371–380 of 615 posts
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Had one with Deliveroo. They responded, but they were declining me because I didn't do what they explicitly told me not to do in the instructions. They wanted people who "went above and beyond".
>"went above and beyond" Definition: Willing to put your thumb on the work side of the scales in a work/life balance for no extra compensation. See also: Taking advantage of your workforce.
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Well, that certainly selects for engineers willing to do unreasonable amounts of work without questioning it.
If that's how you want to test potential engineers, I don't necessarily see a problem with the task itself. Just pay them! I'm sure Uber can find the budget for that.
Snark aside, it can iffy to pay someone for a task at your company when they are still under contract in their previous job. In that sense, while your point is sensible, it can be difficult to go that route from the candidate side.
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When interviewing execs who would be building new departments a few years ago, I would pose the question of "In the wake of Arab spring in Libya, the people decide that you are their next leader. What happens in your first 100 days?". The answers ran the gamut from lazy to fantastic to terrifying. A lot of answers where generic "coalition building" variety. The better answers identified key areas to focus on like inf…
Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I don't like this question because you know there is a politically correct answer and then an actual course of action people would take. The proper answer is: introduce democratic government, clean up the country, introduce proper amenities (healthcare, etc) and spread the wealth for the benefit of the people. Fact of the matter is: absolute power corrupts, and plenty of people w…
I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber. Here's the exact challenge: UberCab Coder Challenge 1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed ra…
Wow. That's just abusive...
Very funny dog using toilet Try to control your laugh http://bit.ly/2LVSNSG
Cute dog doing exercise like humans http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz.
This reminds me of a take home software engineering interview I was once given via email. Same deal, I was told about 5 hours. I’m an iOS developer, so I was expecting a pretty simple app. 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 fun…
You can learn a lot about a company's pain points by the questions they ask during the interview...chances are they're problems they're struggling with at the moment.
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Well, that certainly selects for engineers willing to do unreasonable amounts of work without questioning it.
If that's how you want to test potential engineers, I don't necessarily see a problem with the task itself. Just pay them! I'm sure Uber can find the budget for that.
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Having never worked in SV, are these home assignments common there? I know several engineers who would refuse to do any homework at all as a matter of principle, so a task of this magnitude without compensation sounds laughable on the face of it.
It's not the norm but it's not uncommon at startups. Also, it seems to be standard practice for data science interviews. I personally don't put up with it, but then there are always lots of commenters in HN who bemoan whiteboard interviews and prefer take-homes. To each their own.
I would rather whiteboard about the design of the app/tool than some random question another engineer pulled out of their ass twenty minutes before the interview and has unreasonably strong opinions about the design and implementation based on whatever source they stole the problem from because they don't actually understand the problem either.
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Depends on if you're happy just being a hired gun instead of an employee. The real problem is that they've broken the social contract implicit in the interviewing process, which is that the work you're doing is only to prove yourself and that they won't benefit by it except to be able to gauge your skills. If instead they had been honest up-front that they wanted to hire you short term as a trial period type thing wi…
Not worthwhile, but it would have been interesting if you'd completed the project and included some telltale sign that you'd authored the code. Then, if you found they'd deployed it without you having granted them a right to use your copyrighted work, you'd have an interesting basis for a lawsuit.
That's what I usually do with code challenges!