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My semi-cynical, 35+ years in the industry advice? Avoid blogs, forums, podcasts, social media pages, news sites that only focus on the 1% of startups that make it 'big' seemingly overnight. Go out and talk to fellow entrepreneurs, hackers, company founders and people in the industry, and you will quickly find out that everyone , and I mean EVERYONE goes through a heartless grind and struggle to get things done or to…
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In the last couple weeks I've had to decline 18 total hours of "challenges" and "work samples" from 4 different interview processes. I'm not sure at what point it became de rigueur to require applicants to complete on average 4.5 hours of work without pay, but I really, really don't think it's reasonable. I've even offered to show them my current projects in lieu of work samples, and no go. Baffling.
So 8 hour onsite interview is ok for you, but 5 hour home work is not? Where is logic in that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the last couple weeks I've had to decline 18 total hours of "challenges" and "work samples" from 4 different interview processes. I'm not sure at what point it became de rigueur to require applicants to complete on average 4.5 hours of work without pay, but I really, really don't think it's reasonable. I've even offered to show them my current projects in lieu of work samples, and no go. Baffling.
So 8 hour onsite interview is ok for you, but 5 hour home work is not? Where is logic in that?
Very few would be willing to commit internal time to 100 onsite interviews of 8 hours each.
So the latter sends a signal to the potential employee that their time is at least as valuable to the company as the time of the interviewer(s)
What do they call it when people wish they had impostor syndrome instead of just being an impostor? I have that.
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In the last couple weeks I've had to decline 18 total hours of "challenges" and "work samples" from 4 different interview processes. I'm not sure at what point it became de rigueur to require applicants to complete on average 4.5 hours of work without pay, but I really, really don't think it's reasonable. I've even offered to show them my current projects in lieu of work samples, and no go. Baffling.
On the contrary, when I was last looking for a job, I hit a snag in that a company wanted examples of current projects, but I had none because I don't really program outside of work (I have other hobbies). I wish I could add more to my anecdote, like how I solved this problem, but I avoided it entirely by taking a job offer from a different company the next day.
Oh, that's really no problem at all! Not everyone can just be at home in front of a computer all day, both at home and work, coding all day. What kind of a society would that lead to, haha. Anyway thanks for coming in, we'll be in touch.
Funny story, in 15 years of professional software development I never experienced the sense of imposter syndrome until very recently when I decided after 12 years at one employer (on many satisfying projects) I needed to consider expanding my employment options. AKA I started looking for a new job. Once I got a whiff of the putrid state of hiring in our industry today holy hell... Sure, I’ve been successful at this f…
Years back I worked at a company called Red Gate for nearly 10 years. Latterly, old-timers at the company - including myself - used to joke that we'd never get through the present-day tech interview.
The impression was only heightened by a stint in recruitment where I realised, out of the hundreds of software engineer applications I was reviewing every month, >80% were rejected at first sift, and 80% of the rest were rejected at the coding assessment stage. If you actually made it to first interview there was a 40% chance you'd be offered a job, which is not terrible odds compared with where it had been. We'd hire about one out of every hundred applicants [1].
When it came time for me to move on I was, of course, terrified, because I hadn't updated my CV or gone for a job interview in 10 years, and I now knew from an insider's perspective exactly how ruthless the process can be.
[1] I did actually change the hiring process to try to give candidates a more humanised experience[2], but this didn't change the 100:1 ratio.
[2] Part of the motivation here was selfish: I realised that the way we had been doing it was making me short-tempered and miserable, and turning me into a worse human being.
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If you're asking for C with 4.5 hours of work (as per example above) that's fine if you're paying for their time. Cheaper than a bad hire, stops you missing out on good hires who think "fuck that".
If C should be paid for, then should A be paid for as well? If not, why not?
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If you're asking for C with 4.5 hours of work (as per example above) that's fine if you're paying for their time. Cheaper than a bad hire, stops you missing out on good hires who think "fuck that".
> Cheaper than a bad hire, stops you missing out on good hires who think "fuck that". Does it? If I have a developer job then I'm paid well and don't really care about the money which I have enough of, I care about the time which I have very little of. If you're in the top 0.01% of companies to work for (and the applicant knows that) then it's probably a worthwhile time investment, but for the other 99.99% it's a was…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the last couple weeks I've had to decline 18 total hours of "challenges" and "work samples" from 4 different interview processes. I'm not sure at what point it became de rigueur to require applicants to complete on average 4.5 hours of work without pay, but I really, really don't think it's reasonable. I've even offered to show them my current projects in lieu of work samples, and no go. Baffling.
So 8 hour onsite interview is ok for you, but 5 hour home work is not? Where is logic in that?
There's no substitute for actually working with someone.