The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework • Hacker News Board

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#481

Post by collyw » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

gravyboat wrote: post #287

collyw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed a trend of not naming companies here. Is it against the rules? I fell that we should name and shame companies that are disrespectful of peoples time.

I've had multiple comments detached (as you can see by my comment history) for calling out companies that suck to apply for in the monthly hiring threads. Either the people who posted must have complained so they removed it, or HN doesn't want people to know some companies suck to deal with when it comes to hiring process.

Would Reddit be more open to something like this as in could you create a subreddit and remind HN readers to check?

I see a few people seem interested in the idea of naming such companies. I have wasted a few weekends worth of my time (which at freelance rates is a decent amount of money) and have been ignored when I asked for feedback (sometimes just ignored completely). Its disrespectful and companies should be called out for it. I could name at least one one company that regularly posts in the hiring threads here.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#482

Post by mindhash » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

Given that interviews now a days are not one way street.

Candidate is also evaluating whether company is worth working for.

if you give a take home assignment and don't give me a feedback on stuff I could do better, i would consider the whole thing a waste of time. So if you don't offer that's ok. But let the guy learn a thing or two.

Many people will agree that yc interview process is rigorous but it's also satisfying as you get to learn a lot through out.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#483

Post by bsder » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

speby wrote: post #218

Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. e.g. "I've written large production programs in C." Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly. Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have…

> So maybe the person shares actual code and walks us through it that they wrote, even if not open source? Again, we can't know for certain it is their own code and not some friend who wrote it for them 2 years ago that they claim is their own. Or was a teammate's, or what-have-you. So we can't count on that either.

Then you're not doing a very good walkthrough. I can generally spot someone who didn't write the code they are presenting almost immediately. Occasionally, someone might fool you, but it's pretty rare.

As one of my interviewers said many moons ago: "Yes, his claims and credentials sound overblown. But after reviewing his stuff and interviewing him, he either is exactly what he claims, or he's the best damn liar I've ever seen. Either way we should hire him--the only question is whether for engineering or marketing." :)

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#484

Post by newnewpdro » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

aje403 wrote: post #423

newnewpdro wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, and if we're talking about someone with 30 years programming experience, this history is very relevant - programming has been a popular field for smart but antisocial/unsocialized nerds who had very few if any friends growing up and have spent much of their life alone at a computer. For a person with that background, simply sharing a relatively small private room with a total stranger can be overwhelmin…

But what if you're looking to hire people who go outside sometimes and can talk to people and can write code too? Or should that be illegal?

It's not like you forego the in-person interview and don't learn what you can from that. The point is, by including a take-home portion of the technical interview you can get a better sense of the individual's technical abilities.

If, in addition to what seems to be a technically competent individual, you find they don't perform well in-person, then you take that data and weigh it against where your priorities lie for the position.

There's a huge difference in knowing "technically great, performs poorly with an audience" vs. "technically poor, but we only tested them with an audience".

Furthermore, it's not uncommon for people who experience anxiety during the in-person to loosen up as they acclimate to the office environment and their peers. These people can actually be some of the best contributors, and it can be a very costly mistake to misjudge them. This personality type tends to be quite loyal and averse to changing positions, because the whole process of interviewing and acclimating to a new environment is so stressful to them.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder in this discussion, are you having a bad day?

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#485

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #250

speby wrote: post #218

Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. e.g. "I've written large production programs in C." Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly. Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have…

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

I always end up linking this piece in response to people like you, and here I am again.

These folks have real data on lots of interviews, and have done some analysis on them:

http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-w...

The takeaway that's relevant to you is the section titled "Interview outcomes are kind of arbitrary". Specifically, things like:

As you can see, roughly 25% of interviewees are consistent in their performance, but the rest are all over the place. And over a third of people with a high mean (>=3) technical performance bombed at least one interview.

If you set up a typical tech-company interview process, and if you equate "didn't pass this" with "complete impostor and utterly incapable of coding in any capacity" (as most people with your approach do), well, congratulations. You're almost certainly rejecting a bunch of qualified people, simply because you're terrible at interviewing them and can't actually tell from your process whether or not they're qualified.

The most generous thing I can say is that it's not entirely your fault. You adopted ideas and approaches from people who seemed authoritative but turned out to be the actual impostors in this situation. But now you have a choice: you can reject that, now you know the problems, or you can double down. I suggest not doubling down.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#486

Post by TheGRS » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #475

TheGRS wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this assertion that the technical interview is inherently filtering out great candidates is being very honest (you responded similarly to another comment of mine the same way). One quality being tested is "can you try to do the thing that we're asking for?" That's a measurement in competence and the willingness to get something done. If said candidate is saying "this test is ridiculous and a waste of my…

Most senior devs have a family, value work/life balance, and currently have another job. I don't expect them to take their work home past 5 while they're working with me, so why should I expect them to do that before I'm even paying them?

Personally I think it'd be fine to e-mail back and say "sorry I don't have time to work on this with my current schedule, could I do an in-person interview instead?" That's me though, I would hope the rest of the industry is willing to work with people. Even just the response to the e-mail would tell me that they're competent enough to know their time management and that they have limited bandwidth. At some point you need to make a sacrifice of time though. Even if your hotel and plane ticket are being paid for to fly out to the place of business, you need to take that time off to go in for the interview.

I'd prefer to do a lot of that at home personally.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#487

Post by monksy » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

geebee wrote: post #403

monocasa wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

To me the problem usnt fizzbuzz, its “find all matching subtrees in a binary tree” in 45 min at a whiteboard. I dont need to hit the book to write fizzbuzz, and i could probably code up dfs and bfs without prep but i dont walk around ready to retake my undergrad algoriths midterm. Especially when i really dont even know what the topic will be. Im aware that the question i posed isnt terribly difficult and perhaps it…

The problem with the BFS/DFS questions is that you're playing a forced game of knifey spoony: They expect you to write it in the recursive fashion and then try to stump you with "oh but how does that do on large structures?!" .. Stackoverflow. Then they'll try to force you to do tail recursion.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#488

Post by monksy » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #459

monksy wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure its just the recruiting side. We're seeing some concerning positions in the market: 1. Expectation of long work hours (Frequent and short deadlines due to agile) 2. Micromanagment being the standard (agile) 3. Terrible environments (open desk/office) 4. Removal of vacation time (unlimited PTO means you have no vacation days)

> 4. Removal of vacation time (unlimited PTO means you have no vacation days) That's just not universally true at all. Using my current employer as an example, they have been very good about encouraging employees to take advantage of unlimited PTO. Managers take PTO and encourage people that haven't taken it in a while to do so. Even the CEO goes in front of the company at all hands every once in a while and tells pe…

Which in your case is nice. But you never know when it's going to end, or they're going to start evaluating you on how much vacation you take.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#489

Post by collyw » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

speby wrote: post #218

Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. e.g. "I've written large production programs in C." Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly. Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have…

I think if they can talk you through some code its more relevant than if it was written by them or not. Maintenance of other peoples code is usually more difficult than understanding what you wrote yourself.

The best interview I had from a technical perspective was when I was asked to bring in my laptop with some of my code. , talk a bit about it and add a quick feature. No pressure as I knew the code and the framework. I felt like I could show off what I was good at. It would have likely caught out impostors as well.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#490

Post by collyw » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #255

speby wrote: post #218

Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone's resume. e.g. "I've written large production programs in C." Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly. Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have…

> Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. Agreed. The solution is to not work at a tech company, but instead work in a tech capacity at a real company. - No silly games (before or after hiring). - Better benefits (I'd rather have proper health coverage and a pension than a room full of toys and vaporware stock options). - Immensely more job security (Henry Ford didn't have an "exit strategy"). - Peo…

The problem is that no one gives a shit about code quality at such companies.