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Are you sure you didn't sign any NDA, preventing you from working on ideas you might get during interview? Google used to have pretty water-tight policy on outflow of ideas (but inflow was encouraged) during interviews.
Does Google make you sign an NDA before you interview?!
Before I have used Fitocracy, I'd say this may be the biggest competitor to this, as it is (at least 5 years ago when I used it) more tailored for strength, where one can log specific exercises and track them over time.
Are we sure that it is worth all this effort? Are they so much better than any other company or startup?
Is our own self so much more valuable if a random intervier liked our works an epsilon more than the other candidate?
People inside FAANG are unhappy as well, they leave their company as well.
I believe we should be less impacted by the ads that Google is running to sponsor itself as the best workplace ever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My policy, before finding a place I like and plan to stick around at, is no programming tasks. There's plenty of companies desperate to hire than you can be picky if you know your stuff. I also will walk out if they start up with those 'clever' programming questions that have nothing to do with the job.
Can you illustrate that in practice? You took out the time to go to some office. You just spent an hour talking about your hobbies and attitudes and the company's working culture etc. Then, a programmer asks you to balance a red/black tree. You do.. what? You angrily throw the marker on the ground, cry insult, and run out the building? No, right? So then what? I see this repeated a lot on HN and I'm not sure I'd have…
How about a phone call or a quick email to ask what is their hiring process, what is the work and how it is usually fulfill?
In the current market you are not a seller, you are the buyer. Why should I consider working for you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can offer different perspective here: what about a task which also has some value for you? I rarely give tasks to candidates and only in cases where otherwise good candidate is not familiar with our technology stack. The task in that case is to build a proof of concept on that stack and requires fast learning and general understanding of software architecture. I always give detailed feedback on completed solutions.…
I would never spend 4 hours on a task after hours for a company I'm interviewing for, that is my time and I value my work life balance. It is my humble opinion that a serious interview should take max 1 hour.
One hour interview cannot be more than just screening, when split 50-50 to give candidates enough time to ask their questions. It leaves ridiculously small amount of time to the really interesting technical topics. And this discussion is important: CVs are not trustworthy, plenty of people lie or exaggerate the facts — only a live talk can verify the necessary knowledge, experience and skills. It may not be enough, true, but hiring someone after barely speaking to him is unnecessary risk. And hiring someone without necessary practical knowledge and without proving the ability to learn quickly is the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't spend half a day in your building without being paid. At home, I can split the task. Beside, 4 hours task is a bad joke. I interview at a lot of different companies. I have no time for this.
My policy, before finding a place I like and plan to stick around at, is no programming tasks. There's plenty of companies desperate to hire than you can be picky if you know your stuff. I also will walk out if they start up with those 'clever' programming questions that have nothing to do with the job.
When people are turning their interview questions into successful companies, maybe it is time to start asking some easier interview questions. This is a visceral demonstration of how absolutely ridiculous interviews have gotten.
Also, OP launched on product hunt today. Calling them a "successful company" is generous if not outright false, though I wish them every success.
Stated less dramatically, what happened here is "I turned my design interview prompt into a real piece of software". That doesn't imply that google's interview questions are too hard. A software company asking for a deliverable that approximates software is sane.
I think the time that google demands for their take-homes is a bit much (explicitly, this is 4-6 hours. in practice, it's 20 to 30 if you want to deliver at high caliber). But the questions/prompts themselves are intentionally quite boring, and exist to see how far you can take it.
I found them to be pretty good. These kinds of questions depend somewhat on chemistry between candidate and prompt, so they ask more than one of them, which is great. The takehome I picked was the only one of the 3 offered I could even pretend to care about. Of the two asked onsite, one I felt I delivered on at only the most basic level, and one I think I could have credibly patented / raised a series A for were it a thing I cared to spend 2 years on.
I opened the PDF to find not one, but three separate tasks. Completion of all three was expected, with an estimate of about two hours each. One of the tasks was to replicate Apple’s ‘Reminders’ app in its entirety, backend sync functionality included. Another, a task requesting Visual Studio (iOS devs have no need for any experience with this).
I promptly replied declining to continue the interview process. If you’re ever in a similar situation, interviews can sometimes tell you more about the company than they can learn about you. Good chance I dodged a bullet, and could have been working for someone setting highly unrealistic client deadlines, with the expectation that I can build something in any technology proficiently.
Are you sure you didn't sign any NDA, preventing you from working on ideas you might get during interview? Google used to have pretty water-tight policy on outflow of ideas (but inflow was encouraged) during interviews.
Does Google make you sign an NDA before you interview?!
I never had to provide an actual signature, aside from a verbal agreement with the recruiter to not share interview questions.