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An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

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Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#91

Post by KhanMahGretsch »

In general, I find that assuming that other players will act rationally or in their own best-interests (according to my subjective definitions) is inadvisable. If OP has a major problem with the quality of their hiring process then, by extension, he could also have major problems with his potential co-workers and the organisation's culture.

The value proposition of investing time and effort into interviewing with this company appears to be less than, say, interviewing companies whose priorities are well-aligned with OP from the get-go. That being said, these kinds of "coding puzzle" screeners aren't going anywhere, and may lock him out of great opportunities at great companies.

"I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#93

Post by merpnderp »

Arubis wrote: post #88
bitL wrote: post #82

Many recruitment agencies won't even talk to you until you pass some FizzBuzz test on HackerRank or similar. Even Facebook strongly suggest you to take their own training based off similar platform and Google does something similar. So it seems that even entry level jobs these days require Googlesque excellence just to get your foot in the door. It's similar to law firms requiring you to take parts of bar exam during…

If "Googlesque excellence" is passing FizzBuzz then I am severely undercompensated.

That was exactly my thought. I was doing more complicated code than FizzBuzz at 7 years old and I don't consider myself even a mediocre programmer.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#94

Post by tty7 »

foo101 wrote: post #78
tty7 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your first point, yes exactly. The interview is as much mine as it is the candidates. Not necessarily hiring to complete tickets as fast as possible, but some who can take a task and complete with minimal issues. I don't want to be stuck in meetings or arguing in PRs etc.

Would you really want someone to take a task and complete with minimal issues if the task does not add value to the organization or is counterproductive? I don't know about you, but I would not want to hire someone who can take any task and complete with minimal issues. Where I work, one is encouraged to argue about what is not right in the meetings and offer better solutions. This candidate is doing exactly that: Ar…

Let me explain a little better, and again I am only basing this all off the small amount of data we have.

Let me give an example as I am not the best at articulating. hopefully this helps.

Lets say I hired this engineer as Senior or Team Lead. Now I want the base docker image we use for node bumped a major version. I checked the changelog for the nodes releases and knowing our codebase I think its safe.

I could ask a Junior dev to do it, but I knowing that they are lacking experience this may seem like a "big deal" when really its not.

What I want is the node version updated, validation unit tests pass, regressions tests are good. And it to be released. If there is a failure along the way, address it or sure lets chat about it.

But this Email in response to hackerrank - would make me perceive this to be someone who would respond with a complete change to our CI/CD processes, to our infrastructure, maybe to even using Node - as this sort of task is beneath him.

Sure there would be areas this person might excel at, but some days little tasks just need to get done to keep the ball moving.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#95

Post by fouc »

hashkb wrote: post #3

No, no, no. They have the job, you want it. That email comes across so arrogant that I would expect even the newest hiring manager to laugh and delete. Without even addressing the sour grapes attitude about coding interviews, the sheer arrogance with which you try to dictate someone else's process is a red flag in the first place. That, plus the fact that you're refusing to do what they want, is really bad for your c…

Flip it around.

He has the skills, they want his skills. They are coming to him in the hopes that they're a good fit and that their rewards are enticing enough.

He obviously doesn't need to worry about being hired by ABC.. the only reason he didn't outright reject their test and proposed an alternative is because he thinks it's an interesting company or product.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#96

Post by [deleted] »

falcolas wrote: post #65
tty7 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but without knowing the context I responded on this emails face value. I would also worry hiring a team lead/senior dev who appears to be combative from the initial screening

I would worry about a company who sends lead and senior devs to HackerRank to do junior level programming tests and managers who weren't willing to engage in a conversation.

[deleted]

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#97

Post by renegadesensei »

agentultra wrote: post #80
renegadesensei wrote: post #36

It's an interesting idea. Phrased politely I think it's fine to suggest. Still I can understand why people would refuse your approach. There's an obvious risk involved letting the applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation. The point of coding tests is that you can't prepare or easily Google an answer. The employer wants to gauge your unscripted in the moment programming knowledge. Also as someone else said, you n…

> The employer wants to gauge your unscripted in the moment programming knowledge. I see the appeal of knowing this but I think I'd take a submission from the OP as-is in place of a "coding test." My thinking here is that I can't recall an instance where I needed to write code at a job with a timer ticking down and someone reviewing my work as I went. I usually have the luxury of doing some research and taking a few…

I'm a little biased as a devops guy and former SRE. When you're on call dealing with strict SLA's, your ability to make intelligent technical decisions quickly is important. I expect the guy I hire to not have to Google how to check CPU load or how to pipe tail output from log files into a grep function. At the very least a timed coding exercise tests their nerve.

For other development jobs I generally agree with you. The coding screen will not tell you much. Particularly for a mid-level or senior role. In those cases I am way more interested in their portfolio and in having a long casual technical discussion.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#98

Post by zaphar »

renegadesensei wrote: post #36

It's an interesting idea. Phrased politely I think it's fine to suggest. Still I can understand why people would refuse your approach. There's an obvious risk involved letting the applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation. The point of coding tests is that you can't prepare or easily Google an answer. The employer wants to gauge your unscripted in the moment programming knowledge. Also as someone else said, you n…

    Letting the applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation
That sounds vaguely biased toward the employer. An interview is a a two way process. The candidate in this case will likely have no problem finding a job. In a way, it sounds like he's doing his own pre-screening and the hacker rank request is a non-positive signal for him.

Our profession is somewhat bifurcated. There are the developers who only ever do glue code between systems and never progress beyond java 1.4 and work places where that is a valued trait.

This candidate however is in the other camp. He's creative, and self driven in his learning. He's also driven to get better. He won't be satisfied at the kind of place that doesn't look at him as a unique and creative developer.

This was a negotiation not letting an applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#99

Post by nine_k »

PakG1 wrote: post #45
nine_k wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually made an offer to that person? Do you have the power to double salaries of people in your org?

The implication seems to be that gp has never interviewed and hired people who "had this sort of independent and outside-the-box thinking".

If the implication is true, that would be a data point.

If the implication is false, it would be an exciting data point!

HN being what it is, here is quite a non-zero chance to meet a person with real hiring power who really could have made an offer to the person in question.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#100

Post by gedy »

chadash wrote: post #72
gedy wrote: post #57

I think this is a perfectly valid response if you are senior/experienced/specialist and asked to do these impersonal quizzes. "We need to filter out the idiots" is not a valid reason to waste an experienced candidate's time either.

There's no question that some questions are inappropriate for senior hires. For example, if someone comes in with a lot of open source work, I think it's probably wise for the hiring manager to devote some more time and personalize the process a bit since that person has already has signals that they are probably good (or at least more likely to be good than most candidates). But most developers (and I'd venture most…

Sure, valid points, and agree there's a place for this type of screening. I'm mostly referring to when you're experienced, and approached by a company via an on-site recruiter or employee referral. You are busy and not actively looking, but then trying to then feed you through hackerrank quizzes or whiteboards is just so off-putting.
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