent don't do it this way even though they could).

Firms that are question marks to a candidate prior to some kind of phone interview to assess the fit, experience, and the nature of the role have no business trying to cheaply avoid the required costs of candidate evaluation. By trying to be cheap about it, they send a bad signal (and also generally don't succeed in getting the candidate pool they want to get).

Short, standardized, timed tests have no place in professional software hiring. Literally none. A company that uses such tests definitely raises red flags. It may be a sign of unredeemable dysfunction in the company, it may be some misguided HR initiative, it may be a totally fine place to work. The candidate can't tell and it's seriously not in their interest to waste effort on whatever the test is going to be.

There are just too many bad jobs ... the better decision rule is to always reject and if you end up rejecting an otherwise good job that somehow ended up using short, timed, standardized testing, oh well. The loss function is not symnmetric. Ending up in a dysfunctional job just because you felt good about acing their code test is a far worse outcome than rejecting an otherwise good job and being overly selective about where to work.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#278

Post by frcknfrckn »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #277
frcknfrckn wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the sarcasm a bit much? Yeah, probably. But really, everyone makes hard decisions when it comes to jobs. I just find it somewhat amusing that someone would reject a company entirely because they disagree with one single facet of a multi-step interview process. While we're at it, I don't particularly appreciate many of the insinuations people have made about my team and my employers based simply on the fact that I…

> You feel that any use of that tool is indicative of some unredeemable flaw in the company as a whole. This is a good summary of my position, except that it's not unredeemable. They could just stop using short, standardized, timed tests as a candidate evaluation, and instead they could acknowledge that there is no effective substitute for actually speaking with candidates, probing them about their experiences, and d…

Yup, I still genuinely disagree with most of your points. Just not seeing the connection between using an interviewing tool and being a dysfunctional company. But like I said, spinning tires, etc. All the best to you going forward!

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#279

Post by im_down_w_otp »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #236
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #97

> "Job interviews are difficult by design." In the tech-sector at least they're not "difficult by design." They're obtuse and absurd due to laziness and lack of rigor applied to the problem space by individual firms as well as the aggregate marketplace. Almost nobody applies anything remotely resembling a scientific method or includes the massive body of research available in sociology, psychology, and/or neurology f…

Would you, kindly, start us off with whichever pieces are best for a company to implement/utilize in interviews?

Well, a good first place to start is to survey the various profile models that exist and figure out which one you can get most comfortable using/assessing.

http://www.businessballs.com/personalitystylesmodels.htm

I personally use OCEAN because I'm most comfortable with its scaffolding and applying it via field testing.

Then move on to how those models can be tracked/verified through neurological study. Dario Nardi @ UCLA is probably the most "renowned" researcher in this field, though there are many more.

Re: For anyone who has been turned down by 38 companies

#280

Post by kafkaesq »

jlees wrote: post #182
kafkaesq wrote: post #5

So, how did you get to where you are today? I’ve always been passionate about coding, starting from my early days at Olympiad teams in high school and ACM teams in college. Anyone who's made it onto an Olympiad team[1] of any significant geographical scale, in any category, shouldn't have to deal with this whiteboard nonsense. Maybe a few lightweight-to-medium rounds to verify that they are what they say they are. Bu…

Just because you are smart enough to compete in an Olympiad doesn't mean you can function practically on a software engineering team. Whiteboard coding helps the interviewer see how you think and function as well as "can you solve this problem"; though I agree that it's not necessarily the best way to evaluate those capabilities, it's the best tool some companies have.

Whiteboard performance (positive/negative) doesn't correlate all that well with practical performance on engineering teams, either.
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