311–320 of 524 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Whether that tells you anything about their ability to do fizzbuzz level programming in a more normal work environment is an open question.
There are a few HN readers who've had experience of "choking" on fizzbuzz level programming tests during interviews - even though it's trivial there's something about the interview situation that causes some people to sometimes freeze.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often the "information sideband" is the very fact that the company decided to cut off all communication as a way to convey rejection. If they treat random people that way, how do you think they treat people who are obligated to be on their worksite every day? Companies: DON'T DO THIS! I, for one, actively discourage smart friends from interviewing at places that treat candidates like shit.
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…
That's just nuts, what a horrible experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often these things are scored and ranked separately. Your phone interviewer will likely have scored you on various things, the score from your coding challenge will be taken as well, then everyone will sit down and discuss how people did and rule people in/out.
The only purpose of a code challenge or whiteboard session is to get the candidate and the interviewer talking about code. This is the only signal that you really want out of these exercises. To do both is wasteful, but if I did either and that _didn't result in a conversation about code_, I wouldn't continue with the interview process. Their processes are broken.
That depends heavily on what they're actually screening for. I've received an embarrassing number of utterly atrocious code challenges from candidates in the past. If you can't code something like a roman numeral generator/reader (when allowed to do so at home, in whatever language you want, spending as long as you want on it) then continuing the interview process at this point is a huge waste of time.
In those processes, the purpose was to weed out people that simply could not code at all. Or even cheat, since there are solutions all over the internet for any language you want.
A later stage was to do some programming with us, and we'd talk through issues and see how they dealt with problems/etc.
> 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 got laid off recently and was applying for all the jobs I could find. So I had to do a bunch of these programming projects. I don't mind them per-se, but it takes so long to do each one and you have to be ultra-clean with each one. I don't think companies take into account that you might not have that much free time. It's particularly stressful when you don't get through. On pair programming tasks, I had a pair pro…
1. Phone screen amounting to about 45 minutes.
2. Skype interview with small code samples between two interviewers at 45 minutes each.
3. 2-week paid trial doing real work.
I had #2 yesterday and am currently waiting to hear back from them about moving onward.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never underestimate the dark powers of an incompetent HR department. Not saying this is the case here, but sure has the looks of it ... The person that interviewed was a programmer. The follow up to an interview is usually done by HR. As stated earlier, this is simply an observation I made throughout the years when being in contact with various HR departments. Your mileage may vary.
Any interview I've ever had where HR is involved is somewhere I would never work. Last time this happened I was informed that Russian and Indian are races. Talking about my coworkers by their country of origin (I was saying how refreshing it was to work with a broad array of people in SF vs what I normally work with [white male] in Oklahoma.) Russian is a race. Seriously. HR employees are worthless in my experience (…
That's a dickish thing to say about white men :-/
You just have to determine whether I am a liar--or, more generously, simply unable to assess my own abilities accurately.
> 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.
Watch the recent coreos post/video, the CTO is probably a smart and nice guy but he looks about 16.
HN is not a place for discussing personal details about somebody, like how they look. Moreover, that weird "but" makes this comment read like an attack. Please don't post anything like this again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290180 and marked it off-topic.