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On asking job candidates to code

philcalcado.com

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Re: On asking job candidates to code

#361

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

stutsmansoft wrote: post #60
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 personally would love this style of job screening. I'm not at all worried about 8 "unpaid" hours.

You're free to your opinion, but, you probably should be. Any company that deems your time worthless for the interview probably feels the same way about your time during the work week. Maybe 60-80 hour death marches are your thing, but, that's not a perk I am (and I suspect many others are) looking for.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#362

Post by protomyth »

pyb wrote: post #256
vkjv wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of quick notes: * If you don't provide a link to your github profile, I'm not supposed to look at it. This an HR requirement. Other companies may use this same policy. * I definitely look at github, but it's not always easy to tell if a project is original or not. Quite often I'm presented with either 30 forks, or a few projects that seem like they started as some boilerplate. * Don't just provide github, al…

"I'm not allowed to look at it." Uh? Is it a concern that you'd get too much information about a candidate?

Various states have laws that amount to information about the candidates past or current conditions that should not be used for job decisions. HR is there to protect the company, so they often will tell people what they can consider. Think of it as the human equivalent of not being able to comment on crime data when selling a home.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#363

Post by GVIrish »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #169
vonmoltke wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, some validation that my interpretation of their process is not insane. One thing that really rustles my jimmies is the constant assertion that "false negatives are (effectively) free". I think Google and the companies who hire like them seriously underestimate how much this costs them, both the direct costs of spending so much to ultimately reject people and the indirect costs from the work that is not getti…

The root issue is that, the costs of bad hiring are even higher than that. For a rapidly-growing company bad hires can snowball into a bad organization.

I suspect that the idea that the costs of bad hires are huge comes from not identifying bad hires early. If you hire a jerk who makes poor coding decisions and fail to oust him for a year or more, the effect could be devastating. If said jerk is spotted in a month or so, it may not be so costly.

And really there are levels of bad hire. There's the bad hire who really doesn't know how to do the job and will never get good enough to do it. That person should be very easy to spot with not too much effort in the interview process. The dangerous hire is someone who on the surface can do the work but has a toxic attitude and/or doesn't learn/grow. I'm not sure putting someone through a torturous interview process is going to root that person out.

I think where a lot of the elitist hiring is at now is that many companies aren't so much trying to filter out people who can't do the job, so much as they're holding out for who they think are rockstars. So they put candidates through the ringer with the thought that what will be left is rockstar material.

But many highly-qualified individuals won't jump through hoops for any but the top tier companies, and sometimes not even then. Furthermore, by definition, rockstars make up a very small percentage of the devs out there. What are the chances that every company who is holding out for elite coders even has any applying? Especially considering that elite people probably don't jump around often.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#364

Post by justinhj »

A few years ago I was given a programming test after an initial phone screen with a HR person. They said do it in any language, and it had a fancy framework that let you edit and test the solution before you sent it.

I chose Clojure since I was learning it at the time. The problems were easy and I made working solutions, but the framework wasn't working. I gathered some call stack data and sent it to the people that make the tool. They thanked me for the feedback and later fixed the bug.

I sent the completed code by email to the company with a note about what had happened. Showing clearly that my code works in the form of some tests.

Then, on the basis of this they didn't proceed.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#366

Post by brightsize »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #44
_ak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what probation periods are for. Use them.

What do you mean by probation periods? Something like... "Hi, I'd like to ask you to work for a very temporary contract with us so, if it doesn't work out, you have to scramble to find more work and maybe risk homelessness."

In my experience, in the US, in the few times I've been asked to work for a 2-3 month test-drive, the proposition has been more like ...

Them: "Your skills are great, nice job on the coding project. You seem like a really good fit. We want to hire you, but we'd like you to work on a temporary contract with us at first to see how it goes for both of us."

Me: "Hmm, OK, this does seem like a very good fit and I'm cool with the test-drive. My off-site rate is $150/hr, I can have the contract on your desk in two days."

Them: "Er, wha ..., no, you see, we'll take the salary we talked about and just translate that to an hourly rate. It shouldn't be a big deal, this will only be for three months max."

Net of it: after killing it in the interview, I'm offered a short term C2C contract at drastically reduced rates, doing my usual best work, while getting no employee benefits and paying my own SE taxes, retirement contributions, and all business expenses.

I've encountered such propositions only a few times in the past 5 years, and walked each time obviously, but I still find the chutzpah of these companies astonishing.

On the other hand, maybe that was the last part of the interview? They may have wanted to see if I had any self-respect, any self-confidence, could do math, and understand basic business concepts like taxation and fully-loaded employment costs? A "no" to any of these things would have meant I'd be a more ignorant, cheaper and thus much more highly-valued employee as time went on.

Edit: typo

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#367

Post by seanp2k2 »

hnrodey wrote: post #41

I'm going through the interview process this week at two different companies. One of the companies I found through an ad on Stack Overflow whereby they publish two programming "exercises/puzzles" with the opportunity to earn $100 for a correct answer to each puzzle ($200 total for two correct answers). While I spent more than eight hours on both puzzles, I found them to be thought provoking and I learned stuff in the…

The flip side of this is that not everyone has the luxury of that much free time to focus on puzzle-type exercises just to get a foot in the door. This process seems to select for single people with a good amount of free time, which, depending on who you ask, is possibly what they want (if e.g. frequently greater than 40hr work weeks are expected).

Edit: thinking more about this, it's good to see that it's a paid puzzle, so even if you don't get an interview, you are still compensated for your time.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#368

Post by raverbashing »

jcadam wrote: post #89

A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…

> and also these kids have no sense of respect and professional courtesy

Yeah, this is so true it hurts

Not only kids mind you

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#369

Post by seanp2k2 »

maxaf wrote: post #114
mtberatwork wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that so many employers treat candidates like this Don't give up. Most established companies aren't run by 20-somethings. If the seniors are already in their mid-20s and lack professionalism, then most likely there are other issues going on at this company. You may have dodged the proverbial bullet.

> You may have dodged the proverbial bullet. Wish I could upvote this twice! Every rejection I've ever received came with an information-rich sideband that told me more about the prospective employer than an acceptance would have. In at least half of such cases I said to myself: "phew, that was a bullet I was lucky to dodge... imagine how it might feel to work with these people!"

Yep. I had a company in the Bay Area fly me out for an interview explaining that they'd pay all expenses (as is common). They made me an offer and I went with a different company. They completely ignored my expense submission (they indicated how to submit this previously...basically just send them photos of the receipts and they'd send me a check) and ignored me after I let them know I was going with another offer, so I was stuck with ~$300 in taxi bills (SFO South Bay gets pricey real fast in the days before Uber).

Really really glad I didn't end up there.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#370

Post by protomyth »

iolothebard wrote: post #259
jcadam wrote: post #89

A couple of months ago I did a 'homework' assignment for an interview (it involved writing a simple REST service in go, even though I have at least one personal project demonstrating exactly this skill -- to an even greater degree -- in my github profile). During the phone-discussion after turning in the project, the mid 20-something lead developer couldn't find anything to nitpick (I could have) and even told me he…

I've had this happen multiple times. Why would you hire your own replacement? (This is how they think.) When they have someone hiring not based on what's best for the company but what's best for their own career goals, you know you're going to have issues. Welcome to the world of tailoring yourself for the job. I'm in my 40s, so it gets worse. Can't wait until I'm over 50!

> Welcome to the world of tailoring yourself for the job. I'm in my 40s, so it gets worse. Can't wait until I'm over 50!

It seems like someone could get a pretty good staff if they targeted all the late 30+ people.

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