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I don't understand why to have all these tests for an applicant? Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I fou

I don't understand why to have all these tests for an applicant? Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I found, that nothing else works.

jvolkman 10y ago
Amazon does this for some college hires.
plandis 10y ago
Amazon is a huge company I'm sure they have a lot of different interview types
- crucifiction 10y ago
  Its pretty standardized actually. In this case it looks like he was a part of a "blitz" which often happens for remote locations. A normal interview process is very similar but usually has no hackerrank first, the phone screen is by an engineer and the interview loop may be more like 5-6 people with a lunch break.
dpark 10y ago
> Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I'm not sure what you think you'll learn in one day like this. You're throwing someone into a high-pressure peer-programming session with someone they don't know and a codebase they've never seen. In order to get them to complete anything you're probably going to have to stage a bunch of stuff and basically give them a fake assignment anyway ("fill in the body of this 'findUserByOrderNumber()' method for us") which has turned it into the equivalent a whiteboard coding question anyway. If you give them a single pair-programming partner, you only get one hiring opinion which is a pretty bad idea, and if you give them multiple pair-programming partners the work will have to be even more trivial. I don't think a one-day trial like this will tell you more than a standard interview loop. Some people might do better with it, others will do worse. I also don't think you should expect to get real work out of someone before you hire them, either. If you want me to spend 8 hours building you a feature, I expect to get paid. And the overhead of paying me for 8 hours of work is probably not worth it to your company, because it's a ridiculous amount of paperwork. (And not even possible for people who need visa sponsoring.)
- lj3 10y ago
  > I also don't think you should expect to get real work out of someone before you hire them, either. This has grown on me. It's a lot of time invested per company, but it's still a hell of a lot less time than the interview prep mentioned in the article. It's also more pleasant, since I'm programming something real instead of the fibonacci sequence.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I don't honestly think you're going to get much more than Fibonacci in a one day pair programming session on an unknown codebase. It's just too much to learn before you can really accomplish anything. Beyond one or maybe two days it just becomes an unreasonable request, regardless of whether they pay you.
    - lj3 10y ago
      Oh, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "get real work" out of somebody. IMHO, pair programming isn't getting real work out of somebody. I'm with tptacek on this one: take home programming tests. Specifically, tests where they give you specs for something and you build it however you like.
      - dpark 10y ago
        I'm ok with something like that if it's a reasonable amount of work, and if it's not going to be followed up with the standard interview loop. Extremely long take home work is unreasonable to me. Studying for interviews is at least applicable to many companies. A take home is just for the one. And if it's followed up with a normal interview loop, then it's just more but not better.

I don't understand why to have all these tests for an applicant? Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I found, that nothing else works.

jvolkman 10y ago

Amazon does this for some college hires.

plandis 10y ago

Amazon is a huge company I'm sure they have a lot of different interview types

crucifiction 10y ago
Its pretty standardized actually. In this case it looks like he was a part of a "blitz" which often happens for remote locations. A normal interview process is very similar but usually has no hackerrank first, the phone screen is by an engineer and the interview loop may be more like 5-6 people with a lunch break.

dpark 10y ago

> Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I'm not sure what you think you'll learn in one day like this. You're throwing someone into a high-pressure peer-programming session with someone they don't know and a codebase they've never seen. In order to get them to complete anything you're probably going to have to stage a bunch of stuff and basically give them a fake assignment anyway ("fill in the body of this 'findUserByOrderNumber()' method for us") which has turned it into the equivalent a whiteboard coding question anyway. If you give them a single pair-programming partner, you only get one hiring opinion which is a pretty bad idea, and if you give them multiple pair-programming partners the work will have to be even more trivial. I don't think a one-day trial like this will tell you more than a standard interview loop. Some people might do better with it, others will do worse. I also don't think you should expect to get real work out of someone before you hire them, either. If you want me to spend 8 hours building you a feature, I expect to get paid. And the overhead of paying me for 8 hours of work is probably not worth it to your company, because it's a ridiculous amount of paperwork. (And not even possible for people who need visa sponsoring.)

lj3 10y ago
> I also don't think you should expect to get real work out of someone before you hire them, either. This has grown on me. It's a lot of time invested per company, but it's still a hell of a lot less time than the interview prep mentioned in the article. It's also more pleasant, since I'm programming something real instead of the fibonacci sequence.
- dpark 10y ago
  I don't honestly think you're going to get much more than Fibonacci in a one day pair programming session on an unknown codebase. It's just too much to learn before you can really accomplish anything. Beyond one or maybe two days it just becomes an unreasonable request, regardless of whether they pay you.
  - lj3 10y ago
    Oh, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "get real work" out of somebody. IMHO, pair programming isn't getting real work out of somebody. I'm with tptacek on this one: take home programming tests. Specifically, tests where they give you specs for something and you build it however you like.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I'm ok with something like that if it's a reasonable amount of work, and if it's not going to be followed up with the standard interview loop. Extremely long take home work is unreasonable to me. Studying for interviews is at least applicable to many companies. A take home is just for the one. And if it's followed up with a normal interview loop, then it's just more but not better.