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On asking job candidates to code

philcalcado.com

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Re: On asking job candidates to code

#301

Post by st3v3r »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Like the author, having run a hiring program for several years based on coding challenges designed to mimic the work the team does (ie, work sample tests), I do not understand why any tech company does developer hiring in any other way. I particularly like how this team iterated on their uploader problem, abstracting it out to a socket server and providing a test suite for it. Reacting to ambiguity by abstracting the…

Because not every candidate has the time to do additional work outside of work.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#302

Post by dublinben »

kozukumi wrote: post #289
dublinben wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this article[0] Robert Cornish is 45. [0] http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/3532520/banking...

No we were talking about Brandon Philips :)

That makes more sense. He does look like a teenager. According to Crunchbase he's actually 32!

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#303

Post by JoeAltmaier »

kafkaesq wrote: post #283
dominotw wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had nightmare of a interview experience with AirBnb in 2012. They asked me take 2 days off from work and fly all the way to SFO after I wasted couple of hours doing their coding homework. The first interviewer started with "your degree is not from a good school" like the very first sentence right to my face. He then asked me a string matching question, and insisted that I code up his brute force solution (with terr…

"Your degree is not from a good school" Next time they do that, I hope the candidate says whatever profanities they feel obliged to say to the interviewer's face. And then walks out. By all means, keep posting + telling your friends about this experience.

Its all too common. Probably for the usual reason - it works so well. Many candidates from a 'good school' have been filtered for ability, so essentially come with an endorsement. Those from other schools don't have that endorsement. They may be equally capable, but then again they may not. In fact, often not.

So, discrimination is rampant because it works so well. Its not fair, possibly not legal, but hard to stamp out.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#304

Post by grandalf »

Tunabrain wrote: post #9

> As brain-dead as I was after eight hours at my project, [..] Is giving out an 8+ hour programming project as part of the application process really considered good hiring practice? If you apply to five jobs, you're expected to spend an entire unpaid work week writing code that doesn't benefit anyone? If a company receives 20 applicants, their ideal candidate selection wastes a collective work month? I don't really…

> 8+ hour programming project

It's better than a 5 minute brain teaser question. Any job worth having is worth spending 8 hours applying for. Anyone who views this as "free work" probably won't be a good hire for other reasons.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#305

Post by JoeAltmaier »

danielvinson wrote: post #298
maxaf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you feel better about providing work samples if you got paid fairly for each one?

Maybe this is a bit rant-y, but "Paid Fairly" is incredibly relative. Every time I've been asked about doing some sort of paid coding assignment in my free time, I've asked to be paid at my hourly consulting rate, which many people do regularly, which is $60/hr. This is really not that much for a consulting developer. Every time this has come up, the company would not pay that rate, and offered something more like $2…

I have the same issue. It costs me hundreds of dollars to even agree to an interview, at my hourly rate. To further ask me to do homework is to bilk me for thousands. I cannot afford to apply for most jobs, as long as I have a consulting backlog. Which I almost always do.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#306

Post by eternalban »

Tunabrain wrote: post #9

> As brain-dead as I was after eight hours at my project, [..] Is giving out an 8+ hour programming project as part of the application process really considered good hiring practice? If you apply to five jobs, you're expected to spend an entire unpaid work week writing code that doesn't benefit anyone? If a company receives 20 applicants, their ideal candidate selection wastes a collective work month? I don't really…

> I don't really understand this ideal.

It seems pretty simple to me, if you consider the entire protocol as what it is: a negotiation, with one side asserting their dominant position.

Please excuse me hn for beating this horse to death, but for God's sake, Programmers of the World, Organize.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#307

Post by SilasX »

mooreds wrote: post #281
dominotw wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had nightmare of a interview experience with AirBnb in 2012. They asked me take 2 days off from work and fly all the way to SFO after I wasted couple of hours doing their coding homework. The first interviewer started with "your degree is not from a good school" like the very first sentence right to my face. He then asked me a string matching question, and insisted that I code up his brute force solution (with terr…

It's almost like we need a glassdoor for folks who've just interviewed at companies.

... so, like regular GlassDoor.com. Not sure if you were joking:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Airbnb-Interview-Questio...

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#308

Post by st3v3r »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #87

not sure why there is so much resistance here about doing an 8 hour test, I might be in the minority but for a traditional whiteboard interview I would spend a lot more than 8 hours revising algorithms and so on, and have a lot of stress due to whiteboard coding not being anything like real coding. Being able to take a Sunday to work on a challenging problem in my own editor / computer / dev environment sounds great!…

Because usually you're not applying to just one company, but several. And as you get older, you'll have other things to do outside of work, like family, which makes finding that 8 hours extremely challenging.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#309

Post by SilasX »

mtberatwork wrote: post #99
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is: Writing good resumes and having a lot of experience with programming is a good heuristic for "experience" and "knows how to play the game" but not meaningfully useful for "excellent at programming". Work-sample tests measure the latter. A worker's experience is a heuristic for programming skill, but a heuristic of a heuristic is like an average of a set of averages: Useless.

> Work-sample tests measure the latter. I think that's debatable. The quality of your measurement is then simply a function of how well your tests are in the first place. Do you really think giving a person FizzBuzz is any kind of accurate predictor of future success at a job?

FizzBuzz isn't a test of whether a candidate will succeed, but of whether they will definitely fail. Someone who passes may be good or bad, but someone who can't do it is definitely not qualified.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#310

Post by spike021 »

w8rbt wrote: post #288
spike021 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, at least for their engineering internships, they have a pre-filled list of top schools to choose from followed by an "other" option (at least when I tried applying a couple years ago). That told me exactly what I needed to know. I'd be instantly rejected because of not going to a "good school".

Curious. What schools are on the list? Would a CS degree from Georgia Tech do? Also curious about VT and NC State. I think all three of those are 'good technical schools'.

Here is the screenshot I took at the time: http://i.imgur.com/FXEHuhc.png
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