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When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

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Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#491

Post by l33t2328 »

8note wrote: post #42
HorizonXP wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able or willing to share some samples? I've been shying away from doing technical assessments the "old way," instead focusing on having a discussion about a candidates past projects. I feel like your way could be a good chance to get insights into someone's problem solving and critical thinking skills, which is truly what we value as a dev team.

I've had one given as a thought experiement. List as many different ways as you can for how to figure out if a singly list is broken and has a loop

Isn’t there only one way? Walk through it looking for a repeat?

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#492

Post by leaflets2 »

csmpltn wrote: post #422
jahnu wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worries at all :) > Sorry to be blunt, but chances are they aren't very good, and they are definitely not as good as they think they are. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just so wrong it’s kinda wild how sure you are about this. At least half of the excellent colleagues I worked with in the past 10 years don’t fit your criteria. You’d be lucky to hire any of them.

I agree with you, this cannot be regarded as a healthy approach to hiring and comes off as delusional.

At the same time, it might sort of work, just that since they a bit randomly discard a fraction of the job applicants, the company will end up paying more, for those it hires (supply and demand). But maybe the company doesn't notice (and in the end what does it matter anyway)

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#493

Post by vmception »

leaflets2 wrote: post #489
vmception wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What if they have no code they can legally show” > Sorry to be blunt, but chances are they aren't very good, and they are definitely not as good as they think they are. and there it is, one of the other subthreads is making fun of this kind of employer that swear by showing code this is a false attribution bias where you decided not to notice that every evaluation technique the entire industry figured out will mostl…

> every evaluation technique the entire industry figured out will mostly by filled with people that cant code Is there a typo? The sentence doesn't make sense to me

Every evaluation technique will be mostly filled by people that cant code

The industry tries them all

Its the wrong conclusion on the efficacy of the technique

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#494

Post by cookie_monsta »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #471

When hiring developers, fetch a stoic subordinate who is A) good at eye contact and B) able to maintain said eye contact without blinking. Have this subordinate and the candidate participate in a staring contest. This will show a couple of things about the candidate: A) How well they maintain eye contact (very important for communication) and B) How long it takes them to back down from a challenge; this taps into the…

Is this one of those tests where you hire the first person to call out your BS interviewing technique?

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#495

Post by leaflets2 »

vmception wrote: post #493
leaflets2 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every evaluation technique the entire industry figured out will mostly by filled with people that cant code Is there a typo? The sentence doesn't make sense to me

Every evaluation technique will be mostly filled by people that cant code The industry tries them all Its the wrong conclusion on the efficacy of the technique

Hmm, and evaluation technique cannot be filled by something

One cannot fill an abstract concept like a technique with things

Maybe you mean that every evaluation technique will detect that most of the job applicants aren't good at coding? And therefore, all evaluation techniques seem to work? (Although some techniques are a lot better than others)

If so, then, yes I agree. That's a good point

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#496

Post by xtracto »

grog454 wrote: post #94
xtracto wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I was a hiring manager for programmers I liked setting a "code challenge" where we gave the candidate a simple game and he had to transform it into another game. For example, we gave you a tetris game, you had to change the code to make a snake game. Or change an Othello game to a "number sliding puzzle" game. It was very interesting comparing people that really made an effort to use the game code vs candid…

>It was very interesting comparing people that really made an effort to use the game code vs candidates that just deleted most of the stuff to implement their logic. What does "very interesting" mean here? What does this particular comparison tell you? It's genuinely unclear to me which you prefer, why, and what signal you get beyond willingness to follow an instruction in a peculiar context.

Your comment came up as a bit aggressive for me (non native so I may have misinterpreted) but I'll try to answer in the spirit of HN:

We had candidates that were 'frustrated' because of the code. Some were frustrated that the code was low-quality, others that it used Canvas for drawing and they have never used canvas. Others about the way the logic was implemented originally.

The best candidates worked with what they had, and used the "tools" at their disposal: for example, use the code that draws a circle in the canvas already, dont try to reinvent it. At the end of the 3 hours, we talked about their experience doing the project and they had good feedback.

The bad candidates just deleted most of the code and added their own logic. My thought process is that, I could imagine them on their first day of in the team: the code startups have is never "the best one". I dont want someone who wants to throw the baby with the bathwater, but someone who can improve what we have.

A detail is that the challenge lasted 3 hours. Of those 3 hours , 1.5 hours wage candidate was "pair programming" with some developers (segments of 30 min spaced to give the candidate time to work alone). And during the pair programming , the devs were instructed to help him, give them hints and ask "revealing" questions.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#497

Post by amon22 »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #471

When hiring developers, fetch a stoic subordinate who is A) good at eye contact and B) able to maintain said eye contact without blinking. Have this subordinate and the candidate participate in a staring contest. This will show a couple of things about the candidate: A) How well they maintain eye contact (very important for communication) and B) How long it takes them to back down from a challenge; this taps into the…

Haha, good one!

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#498

Post by gavinray »

vmception wrote: post #478
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work if they only have coded as part of jobs? Do you assume everyone is working on some side project or open source?

My bet is that it doesn't work. My experience is that they are assuming that, just like those recruiters and hiring managers that look for “an active github” and swear by that

If you can write software, have you never once encountered a bug in something you use or a tiny feature that would have made your life so much easier + just done it yourself?

I understand not wanting to do a ton of weekend projects and having other hobbies, but it's wild to me to think that being able to do these sorts of things but never doing it happens.

It's sort of like a car mechanic who doesn't fix/tweak his own car.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#499

Post by vmception »

leaflets2 wrote: post #495
vmception wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every evaluation technique will be mostly filled by people that cant code The industry tries them all Its the wrong conclusion on the efficacy of the technique

Hmm, and evaluation technique cannot be filled by something One cannot fill an abstract concept like a technique with things Maybe you mean that every evaluation technique will detect that most of the job applicants aren't good at coding? And therefore, all evaluation techniques seem to work? (Although some techniques are a lot better than others) If so, then, yes I agree. That's a good point

Yeah thats my point, but also that none are better than the other

They are poor methods of screening or evaluating good candidates for the actual job duties

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#500

Post by gavinray »

daxfohl wrote: post #475

How do you avoid language familiarity bias? I've had one interview like this and am sure I did much worse just because the language was Javascript, which I have limited experience with. Intuitively I'd expect that not to make much difference since most mainstream languages are pretty similar, and the interview wasn't syntax oriented. But that's not what I experienced. Signal to noise ratio was there and definitely af…

A good interview should be language-agnostic, if it's not a junior position IMO.

Most of my code-based interviews have been this way, and when I've been the one interviewing, I say: "Use whatever language/tech you like."

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