Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

work.qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#931

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #927
preordained wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I would say is just talk through problems with candidates as simple as that sounds. Try to grok how they think through software problems. Nothing mind-blowing there, but what I'm saying is how someone codes fizz-buzz tells very little...or to me this is like hiring a driver by taking them out to a parking lot and doing doughnuts. If you can fathom the idea that they can drive a car (at all) it seems like it…

> One thing I would say is just talk through problems with candidates as simple as that sounds. Try to grok how they think through software problems. Nothing mind-blowing there, but what I'm saying is how someone codes fizz-buzz tells very little...or to me this is like hiring a driver by taking them out to a parking lot and doing doughnuts. That's what people do, or should be doing, along with the whiteboarding. I d…

For the most part, we can read someone's fizzbuzz solution easier than we can read people.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#932

Post by vonmoltke »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #597
vonmoltke wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Shitty plumbers are licensed. Shitty electricians are licensed. Shitty hair stylists are licensed. A license says nothing about current competence. It says the person demonstrated some minimal level of competence at one point, fills out their paperwork every year, and hasn't fucked up royally enough yet…

Fizzbuzz and other interview coding tests are being used to test minimal competence. If a license proves minimal competence it solves this particular problem. Sure, the licensed may be shitty at their job but at least they can do the job.

I highly doubt "Our industry's hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious" refers to tests of basic competence.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#933

Post by vonmoltke »

freehunter wrote: post #873
vonmoltke wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to belittle anyone but...a plumber is licensed. An electrician is licensed. Even a hair stylist is licensed. Shitty plumbers are licensed. Shitty electricians are licensed. Shitty hair stylists are licensed. A license says nothing about current competence. It says the person demonstrated some minimal level of competence at one point, fills out their paperwork every year, and hasn't fucked up royally enough yet…

So because some licenses don't have ongoing re-certification requirements, that means all license are bad? Couldn't it just be that a "programming license" has regular testing and re-certification? Because a license/certification test is the exact definition of "skills/competency assessment". If the licensing test doesn't meet those needs, that's not the fault of licenses in general, that's a fault in the test and ca…

> So because some licenses don't have ongoing re-certification requirements, that means all license are bad?

That is not at all what I said. I was addressing how licensure does very little to prove competence for the three trades specified in the post.

> Couldn't it just be that a "programming license" has regular testing and re-certification?

How many licenses require recertification? Why do you think a programming one would? Continuing education requirements do not count for this, as they are mere completion measures.

> Because a license/certification test is the exact definition of "skills/competency assessment".

Yes, and this test needs to be passed once. The longer ago it was, the less it says about the person now.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#934

Post by henrikschroder »

sudosteph wrote: post #679
henrikschroder wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many days of vacation per year does the average employee take? > I personally am so spoiled by this I had the standard six weeks of vacation per year at my first real job. How many weeks of vacation do you use per year?

6 weeks is not standard in the US. I'm used to seeing 15 days of flexible pto/sick time and 6 holidays. Also, due to how the pto time would accumulate per each pay period, it can take many months to save up a whole week. I'm much happier with unlimited pto, as I now take 4-5 weeks spread out however I prefer.

> 6 weeks is not standard in the US.

I know, I was trying to add some outside perspective. Where I'm from, 5 weeks is the legal minimum, and everyone has the legal right to get 4 consecutive weeks off in the summer. Consequently, since everyone does this, and expects this, companies adjust for it, and most importantly: No-one bitches about it. There's no masochist culture around not taking vacation.

The problem with "unlimited" vacation is that it's of course not unlimited. There is a limit, it's just not written down on paper, it's not part of your employment contract. It's arbitrary. At one point, either your boss or your boss's boss is going to say no.

And if you get told no, you have no legal recourse! If you get fired for taking "too much", you can't sue for wrongful termination!

Fixed vacation time protects you as an employee. Why doesn't your company just give everyone five weeks of vacation and have that written down in the employment contract?

It's exactly like bonuses vs. salary. A bonus can always be withdrawn for any reason or no reason, but it's very difficult to lower someone's salary.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#935

Post by user5994461 »

newobj wrote: post #701
user5994461 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are developers who went through a master or PhD at a top school, with a similar difficulty and debt to medical school. There are companies who will only hire you if you got a degree and relevant experience. The big tech companies never mention it but most of the workforce had a long education.

I've never seen post-grad requirement for a dev unless it's a cutting edge research position and they need PhD's from the problem domain. Requiring a master's for a dev position is just a joke and I wouldn't take a company seriously that was asking that. Above not true for roles like PM, where for better or worse an MBA carries weight.

>>> I've never seen post-grad requirement for a dev unless it's a cutting edge research position and they need PhD's from the problem domain.

I've seen it in almost every place I worked for in London. The floor is either only people with degrees or only people with no degrees.

The degree is never announced as a requirement, it's rather selected automatically during the interview. For instance in programming, some questions about state machines and graph traversal will do a wonderful filter.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#936

Post by monocasa »

ubernostrum wrote: post #757
monocasa wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I'd love to see it if that's true. I love cool approaches to computation. FWIW as long as you can back it up with knowledge of what the relevant tradeoffs are (and don't scoff at a more KISS attitude for doing actual work), you're pretty much guaranteed to get a thumbs up from me if you give an answer off the beaten path.

I dislike traditional phone screens enough that I hone unusual solutions for them. And when they get evil enough, I put them in a public repository. Here's my FizzBuzz: https://github.com/ubernostrum/interviewer-hell/blob/master/...

That's awesome! I'd probably follow up that, since I generally interview for real time, firmware jobs, we try to clearly bound execution time, and therefore frown against more functional techniques like that. But you clearly know how to program well and would most likely get a thumbs up. : )

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#937

Post by monocasa »

profalseidol wrote: post #698
monocasa wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to hate it, but have now performed enough interviews of supposedly senior devs with decades of experience. I've literally seen someone who did firmware for the space shuttle grind for 45 minutes on fizz buzz without making progress. Like, I'd they struggle for ten minutes or so, I take a step back and say "Ok, screw syntax, let's just vaguely talk about what needs to happen and mock up some pseudo code.". Even…

How did he do the firmware of the space shuttle without knowing such basic coding?

I think he probably didn't really, he was just dead weight on his team.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#938

Post by freehunter »

vonmoltke wrote: post #933
freehunter wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because some licenses don't have ongoing re-certification requirements, that means all license are bad? Couldn't it just be that a "programming license" has regular testing and re-certification? Because a license/certification test is the exact definition of "skills/competency assessment". If the licensing test doesn't meet those needs, that's not the fault of licenses in general, that's a fault in the test and ca…

> So because some licenses don't have ongoing re-certification requirements, that means all license are bad? That is not at all what I said. I was addressing how licensure does very little to prove competence for the three trades specified in the post. > Couldn't it just be that a "programming license" has regular testing and re-certification? How many licenses require recertification? Why do you think a programming…

>Why do you think a programming one would?

Because it doesn’t exist yet, and my hypothetical is just as good as yours.

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#939

Post by [deleted] »

monocasa wrote: post #936
ubernostrum wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike traditional phone screens enough that I hone unusual solutions for them. And when they get evil enough, I put them in a public repository. Here's my FizzBuzz: https://github.com/ubernostrum/interviewer-hell/blob/master/...

That's awesome! I'd probably follow up that, since I generally interview for real time, firmware jobs, we try to clearly bound execution time, and therefore frown against more functional techniques like that. But you clearly know how to program well and would most likely get a thumbs up. : )

[deleted]

Re: The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

#940

Post by ubernostrum »

monocasa wrote: post #936
ubernostrum wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike traditional phone screens enough that I hone unusual solutions for them. And when they get evil enough, I put them in a public repository. Here's my FizzBuzz: https://github.com/ubernostrum/interviewer-hell/blob/master/...

That's awesome! I'd probably follow up that, since I generally interview for real time, firmware jobs, we try to clearly bound execution time, and therefore frown against more functional techniques like that. But you clearly know how to program well and would most likely get a thumbs up. : )

Admittedly most of my phone-screen solutions aren't tuned for performance; they're tuned to make people scratch their heads.

My code for "detect if a number is a perfect square", though, is O(sqrt(n)) time and O(1) space and uses no floating point operations. Which isn't quite Newton's method, but also saves me having to memorize an implementation of Newton's method and appropriately causes confusion. Here it is in Python, with obfuscation help from itertools:

https://github.com/ubernostrum/interviewer-hell/blob/master/...

And slightly less obfuscated C:

https://github.com/ubernostrum/interviewer-hell/blob/master/...

Post reply on HN