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One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

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Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#71

Post by vinceguidry »

rhizome wrote: post #57
minimaxir wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employment is a two-way street, especially for someone in-demand as a Rails engineer.

Something about this post tells me that there is not actually that high of a demand, and that there may actually be a glut.

Strictly-speaking, there are probably more people that know Rails then there are jobs requiring it. Even given that, the balance of power in the labor market is still supply-side. A Rails engineer can easily get jobs in just about any other platform fairly easily, and probably already has on occasion. But a company can't magically turn a need for a Rails coder into a need for a Java one.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#72

Post by yeukhon »

rhizome wrote: post #70
yeukhon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that's not silly at all. You are taking the wrong context and you are fooling yourself thinking it is unimportant to question abililty. Linked list is the simplest data structure one can pick it up in 5 minutes in using languages like Ruby and Python. Do you honestly think any serious entrepreneurs would want a company growing hire someone who can't even tell you the basic of a linked list (can you imagine one…

Please describe a use-case for linked lists in Ruby and/or Rails where Array would not suffice.

Stop this stupid ruby python library is suffice. If you don't bother to read my comments above how libraries are not enough, then forget it.

Why do we even bother to teach linked list or any algorithm if we can just rely on all the libraries out there?

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#73

Post by rhizome »

yeukhon wrote: post #72
rhizome wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please describe a use-case for linked lists in Ruby and/or Rails where Array would not suffice.

Stop this stupid ruby python library is suffice. If you don't bother to read my comments above how libraries are not enough, then forget it. Why do we even bother to teach linked list or any algorithm if we can just rely on all the libraries out there?

So we can use them as shibboleths when interviewing people for Rails and Python jobs, apparently. But evidently I triggered some anger management issue of yours, so I'll just walk on eggshells from here on out.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#74

Post by apoorvamehta »

bonemachine wrote: post #63
MattRogish wrote: post #22

There's no shared risk here, it's all on the candidate. Bad form. Only something along the commitment of the 0.5-1hr "weed out" question can/should be done remotely. If you're going to require people to do ~7 hrs of tests, that had better be at the office, pairing, with other folks (and at least give them a free breakfast/lunch/dinner!). 7 hrs while working a 40hr (or more!) week is a pretty hefty commitment, and I s…

Yeah, 8 hours of essentially uninterrupted time is a lot to ask -- in fact it would basically be a deal-breaker for anyone with full-time commitments, or who otherwise values their time. Also, (explicitly) timed coding tests imply that you don't really trust the candidate. Of course they could be lying when you casually ask how much time it took (or whether they got any help), but the few who go that route will proba…

You are right - 8 hours of uninterrupted time is excessive. And, our approach specifically does not ask for that.

If you see the constraints defined in the post - the goal is to have the interview be remote so that the candidate can do this wherever and whenever they want. And, the tests are specifically designed to be not longer than 4 hours long each. Perhaps what wasn't clear is that this is not in a single session.

Interviews can go for as long as a week - really depends on the candidate's schedule.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#75

Post by stefan_kendall »

apoorvamehta wrote: post #74
bonemachine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, 8 hours of essentially uninterrupted time is a lot to ask -- in fact it would basically be a deal-breaker for anyone with full-time commitments, or who otherwise values their time. Also, (explicitly) timed coding tests imply that you don't really trust the candidate. Of course they could be lying when you casually ask how much time it took (or whether they got any help), but the few who go that route will proba…

You are right - 8 hours of uninterrupted time is excessive. And, our approach specifically does not ask for that. If you see the constraints defined in the post - the goal is to have the interview be remote so that the candidate can do this wherever and whenever they want. And, the tests are specifically designed to be not longer than 4 hours long each. Perhaps what wasn't clear is that this is not in a single sessio…

It wasn't clear. If this is separate tests, this makes the process a lot more doable, and pretty cool.

Re: One Hour Hire - Hacking Engineer Interviews

#76

Post by thedufer »

The lack of respect for candidates is kind of frightening, given the current job market. What I'm hearing is that a successful candidate (one who goes through the whole process) is 1/8 as important as a current employee (based on the hours they're willing to put in). This sounds like it will do a great job of filtering candidates - assuming, of course, that you're trying to filter for employees willing to put up with abuse from their employer.
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