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Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

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Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#51

Post by expertentipp »

notyourday wrote: post #29

TL; DR summary: programmers... err.. software engineers discover that fundamentally most of the companies consider them to be be totally interchangeable, just like janitors are fundamentally interchangeable or models walking down the catwalk during the NY Fashion Week are interchangeable. Since they did not save money for the twenty years that they have been paid quite well, they dont like the prospect.

Outside of certain bubbles (i.e. in most of the world) they have never been paid exceptionally - well, at most.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#52

Post by Spoom »

joncrocks wrote: post #31
erikbern wrote: post #19

I interview 20-30 people per week and send most of them Hackerrank tests. I'm a big proponent of vetting that people can write code, but 99% of the questions on HR are waaaay too "algorithmic". Had to go through almost all of them to find a few tests that are not about graph algos or dynamic programming – finally found a question that was based on regular expressions and a few other ones that I think are a bit more r…

We (the company I work for) use Codility for some of our roles. I think you can add your own tasks/questions.

Big fan of Codility. They do have a lot of algorithmic questions as well, but they also have easy ones (which we use), and we tested them on our own staff prior to deploying (all then-current staff got perfect or nearly perfect). I would only use medium or above if the question tested something that the job absolutely needed in a candidate.

They also allow candidates to add their own test cases easily, which, for the ones that do, tends to be a very strong signal in their favor (they also tend to do better).

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#53

Post by maxerickson »

Majestic121 wrote: post #24
maxerickson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't saying that a few hours is enough to get past it the nearly same thing as saying that it is just garbage?

I used to think that, but you'd honestly be surprised how many people it filters out successfully. It is just an advanced version of FizzBuzz : even if it's not enough to determine whether someone is good or not, it definitely burns people that are not able to code at all. It also provide talking points for the interview afterward about coding style and all. Of course, it's not sufficient, but it's just a stage among…

So it's a step up over randomly pulling people right off the street?

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#54

Post by jarsin »

jondubois wrote: post #49

HackerRank tests are very effective for companies in that they capture candidates who: - Have great problem solving ability. - Low emotional intelligence or self-esteem (don't realize that the kinds of companies that make you do these tests are exploitative and will treat you like livestock). - Don't have specific ambitions and don't place much value on their own time (prepared to spend tons of time studying/practici…

The question is though how the hell do we find companies that don't do these test? It seems everyone and their mom are doing it now days, even immigration officials :)

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#55

Post by davb »

wolfgke wrote: post #25
djhworld wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the professions this is quite simple as there are standards, Doctors, Accountants etc are all trained to the standard qualifications that are often internationally recognised. How could you do that for software engineers? There are so many programming languages, frameworks out there that are constantly evolving and companies have different demands. I think it would be a really hard problem to generalise.

> There are so many programming languages, frameworks out there that are constantly evolving and companies have different demands. An idea that I have thought of is to standardize on some programming language/frameworks/demands that are known to be supported for a very long time (15 years?). If you need something from this buffet, you are fine and have the advantages that this provides. If you have special demands, y…

I would love to see some sort of standardisation and rationalisation within software engineering. It's so fragmented and ego driven. Every framework is better than the last, my programming language is better than yours. Thought is rarely given to longevity. I'd much rather work with a more dated ecosystem that I know will be around of true next 20 years than the continual paradigm shifts we endure just now.

I'm exhausted and frustrated with the field as it exists just now.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#56

Post by codyb »

lozzo wrote: post #26

I am in my 40s and have a relatively safe job and not looking for a change. A friend of mine told me to apply for a certain company and I did. They asked me to free an hour one evening and they put me through hackerrank. And I failed. I failed big time. My take away: Surely we all need to revise if we seriously want to apply for a job yet it did feel like the screening was asking me to see how good I am at resolving…

I'm only 27 and I suck at these tests. This year alone I've run the gamut working frontend, backend (Spring), services (clojure), elasticsearch, and a bit of devops.

I tried one last night after a nine hour work day in JavaScript and it kicked my butt. First I was thinking solution X but eventually realized Y was simpler, so then I've wasted a bunch of time because the pressures on coding quickly instead of "mulling" over as you mentioned.

It was similar with a Ruby one which I prepared for by running through the Ruby Koans. Lots of time spent looking up syntax, and the vast majority of the time I'm not starting entire repos from scratch, so a lot of simple but not oft repeated things can trick you up to.

And, to be quite frank, when I'm at home, and I want to program, I want to work on my over engineered, terribly underdeveloped personal website where I get to do things I don't normally do, putz around with erlang and postgres, do the devops and all that other stuff.

Ahh the afflictions of the affluent!

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#57

Post by Joe-Z »

shados wrote: post #43
carlmr wrote: post #4

> Exactly on point. Also one gripe I have with hackerrank (I did some of the challenges to brush up on some language knowledge), is that a lot of the questions are poorly designed and from obvious amateurs. I still think that neither whiteboarding nor hackerrank selects for good developers. In the end you get people that studied hard to solve a certain class of problem that you'll never need in the real world. It's w…

> similar tests aren’t necessarily relevant to the work actually done in finance technology roles IMO, what's relevant for a role is the skill set most people currently doing that role have and that's not always a good thing. I've been the first shouting on top of a roof that we shouldn't ask people to know stupid little algorithm trivias to get a job. But the narative for that quickly devolved to "data structures an…

I consider it from a problem-solving perspective: I don't need to know the intricate details of dozens of sorting algorithms or data structures. What I need to be able to do is solve the problems that get thrown at me in daily work. So if I get assigned, say, a performance problem I might, after some research, come up with the idea to use a different data structure to solve it. Or something entirely else! Depends on the problem and where my research leads me.

As a software developer I see myself mainly as someone who solves problems to help others do their work better. So, while I agree that having a strong CS background is definitely a benefit, I don't think it matters that much if you can't get binary trees just right after not needing to implement them for years.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#58

Post by notyourday »

expertentipp wrote: post #51
notyourday wrote: post #29

TL; DR summary: programmers... err.. software engineers discover that fundamentally most of the companies consider them to be be totally interchangeable, just like janitors are fundamentally interchangeable or models walking down the catwalk during the NY Fashion Week are interchangeable. Since they did not save money for the twenty years that they have been paid quite well, they dont like the prospect.

Outside of certain bubbles (i.e. in most of the world) they have never been paid exceptionally - well, at most.

Outside that bubble they were paid just as well compared to the going salaries of other people living outside that bubble.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#59

Post by jarsin »

xtracto wrote: post #41

We faced exactly this problem at the current company I work for. When the company was just starting, we had the great idea to use interview questions "like the ones they make in SV", thus used algorithmics-heavy problems when interviewing candidates. Fast forward 4 years, and I realized that the dev team we have is basically a group of just-graduated Engineers or people with at most 1 year of experience. My "eye open…

In my network many people that I would classify as bad to some of the worst developers I have ever worked with ended up at Google. They are masters of this type of programming problem solving but could not build a straight forward, maintainable system to save their lives.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#60

Post by JohnTHaller »

Spoom wrote: post #42
olympus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When he says the tests favor people that just graduated from school. Those that have been in the workforce for a while (older people) are focused on "real world" problems and not the academic problems seen on HackerRank. Any system that favors young people over old people is ageist. I'm not saying I agree with the argument (old people have been complaining about young people for a very long time), but the logic is ea…

Bigger software companies also typically require "experienced" candidates (read: not new grads) to pass a systems design interview, which is very subjective and typically fairly difficult. This essentially makes the bar for new grads lower. The argument is that this is because they expect experienced developers to be able to enter at a higher level, but the cynical side of me thinks that it's because they really pref…

You can be a new grad and have experience. I made a point to do work in college that was appropriate for my work field when I graduated. Appropriate summer and part time jobs helped quite a bit as well. Having a bunch of appropriate jobs and projects under your belt (especially a few apps in app stores and code up on github) goes a very long way.
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