Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On asking job candidates to code

philcalcado.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 524 posts

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#391

Post by jameshart »

jasode wrote: post #246
jameshart wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The denominator has no relevance to how selective your hiring process is. Your process does not become more exacting and precise simply because you received more applicants.

>denominator has no relevance to how selective Thank you for confirming that you were using the colloquial version of "selectivity" which doesn't require knowing the denominator instead of mathematical "selectivity" which does . You're using "selective" like this definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/selective I was using "selective" like this: http://www.programmerinterview.com/index.php/database-sql…

So you don't care about on what basis selection is performed?

If your assertion is just that Google rejects a higher proportion of applicants than Harvard, that's... not at all interesting. The lottery rejects and even larger proportion of applicants for its 'grant' program, but I'm not going to try to learn anything from how it goes about picking winners.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#392

Post by epicureanideal »

FilterSweep wrote: post #213
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…

"it's hard to find good developers".........who can implement a super-efficient malloc and free in a coding interview within 6 hours when applying to a CRUD/REST app job at a CRUD/REST app salary

Are low level engineers much better compensated? Do you see $300-400k salary for this kind of work?

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#393

Post by praneshp »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #369
maxaf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, s…

Yelp tried this with me, when I was in grad school and $150 was a really big amount. A friend of mine kindly offered to carry the expense report and drop it off with the recruiter when he went in to interview a month later.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#394

Post by IanCal »

busterarm wrote: post #360
IanCal wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Call it what it is then. It's not a challenge but a weed-out. I know full well that that's what your company is screening for, but that also means that I know that I don't want to work for you. My time and contributions will not be appropriately valued by such a company and I won't like working there. My skills/value are not commodity. I don't want to start out a hopefully multi-year relationship on dishonesty. I ima…

I guess I'm not really sure what the difference is, the entire point of all hiring processes is to "weed out" those that you don't want to hire. Otherwise what's the point?

> My time and contributions will not be appropriately valued by such a company and I won't like working there

I don't get how that's related.

> I don't want to start out a hopefully multi-year relationship on dishonesty.

There's no dishonesty there, the applicants were given a simple task to do in order to progress to the next step. If you're applying for a software engineer position and cannot even make a decent attempt at an extremely simple task when given complete flexibility then it's a waste of both of our time to continue.

(edit - I should point out that this was not at my current employer)

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#395

Post by llcoolv »

tostitos1979 wrote: post #344
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I balked at a take-home. They agreed it was a nuisance, instead hired me for a week to work with their team as a contractor ! At my rack rate. That was a great experience, didn't hit me in the pocketbook, and convinced the team we could work productively together.

This is a good idea. Doesn't work for people on visas but I can imagine working this out somehow. Basically, make the potential employer realize that your time isn't free.

I don't really agree - I remembered a take home assignment which combined enterprise-like object-oriented design (data model, strategy) with algorithmic thinking (several flavors of graph traversal). The job also turned out to be top-notch before the company was bought by a certain trading firm which has 2/5 (and falling) on glassdoor. 9 months later it was pure shite. it was the best team i ever worked in though - still keep in touch with some of the guys :)

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#396

Post by tjl »

vkjv wrote: post #244
enraged_camel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>* If you don't provide a link to your github profile, I'm not allowed to look at it. This an HR requirement. Other companies may use this same policy. First time I'm hearing about such a policy. Can you explain the reasoning?

I don't know the specific reasoning behind it. It's not specific to github. We aren't supposed to look at any reference that isn't provided by the candidate. This includes linkedin, facebook, etc. It's most likely an overly broad means of protecting against employment discrimination.

Considering that much of what's on people's Facebook pages is against the law to even ask about (in some jurisdictions) it's probably a wise choice. Stick to what's provided by the candidate. I provide a link to my LinkedIn page on my résumé, but nothing on it touches on areas I know would cause problems. Most of my coding is in private projects so I generally don't bother with listing my GitHub.

For example, I know that where I am it's against the law to ask if someone is married during the hiring process and that's pretty clear on many Facebook pages.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#397

Post by haylem »

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 agree it's frustrating - and I've been on both sides of that fence - but still... it always puzzles me when someone seems to get worked up over the fact they didn't seem to get the callback they expected even though they had been told they were probably good enough. Why do people simply forget about the possibility that someone even better showed up right after them and got the spot instead, and rightfully so? It doesn't (necessarily) mean you were bad, or that they lied to you, or anything of the sort. It might just mean they had other candidates who fared even better.

Also, in these cases, I'd recommend you simply call back yourself. Think of it as the opposite of the judicial system (for the US and most of Europe, at least): the burden of proof is on the prosecution. In this case, it's on the job-seeker. You're the one who has to show you want the job and that you're the best fit. The company's role is to find a good fit (and to do so by using their resources in a reasonable way).

That being said, I wouldn't advise on doing "homework" assignments that are exceedingly long.

For the record, when I am on the recruiting side of the fence, I always do a phone screening first, with live coding in a shared editor. Only then might remote homework or on site coding come up, and I always tried to make sure the effort is minimal. It's hard to find something that fits all people and minds though. Try to design a recruiting scheme, and let me know how it works out and if it doesn't piss anyone off. :)

The courtesy thing is another issue entirely, of course, and obviously a lot less defendable...

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#398

Post by TheOneTrueKyle »

I recently spent 4 weeks of my life interviewing for one of the bigger video games companies for their web dev team.

After those 4 weeks, I didn't get the job. Around the 3rd week I felt like my time was wasted. I want to work for this place, but if I want try again later in life, I probably won't because it took up way too much of my time with little to no value.

It sucks that I'm required to sacrifice my personal and vacation days to find potential new employment.

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#399

Post by innertracks »

grp wrote: post #208
innertracks wrote: post #101

Last week, I finished 2-3 hours of on-site interviews which required a flight and an overnight stay after an initial phone screen, a phone technical interview, and a short technical challenge online. I was surprised how a couple really basic concepts evaporated from my head during the in-person white boarding. The questions though were reasonable and the interviewers were friendly. All in all a positive experience ju…

Linden tea, orange blossom tea or mix of both. Have a nice deep sleep.

Noted. That sounds good. Thanks!

Re: On asking job candidates to code

#400

Post by haylem »

x0x0 wrote: post #352
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…

That sucks. I was an internal referral there for an ml position. They rolled a fucking front-end developer who had never looked at my resume into my first interview just shy of 25 minutes late. And yes I'm sure about the time, because I was walking out at 25 minutes. Dude was nice and we had fun chatting (not about work, just a cool outdoorsy dude), but we had nothing in common in the work we do. I finally talked to…

> They then decided they weren't sure if I wanted to work there (apparently because, you know, I'm in the habit of wasting a day of my life interviewing for giggles)

That's not really fair though. Tons of people apply for jobs because they need a job. I've surely done it in the past. I've applied and accepted jobs I didn't give a damn crap about. I had to pay rent, feed 2 kids, and pay my wife's tuition. And even did so with multiple jobs at the same time. Anything else was secondary. I went into interviews, praised the greatness of the ideas of some shitty startups which were doomed to fail. I always showed up prepared and was "professional" (in so far as you can show up and not give a rat's ass, but not let it show), and always tried to show I was invested by having already ideas about their products, website, etc... But still, didn't actually care for that stuff.

So, I was motivated and a good "employee", but was I a good fit? Probably not.

And, on the other hand, I also actually did interview at times just for giggles. Or for practice. Or just in case. Or to get leverage.

And when I was the recruiting, while I surely wouldn't assume that the person in front of me would be "interviewing for giggles" (at first), I can totally understand the "weren't sure if I wanted to work there". Like I answered on another part of this thread: the onus / burden of proof is on you, you are the one who has to show you really want to be there (even though you actually may not).

It's screwed up, but it's how it is, because we also work for money. I know I did often. Still did my best in any job I got though.

(And you should not expect that either, actually. I'm similarly pissed by friends or colleagues who tell me "damn it's like these guys don't care about the job or don't give it all". Well, heck yeah, why would they?)

Post reply on HN