Hiring Without Whiteboards • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#461

Post by kelvin0 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #447

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A crystal ball?

All jokes aside he was not foaming at the mouth or unpleasant when we first started the meeting, and I'm not the quickest one to pick up on subtle body language cues. So your guess is as good as mine.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#462

Post by jmchuster » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #450

jmchuster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So candidates actively chose to add a 4h project on top of a 4h in-person interview?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#463

Post by cutemonster » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #133

It's definitely important to prove you understand the core concepts required to be a successful developer, such as using efficient & scalable approaches to solve a problem, but writing quality code from scratch simply doesn't mix with high anxiety. And it's not representative of how programming work is done in the real world. I think a good middle-ground is pair programming where the interviewer writes the code based…

Interesting idea

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#464

Post by cutemonster » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

kelvin0 wrote: post #461

cutemonster wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A crystal ball? All jokes aside he was not foaming at the mouth or unpleasant when we first started the meeting, and I'm not the quickest one to pick up on subtle body language cues. So your guess is as good as mine.

interesting that weren't any "signs" before

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#465

Post by cutemonster » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

jmchuster wrote: post #462

cutemonster wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So candidates actively chose to add a 4h project on top of a 4h in-person interview?

There's probably a one or two hours soft skills interview and more that they didn't mention.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#466

Post by tjpnz » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #451

asdff wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you penalize an employee for getting help on a problem? Stack overflow away. Troubleshooting is an essential skill.

I think s/he meant letting a friend do the whole assignment

Precisely and I've heard of people landing gigs at some well known companies who did just that. Without any followup questions.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#467

Post by collyw » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #297

collyw wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the whole developer community) really need to stop responding to such companies. I did one recently after the initial HR person chat. I spent a morning on it as they suggested 2 or 3 hours. But then I was rejected for the most pedantic reasons (2 white space PEP violations), not setting up mocks for testing (that would have doubled the scope of the project). Providing an HTML response rather than JSON when the sp…

It sounds like your submission was unrefined, maybe amateur. That's what tests like this are for. Referring to "the HR girls" isn't winning you any points either, and makes me wonder what kind of attitude you displayed to the people involved.

Not as amateur as the spec.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#468

Post by kelvin0 » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #464

kelvin0 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A crystal ball? All jokes aside he was not foaming at the mouth or unpleasant when we first started the meeting, and I'm not the quickest one to pick up on subtle body language cues. So your guess is as good as mine.

interesting that weren't any "signs" before

What type of signs do you have in mind? Maybe some examples of your own experience will help me understand missed clues.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#469

Post by friendzis » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #443

friendzis wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

> At what point in the process

> > instead of turning in code for review

I.e. something like instead of turning in code example they turn in a motivated analysis of why the scaffolding provided cannot support "proper" (and then analysis of so called proper) implementation of the thing asked, provide analysis for changes required in the scaffolding.

Basically, the candidate would turn "provide and review code" process into "let's talk about architecture, implementation and tradeoffs". Would you discard such a candidate for not following the process because you expect seniority or would higher level thinking be a plus?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#470

Post by vanusa » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

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…

What does architecture mean to you? He responded, I ask the questions here not you. I immediately ended the interview.

Again, thanks so much for naming the guilty party (NoRedInk) in this case. So that we can firmly add them to our list of companies not to bother engaging with, if this is the kind of behavior we can expect from their interviewing team.

The above anecdotes speaks volumes about the mentality that drives companies like these -- and the "culture fit" they're apparently looking for.