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Please stop the coding challenges

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Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#281

Post by TeMPOraL »

HPsquared wrote: post #185
cess11 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they expect people to work for free for more than a month to learn material they then won't use. In my mind that's a rather nasty practice. Not that I'm complaining. I'm happy to pick up people that are good at computers but wouldn't be able to pass that hurdle, and probably wouldn't hire anyone that has.

It's very mild compared to postgraduate education. Or getting a degree in general. That's years!

If you're getting a PhD solely for a job in marginally related part of industry, that's on you. The experience is useful if you're doing it for right reasons, instead of as a proxy ritual to boost your CV. There are more efficient ways to do the latter.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#282

Post by 0xffff2 »

bhhaskin wrote: post #250
0xffff2 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come around to the idea that all people who will be expected to write code as part of their job need to be evaluated for their ability to write code as part of the interview process. I've seen too many people write convincing and impressive resumes without a single ounce of technical ability to their name.

You're hiring for a senior role, not a junior or mid. Your candidates aren't fresh out of school or just starting their careers. They already have plenty of work experience. They already know how to code and have been doing it for years. A conversation will tell you much more about their approaches to problems solving, team work, and mentoring than a coding challenge will. Looking at their GitHub, their work experien…

>They already know how to code and have been doing it for years.

I'm telling you from my own experience that this is observably not true. Twice now I've been burned by internal hires who objectively had years of experience (easy to verify when they have been working within my division) and yet couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

And tangentially, with some of the health care experiences I've had I very well might try to administer a basic anatomy quiz to potential doctors if I thought I could get away with it.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#283

Post by theamk »

redundantly wrote: post #249
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…

> > When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team? > All the time. So you were forced to do it in a silo? No access to any type of documentation, whatsoever? Not able to refer to any C++ manuals or any other type of documentation? Not permitted to access the internet to look things up? Barred from using online forums to seek help?

You've read the post, right?

The OP says: "A “4-hour” assignment". This is take-home, so candidates are free to use any C++ manuals, documentation, AI, online forums, whatever...

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#284

Post by Temporary_31337 »

Aside from all the comments saying that coding challenges aren’t as unrealistic as you think, there’s also the fact that there seems to be an oversupply of good enough coders for some roles so companies need to filter beyond that. Yeah inclusive environments etc is a nice to have but if you can get a top level coder that can solve problems quickly and not crumble under time pressure, even better. Why settle for good enough if you can get really good instead?

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#285

Post by stickfigure »

bhhaskin wrote: post #263
stickfigure wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you waste your time with? I exclusively give pairing interviews, usually just 1 hr. The variance between good and bad candidates is amazing, and you wouldn't guess at all from resumes or casual conversations. Most candidates have given me very positive feedback. Why wouldn't you want to be interviewed like this?

I'm a senior developer. Of course I know how to code. Do you know how many code challenges I've done over the course of my career? 99% of them where terrible at evaluating my ability to code. They are a waste of time at the senior level. You are much better off with a conversation, looking at past work and experience and references than you are doing code challenges.

After interviewing ~50 people using this technique - I'm sorry but there's no "of course". I cannot tell by looking at your past work experience or talking to you whether you know how to code.

I know this, because I used to look at resumes and have long conversations before I ran my pairing interview. And I found the results almost uncorrelated. Now I save the fun conversations for people who make it through the screening. But by then I already know if I want to hire them.

My pairing interview (it's a pairing session, not a code challenge) covers aspects of engineering that I specifically care about. It's not terribly hard. But at the end I'll have a pretty good idea if I want to turn this person loose in my codebase.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#286

Post by janalsncm »

Frame shift: coding challenges are work. (I don’t care that the assignment is useless for the company, that’s not my problem!) The issue for me is that it is unpaid.

If you really want me as a developer, pay me. As an industry, we might even set a standard rate for these homework assignments. I suggest a rate which is enough for me to say it wasn’t a waste of my time.

As an anecdote, I was interviewing at a startup that sent me one of these homework assignments. I told them I would do it for $1000 now, or whenever I got around to it otherwise. I never got around to it.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#287

Post by nvahalik »

We recently went through a hiring process using a recruiter. Our assumption was that the people they vetted were "legit" and we didn't need to do any additional work to verify that they had the skills they said they had. If the recruiter wastes our time it's a surefire way for them to never get business again.

Anyway, in lieu of a coding interview, I opened up a couple of tickets (one a long term change request, another a real life problem we encountered just the day before). I provided them logs and answered questions and watched the interviewees move through both scenarios.

We capped the time at an hour. The focus was more on the interaction between them and myself—it actually used the "real stuff" they'd encounter.

I was amazed at the diversity of the responses and how differently people approached a problem.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#288

Post by dylan604 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #215
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…

> When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team? Heck, I have to debug the stuff that some idiot (me) wrote six months ago and it might as well have been someone else who wrote it for all I remember about how to debug it

So many times I'm reviewing code and really wish unpleasant words with the developer that created this horrible code. Problem is, people think I'm weird when I talk to myself like that.

Edit: apparently this wasn't written clearly enough that I was the original dev that I'm having words with???

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#289

Post by John_Cena »

bhhaskin wrote: post #269
alkonaut wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither did I. But I'd rather just "smuggle" out some past work and "rewrite it" to make it inconspicuous, if I didn't have my own personal work to show. The company I work for isn't well known so saying "I worked there in a senior role for 10 years" isn't going to get me the next job. If I didn't have anything to show for that I either made for fun or could display from a past job, I'd not apply for another until I…

Wouldn't that be a red flag if they don't have any public code at all as a senior developer? They aren't fresh out of school or just starting their careers. They should have something.

I'm a senior developer and my github is half guitar tabs. I'm not interested in peacocking. Maybe it's because Hackaday refused to put my name on the article with my senior design project years ago and I just don't want to play the game.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#290

Post by nox101 »

> When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team?

All the time now that WFH is normal and collaborating with a team member is 10x harder and 10x slower.

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