321–330 of 545 posts
I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…
This - the non-portable aspect - is what irks me the most.
Especially for enterprise developers. Since most of the software we develop is under NDA, we cannot put any of it online to showcase our skills.
I've had to do 3 different take-home "coding exercises" over the last 10 days. 1 was for a Hedge Fund, another for a Real Estate company and a 3rd for an Accounting SaaS company.
I'm in the process of publishing these coding exercise solutions after polishing it up a bit more onto my github profile. Still, I feel like this will also be a waste, because like OP says, most companies have their own specific "Coding tests" and wouldn't take an already coded solution to accept skills and experience of the candidate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I look at a developer's Github profile I know that: 1. They care enough to have a Github profile 2. I can see their actual interests. 3. I know they're interested in random experiments 4. I can see if and how they treat their projects. Are they dedicated maintainers, or do they just fire off one-shot projects without ever deciding to maintain them? And a whole lot more. A person who maintains a single shell scri…
That's fair, thanks for explaining. To me it's fine to treat it as a huge bonus if the engineer can maintain a long lasting project with diligence. I just know a lot of people find side projects fun because they can let loose a bit and try out random stuff that may not be their "best" code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're espousing a false dichotomy. The options in evaluating a candidate aren't merely "give them whiteboard coding problems" or "examine their side projects". Give them a take-home assignment. Give them an in-person assignment where they have several hours to complete a smallish design-and-build task. There are a lot more options, and I'm getting tired of people claiming they don't know how to evaluate technical ca…
Giving a candidate a "take-home assignment" is actually the most disrespectful of the options listed. Unless you're an awesome company, with really cool projects and offering me a jaw dropping salary and benefits, then no, I'm not going to do free work for you. Even if you are an awesome company, people probably have to actually work for you to see that, so no, I'm not going to do free work for you. I'd rather spend…
It's kinda funny that so many people have this attitude, when, as a salaried employee, we likely have all done more than a standard 40-hour work week on occasion (or habitually), without extra compensation.
Do you also consider time spent prepping for an interview (brushing up on algorithms, learning about the company, researching interview questions, whatever) as "doing free work"?
I just really don't get this attitude. It's not "work", it's a evaluation. And it's an evaluation that actually displays skills relevant to the job, unlike many other approaches.
I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
You're espousing a false dichotomy. The options in evaluating a candidate aren't merely "give them whiteboard coding problems" or "examine their side projects". Give them a take-home assignment. Give them an in-person assignment where they have several hours to complete a smallish design-and-build task. There are a lot more options, and I'm getting tired of people claiming they don't know how to evaluate technical ca…
After I submitted my solution though, the company came back to me and said that they had received a lot of submissions and would not move forward with my candidacy. This made me intensely angry as I had spent an entire evening coding up the solution.
To add insult to injury, they even asked me to remove the solution from Github where I had posted it (I had not posted the question so it wouldn't really make sense to someone just glancing at it). At that point I stopped all communication with said company.
I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not work for anyone who currently has a job, unless your current employer has extremely lax moonlighting policies.
True, but a paid short-term contract to do an actual task for the company would work. Knock out a small feature during the night/weekend. Keep it something contained and relatively straight-forward. If they can get it done, it demonstrates the candidate's ability to parse your codebase (so they are learning something they'd need for the job anyway) and they have contributed. I think most companies just don't want to…
It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person…
Computing is really noisy and chaotic. There are a lot of dudes out there that just can’t cut it, for whatever reason, and there’s no good way to figure out who’s who. Whiteboard stuff selects for a particular algorithmic dexterity that I just don’t need a lot of the time. And rejects some of the grungier virtues that make a big difference in moving units in production. Hiring folks for a couple weeks is fantasticall…
Inability to ship tends to be a project planning and scoping problem, not an engineering performance problem. If you can't ship, it's not because you have lazy developers but because you either bit off more scope than you could chew, or you don't actually have a plan that gets you from-here-to-shipping--one that is more detailed than "work harder, guys".
I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
Likewise the companies that think they are more important than my private life are not worthwhile for me to apply. If the HR isn't able to evaluate my skills from my references and the projects I helped my employers and customers to earn, there are also lots of companies to apply for. Just like employees, companies aren't special snowflakes. Besides most of my github stuff is useless for my type of work, because I am…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Employers don't care. The wrong empoyers don't care. The right ones do. My github portfolio is a means for me to determine if a potential employer is suitable for me, not the other way around. It's not a test for me to pass, it's a test for a potential employer to pass. If a recruiter brings up things listed on my LinkedIn page, I know they're not suitable for me. If they bring up things on my github, I'm reasonabl…
I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. Nor my plumber, dentist, gardener, or any other professional. I look at their past work history and reviews from customers and/or coworkers. I will never understand the belief that side projects are in any way necessary. I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the off…
If you were looking for a drummer for a band, you would want to hear him play.