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Hiring Without Whiteboards

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Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#441

Post by cutemonster »

pandaman wrote: post #377
wildrhythms wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned down an offer from a direct competitor company because they tried to funnel me through an automated programming "test". I told them I have years of experience at their competing company whose hiring bar is notoriously high, and they still demanded I take their weird test. The company was Goldman Sachs. Name and shame.

I had similar experience with Facebook, not directly competing as they are just expanding into my area of expertise, but they had been looking to poach. The recruiter told me that the first step will be a test to determine if I can program so I told them I am not interested without even trying to negotiate out of it.

> a test to determine if I can program so I told them I am not interested

It seems you don't enjoy coding?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#442

Post by cutemonster »

twic wrote: post #403
tziki wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not time the programming task? Since it's supposed to take about two hours you could ask them to choose a two hour slot, email them the task at that time and have them return it two hours later. This wouldn't penalize people who choose to abide by the time guideline vs more dishonest candidates.

If your slot starts, and then something comes up - your elderly grandmother phones, your internet goes down, your roof springs a leak - that would be pretty annoying.

What about visiting a coworking space and blocking your grandmother's number?

Temporarily only

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#443

Post by cutemonster »

friendzis wrote: post #232
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #169

We use a 3 step process, sans whiteboard: 1. First interview, the candidate interviews us. What market we serve, what our development processes are, what our technology stack is. If they express interest by being prepared and asking good questions, we send them home with 2. a programming task. Choose 1 of 5 tasks. The tasks are not abstract problems or puzzles, but come out of the designs we've implemented. We ask fo…

> The tasks come out of the designs we've implemented. I guess the tasks are something like "take this scaffolding and implement thing x". What would you think if the candidate responded saying the scaffolding does not allow to implement X properly without sacrificing things y and z, and instead of turning in code for review would show up for a discussion about the compromises and deficiencies in the scaffolding?

> if the candidate responded saying

Responded how, when? (At what point in the process)

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#444

Post by cutemonster »

azangru wrote: post #312
ShamelessC wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about paying candidates for the time they spend on the assignment?

I would feel bad about it. You don't normally pay candidates for the time they spend doing the whiteboard interview, do you? You can view the take-home task as a replacement of the whiteboarding session, equally with no pecuniary obligations for the candidate.

Another thing, what if it seems some people just want the money, and didn't try seriously

Then what? Would it feel good to pay

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#446

Post by cutemonster »

kelvin0 wrote: post #358
mountainboot wrote: post #335

I interviewed with one of the companies on that list a few years back (noredink). They gave a timed hackerrank style coding question as round one (so I guess technically not a whiteboard). I passed that, then I had an interview with an actual person. He asked me vague question, like what is architecture, I started to reply with what design tradeoffs I made on the app I was working on. He literally laughed at me, and…

I've had one such interview go really bad. I am normally a very trusting and confident person, but that interview destroyed me for days. This was for an internship on my first year of uni when I just started learning to code C and C++. The position was for a Junior programmer (which I was). At some point the interviewer asks which I would choose in a project, C or C++ and reasons why. Basically answered that it depen…

> Basically answered that it depends on the project ... it all depends

Sounds like a good judgement thing to reply :)

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#447

Post by cutemonster »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #422
nathanaldensr wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely see it talked about just how much ego plays a part in interviewing. In fact, I'd wager it plays one of the biggest parts of the interview process. If you get even one interviewer that is bitter, unhappy, on a power trip, or otherwise a sociopath, you're not getting hired. Many folks hate interviewing candidates; it can put them in a bad mood. They're going to take it out on you because it's safe.

Ego issues sometimes apply to the interviewee as well. I once had to interview someone that clearly thought the interview process was beneath them. This person answered every question as if it was a stupid endeavor and we should just hire them since it was just obvious how great they were.

What would have been a way to find out s/he had that mindset, before having the interview?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#448

Post by [deleted] »

pc86 wrote: post #417
mountainboot wrote: post #335

I interviewed with one of the companies on that list a few years back (noredink). They gave a timed hackerrank style coding question as round one (so I guess technically not a whiteboard). I passed that, then I had an interview with an actual person. He asked me vague question, like what is architecture, I started to reply with what design tradeoffs I made on the app I was working on. He literally laughed at me, and…

Thank you so much for actually naming the company. Too many times we read someone's experience, which even if only half true, would be horrifying, yet no indication of who the company was.

[deleted]

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#449

Post by pandaman »

cutemonster wrote: post #441
pandaman wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had similar experience with Facebook, not directly competing as they are just expanding into my area of expertise, but they had been looking to poach. The recruiter told me that the first step will be a test to determine if I can program so I told them I am not interested without even trying to negotiate out of it.

> a test to determine if I can program so I told them I am not interested It seems you don't enjoy coding?

No, not writing code per se.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#450

Post by cutemonster »

jmchuster wrote: post #171
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past we had some candidates complain about take-home problems. The primary complaint was that candidates weren't interested in dedicating 4-5 hours of their own time unless they felt that someone from the company was putting in an equal amount of their own time. Some candidates also had suspicions that we were trying to use them for free labor (Not true, we used the same toy problem for every candidate). One c…

So instead of doing a 4-hour on-site interview, you make a hiring decision based on a 4-hour take-home problem?

Seems you think that 4h test was all, wondering how you got that idea
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