3 ms·

I don't mind a 2 hour or even maybe a 4 hour assignment, but a project estimated at 8 hours? Yeah, either you pay me for that time, or I'll just look elsewhere

by thedz 11y ago

I don't mind a 2 hour or even maybe a 4 hour assignment, but a project estimated at 8 hours? Yeah, either you pay me for that time, or I'll just look elsewhere. (And granted, that might exactly be what the company is looking for: a way to reduce the amount of applicants they have to sift through)

p4wnc6 11y ago
The problem is, there are no realistic 2-hour, or really even 4-hour, coding projects that faithfully map to on-the-job skill. 2 hours is too long for a data structures riddle, but way, way too short for anything of even a tiny degree of complexity. Let alone writing some unit tests, mocking up a design and then scrapping it for something that makes more sense. Timed coding tests are just a waste of everyone's time, whether it's a weekend take-home thing, or a 30 minute whiteboard thing, or anything in between. They do not account for individual developers' needs, like privacy, their own editor or IDE, and they exist in this ether between bullshit trivia and an outright working internship that ought to be paid. The other huge thing is that in a lot of firms (I doubt Digital Ocean is like this, but many firms are) "programming" is a low-status, junior activity. In these companies, if someone asks you to write code in an interview, especially if you are an experienced candidate with a GitHub profile, references, and project experience, then even merely asking you to code is more like saying "dance, monkey, dance" and setting the whole atmosphere of your negotiations and interviews in such a way where you are the lucky low-status person who should be so grateful as to receive a job. Unless you get a really great cultural feeling from speaking with technical team members first, the best general advice is to simply reject employers who ask you to write code. If they ask you to write code before even speaking with you, absolutely reject. Full stop. I also think all candidates should fully reject internet-based timed "exams" as well. Things like HackerRank are designed to commoditize software labor, which is a creative design activity and if it even can be commoditized at all, it surely can't be boiled down to data structure trivia that you have to code around in a browser-based IDE with a literal clock ticking down. Anything like HackerRank immediately screams "quantity not quality" and is straight rejection-worthy, no questions asked.

by thedz 11y ago

p4wnc6 11y ago

The problem is, there are no realistic 2-hour, or really even 4-hour, coding projects that faithfully map to on-the-job skill. 2 hours is too long for a data structures riddle, but way, way too short for anything of even a tiny degree of complexity. Let alone writing some unit tests, mocking up a design and then scrapping it for something that makes more sense. Timed coding tests are just a waste of everyone's time, whether it's a weekend take-home thing, or a 30 minute whiteboard thing, or anything in between. They do not account for individual developers' needs, like privacy, their own editor or IDE, and they exist in this ether between bullshit trivia and an outright working internship that ought to be paid. The other huge thing is that in a lot of firms (I doubt Digital Ocean is like this, but many firms are) "programming" is a low-status, junior activity. In these companies, if someone asks you to write code in an interview, especially if you are an experienced candidate with a GitHub profile, references, and project experience, then even merely asking you to code is more like saying "dance, monkey, dance" and setting the whole atmosphere of your negotiations and interviews in such a way where you are the lucky low-status person who should be so grateful as to receive a job. Unless you get a really great cultural feeling from speaking with technical team members first, the best general advice is to simply reject employers who ask you to write code. If they ask you to write code before even speaking with you, absolutely reject. Full stop. I also think all candidates should fully reject internet-based timed "exams" as well. Things like HackerRank are designed to commoditize software labor, which is a creative design activity and if it even can be commoditized at all, it surely can't be boiled down to data structure trivia that you have to code around in a browser-based IDE with a literal clock ticking down. Anything like HackerRank immediately screams "quantity not quality" and is straight rejection-worthy, no questions asked.