I will not do a tech interview

Post by jlarocco » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

tocomment wrote: post #37

300bps wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I do not see how you can lose if you take the contract-to-hire approach I agree with most of what you said, but one way you can lose if you insist on contract-to-hire is that you are filtering out a portion of the highest quality candidates who are only interested in immediate full time hiring.

I don't think many candidates are interested in "immediate" hiring. Most people I know need to take extra time to wait for other offers to come in. It also gives the candidate a way to see what kind of problems he'd be working with, and the quality of the code-base, working conditions, etc. I think it's a win-win.

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #111

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good developers cost, what, $120K-150K/year? If a two week trial period is "expensive" to you, you don't have the budget for someone in that pay range.

It's expensive in other ways though. A programmers who is currently employed but thinking about moving on probably won't agree to a two-week trial period because of the substantial risk that they get rejected afterwards and end up unemployed. That makes the trial period expensive to him . In turn, it makes it expensive to the employer as well, because you'll filter out good people.

Post by jarek » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:18 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #247

peeters wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like software engineering is one of the only fields with people arrogant enough to assume that every good and passionate programmer should also be doing programming as a hobby. I loved software engineering so much that I decided to turn it into a career, so that I could do it every day. But now you want me to do it every day and every night? No. My work during the day is fulfilling. My hobbies provide…

If I have two candidates and the only signals are (resume, portfolio), then I will select the highest signal. I am sorry, but I can't in conscience decide to take someone without proven work over someone with proven work without other information. If your resume is significant, then I will probably add to the signals with a phone call followup. I'm not looking to create false negatives. I also want to point out that…

Post by heurist » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:21 PM UTC

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #187

pja wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google recently revealed that going back over the data they kept about past hires demonstrated that an individual's GPA was completely independent of the quality of their future contributions to the company. Why should Oracle be any different?

google are a notoriously selective employer, so it's hardly surprising that GPA has limited predictive power within the sample of people who were successful applicants.

Post by ewest » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:25 PM UTC

pdovy wrote: post #255

300bps wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, is this a money issue, i.e., you refuse because it feels like working for free? Not OP, but it doesn't "feel" like working for free. It is working for free. Having someone perform work for you without paying them is illegal in the United States (see minimum wage laws). There's a simple solution; pay them $x per hour to do your 3 hours of work. Even if you pay them $100 per hour that's a cheap way of filt…

Hm, I guess I didn't think about it that way since we wouldn't actually ever give out "real" work, we give out the same problem (which is an extremely scaled down version of a real application) to most everybody who passes a phone screen. I think paying them is perfectly reasonable, but I'll also note anecdotally that having done this for many candidates for years, I think very few people have ever declined.