Take-home interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Take-home interviews

#291

Post by brianwawok » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:26 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #58

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…

> Would expect it to take maybe 5 hours to code. So, if you are interviewing at 20 companies, you need to expend 100+ hours or almost 3 full work weeks ? It should take 1 hour or less. Period. Probably less that 1/2 hour. I doubt I get much more information asking you for a 5 hour assignment than a 1/2 hour assignment. If I'm really that interested in your programming on the fly, I should do it at the interview where…

> So, if you are interviewing at 20 companies, you need to expend 100+ hours or almost 3 full work weeks?

I have never interviewed at 20 companies when I needed a new position. If you do, cool - but not sure I want to simplify my hiring process to help someone mass interviewing.

If we have a conversation and we both like each other, let's see if we can come to terms we are both happy with. If we are playing other companies off each other for 1k raises, it seems not really worth the hassle.

Re: Take-home interviews

#292

Post by dpark » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #288

dpark wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not believe coding is largely separate from engineering. I could pick up a cookbook and study how to cook a souffle. I could learn enough about this academically that I could answer basically any questions you might ask. Having this academic knowledge is a good thing, but it doesn't mean I've ever even separated an egg. If you really want to know if I can make a souffle, your best bet is to hand me the stuff a…

I think I'm not being clear and may be misunderstanding you. When I was writing signal processing code, we had four levels of engineering. - The first was an Algorithm Description Document. This document laid out, in mathematical terms, the algorithms used for various signal processing functions in the system. It was purely conceptual. - The second was an Algorithm Implentation Document. This document mapped the algo…

Yes, I'm generally looking for someone who can do all of those things (though I don't work in DSP, so it's not an exact mapping). I would say that at least part of #3 is coding. If you're actually defining code layout etc., you are basically coding. If you dig deep enough here, you can probably rule out the vast majority of people who can't do #4. I still think it's a more efficient use of time to just ask them to do a bit of coding, though. Then I have certainty on the question rather than an implicit answer.

Re: Take-home interviews

#293

Post by sammydavis » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

odonnellryan wrote: post #144

robspychala wrote: post #106

From the employees' perspective: Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. You send it over, then the company says no or yes, only to move to new stage. In the worst case you ruined your weekend and received a no. But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your…

I've gotten some pretty wacky projects. Basically, implement a fairly-complex web app. Something that I'd assume (even after doing similar tasks) would probably take me up to 40 hours of work, just because the scope is so crazy. They want user login, multiple features, etc... basically an MVP for a small product. It's hard. If you submit part of the project, which you usually have to do unless you're unemployed, they…

I recently interviewed for 4 jobs, one of them was one of these type of "you must implement this in 1 hour". It was painful. I didn't finish in time. Apparently the idea was you much choose language X, it will e pretty easy with language X. I chose Y, and they said why did you choose Y, that was stupid. Result - I chose one of my other 3 offers, took the one that made me a staff programmer. And I live in Seattle, ha ha bay area.

Re: Take-home interviews

#294

Post by tokipin » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

tokipin wrote: post #242

jimbokun wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, they are quite different forms of communication. Coming up with something that works, versus explaining why it works or why you did it that way after the fact. I think it's the "thinking out loud" part before you have a solution, that can fluster a lot of introverts.

for some it's not about introversion/extroversion but simply the fact that whatever part of their brain deals with speech is the same part that deals with thinking through those kinds of problems, so they can't do both at the same time as a matter of physics . this is to put it precisely. the reality is much messier and varied. the point is, people's brains are not wired the same. and what this means, to make a long…

[edit]oops. obviously, i meant apples to apples :D

Re: Take-home interviews

#295

Post by btilly » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #250

btilly wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And that seems fair. Why is it only the employee that is expected to take up time? At the end of the day there is likely to be more than one applicant, so your spending 3 hours of your time for 50% chance at best.

Just in case you look at your old thread.

The fundamental reason why this is OK is that the company is hoping to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate's time. The person who pays the piper, gets to choose how it happens.

But that said, it is still fair. The effort required to hire a new person into a competent company is significantly greater than the effort it takes a competent person to get a new job. As a candidate it doesn't look like this because you see that you personally gave the company more attention than vice versa. However you don't see all of the other people who the company also paid attention to and ultimately rejected.

If you're a competent developer it probably still doesn't look like this because the company usually develops procedures that concentrate the required effort in the hiring manager and/or HR. Therefore you have little idea how much effort is actually spent looking for candidates.

But spend time as a hiring manager and it will be obvious.