6 ms·

this is all good info. especially the take homes. when i interviewed this time around for a new job, the most frustrating part were the take homes. lots of com

by swang 10y ago

this is all good info. especially the take homes. when i interviewed this time around for a new job, the most frustrating part were the take homes. lots of companies expect you to do a sample project that only grants you an audience to a technical phone screen. like, what? didn't i just pass your technical test? if i still have to show my technical prowess doesn't that mean you don't trust my resume, or trust that i honestly completed your assignment? i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it. i failed a large company's take home even though it was feature complete, but i sacrificed really slick/nice ui for a workable ui that i felt was passable given no direction. i got a thanks but no thanks reply back. as with regards to luck; another company i interviewed at, i aced their take home. then i interviewed with ~6 people who all said they liked me (or at least that was the feedback i got). but when i interviewed with the vpe, i failed a question about semaphores, (i knew what they are, but just didn't have the answer to a specific question the vpe asked) and failed the job app. the job position was to be a front-end developer.

strictnein 10y ago
> "i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it." I had a take home for a UI position that I spent ~10-12 hours on. It was some pretty standard UI stuff and they had 5 points of functionality they wanted you to code. Make it responsive, have these sections in a different order on mobile, make X do Y when you click Z, etc etc. At the interview, two technical peers walked through what I had submitted. Their questions made it really clear they had no idea what problems I was supposed to solve. - Why didn't you write a complete RESTful backend to serve this data? (the instructions literally said not to) - Why didn't you use a CSS pre-processor? (the code required ~30 lines of CSS) - Why doesn't this button work? (it wasn't supposed to) - Why doesn't this code work on a mobile device? (it worked just fine on mobile devices) Really just a strange, strange experience.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Given their cluelessness, would you even want to work with them? I'm guessing you "failed" that interview, and it was probably a good thing, too.
  - lj3 10y ago
    I hear this a lot in these kinds of discussions. While I agree with you that these might not be the best people to work with, the equation looks very different after doing these kinds of interviews for 6 months and you really need a paycheck yesterday.
pmiller2 10y ago
> the job position was to be a front-end developer. You lucked out then, I think. If they were looking for a front end developer and asking questions about semaphores, something is definitely wrong.
- swang 10y ago
  the position was for a front-end role, but the company itself is more "low level" than that. it was just one of those situations where the vpe is a very smart person, but has no clue about the front-end, and apparently this was a pet question of the vpe. i don't think i "lucked out" since the people i would have actually had day-to-day interactions with were fine people. but yeah that is definitely a blind-spot for them.
kybernetikos 10y ago
I disagree about the take homes. But this may primarily be because I've been hiring with a heavily weighted take-home for the last six months. Here's my reasoning: 1. I don't want to work for a company that uses CVs as a major part of its job screen, since they are nearly useless from an informational point of view. Steps that improve the quality of candidates also improve the expected quality of your future colleagues. 2. The take home gives significantly more information than a phone screen. Candidates who are rejected because they find the take home too hard, or who would have passed a phone screen but not the take home are saving time because they don't have to take any time off to come into the office for an onsite. 3. Having a good take-home means we can make the rest of the process more lightweight. We have an extension interview where we pair with you while you extend what you took home, and then you're done. This is much more respectful of your time than multiple days of algorithmic questions. 4. It's easier to make marking take-homes blind - i.e. to guard against various biases compared to phone screens and even in-person interviews. 5. The take-home is simplified, but similar to the sort of thing you will have to do in your actual work, so doing it gives you extra information about the job itself. 6. The take-home is designed to result in something that's fun. Many of our candidates say that they enjoyed doing it. Even some of the ones who fail it. Some even say it's a reason that they choose us over some other company. It is true that some good candidates simply refuse to do take homes on principle since they have lots of choice. To try to combat this, we make sure we try to explain why it's worth your time. If I told candidates 'congratulations, you've got a 1 day onsite interview' (where in the morning you're on your own and we send you home at lunchtime if you've not made good progress) instead of a half-day take-home (in which we are very flexible over how much elapsed time you need) and a 1.5 hour onsite extension, do you think candidates would prefer that?
- pmiller2 10y ago
  I'm assuming you're referring to an un-timed homework assignment. Timed homework assignments are absolutely the devil and I don't think I'd do one of these. My biggest issue with (un-timed) take home assignment is that often, as a candidate, this ends up with me investing a nontrivial amount of time, only to not hear anything back. If I'm going to spend multiple hours on something, I would kind of like something in return, such as feedback on my work. Very, very few companies will give any feedback since they don't want to be sued and/or have the candidate try to rebut the reasons why they were turned down.
phunehehe0 10y ago
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned. I have been on both sides. Take homes are awesome when used correctly. They shouldn't be used for a candidate with a relevant opensource profile. In that case, you can already assert that they have the technical skills. You can ask them about their projects to make sure it's their work if you want. Personally I'd go straight to communication skills and cultural fit. For a candidate without much opensource contributions, take homes help both sides: - Candidates get the chance to prove that they are smart and fast learners (especially if you want to get into a slightly different area) - Companies don't have to worry about candidates who can't do fizzbuzz - Neither side have to do the horrid live coding (yeah, nobody likes that, even the interviewer) The awkward thing for me is to deal with candidates who seem to be good at _something else_ (that is not a good approximation of the work at hand). I usually ask them why they want the position. Usually it's just that they "want to get into a slightly different area" and fortunately most agree that a take home is fair.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > The awkward thing for me is to deal with candidates who seem to be good at _something else_ (that is not a good approximation of the work at hand). I usually ask them why they want the position. Usually it's just that they "want to get into a slightly different area" and fortunately most agree that a take home is fair. Trying to get companies to even talk to me about positions that are not like whatever I am currently doing is like pulling teeth. I used to work in real-time embedded systems, signal processing specifically. I shifted to NLP and ML for reasons, but one of them was not "I'm tired of/can't hack embedded and want to try something else". I would love for companies to give me take-homes to prove I can still do embedded. Instead they just ignore me.

by swang 10y ago

strictnein 10y ago

> "i also agree these take homes are not 4 hour affairs. they give you no direction so you can't sacrifice ui/ux for functionality because you have no clue how they judge it." I had a take home for a UI position that I spent ~10-12 hours on. It was some pretty standard UI stuff and they had 5 points of functionality they wanted you to code. Make it responsive, have these sections in a different order on mobile, make X do Y when you click Z, etc etc. At the interview, two technical peers walked through what I had submitted. Their questions made it really clear they had no idea what problems I was supposed to solve. - Why didn't you write a complete RESTful backend to serve this data? (the instructions literally said not to) - Why didn't you use a CSS pre-processor? (the code required ~30 lines of CSS) - Why doesn't this button work? (it wasn't supposed to) - Why doesn't this code work on a mobile device? (it worked just fine on mobile devices) Really just a strange, strange experience.

pmiller2 10y ago
Given their cluelessness, would you even want to work with them? I'm guessing you "failed" that interview, and it was probably a good thing, too.
- lj3 10y ago
  I hear this a lot in these kinds of discussions. While I agree with you that these might not be the best people to work with, the equation looks very different after doing these kinds of interviews for 6 months and you really need a paycheck yesterday.

pmiller2 10y ago

> the job position was to be a front-end developer. You lucked out then, I think. If they were looking for a front end developer and asking questions about semaphores, something is definitely wrong.

swang 10y ago
the position was for a front-end role, but the company itself is more "low level" than that. it was just one of those situations where the vpe is a very smart person, but has no clue about the front-end, and apparently this was a pet question of the vpe. i don't think i "lucked out" since the people i would have actually had day-to-day interactions with were fine people. but yeah that is definitely a blind-spot for them.

kybernetikos 10y ago

I disagree about the take homes. But this may primarily be because I've been hiring with a heavily weighted take-home for the last six months. Here's my reasoning: 1. I don't want to work for a company that uses CVs as a major part of its job screen, since they are nearly useless from an informational point of view. Steps that improve the quality of candidates also improve the expected quality of your future colleagues. 2. The take home gives significantly more information than a phone screen. Candidates who are rejected because they find the take home too hard, or who would have passed a phone screen but not the take home are saving time because they don't have to take any time off to come into the office for an onsite. 3. Having a good take-home means we can make the rest of the process more lightweight. We have an extension interview where we pair with you while you extend what you took home, and then you're done. This is much more respectful of your time than multiple days of algorithmic questions. 4. It's easier to make marking take-homes blind - i.e. to guard against various biases compared to phone screens and even in-person interviews. 5. The take-home is simplified, but similar to the sort of thing you will have to do in your actual work, so doing it gives you extra information about the job itself. 6. The take-home is designed to result in something that's fun. Many of our candidates say that they enjoyed doing it. Even some of the ones who fail it. Some even say it's a reason that they choose us over some other company. It is true that some good candidates simply refuse to do take homes on principle since they have lots of choice. To try to combat this, we make sure we try to explain why it's worth your time. If I told candidates 'congratulations, you've got a 1 day onsite interview' (where in the morning you're on your own and we send you home at lunchtime if you've not made good progress) instead of a half-day take-home (in which we are very flexible over how much elapsed time you need) and a 1.5 hour onsite extension, do you think candidates would prefer that?

pmiller2 10y ago
I'm assuming you're referring to an un-timed homework assignment. Timed homework assignments are absolutely the devil and I don't think I'd do one of these. My biggest issue with (un-timed) take home assignment is that often, as a candidate, this ends up with me investing a nontrivial amount of time, only to not hear anything back. If I'm going to spend multiple hours on something, I would kind of like something in return, such as feedback on my work. Very, very few companies will give any feedback since they don't want to be sued and/or have the candidate try to rebut the reasons why they were turned down.

phunehehe0 10y ago

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned. I have been on both sides. Take homes are awesome when used correctly. They shouldn't be used for a candidate with a relevant opensource profile. In that case, you can already assert that they have the technical skills. You can ask them about their projects to make sure it's their work if you want. Personally I'd go straight to communication skills and cultural fit. For a candidate without much opensource contributions, take homes help both sides: - Candidates get the chance to prove that they are smart and fast learners (especially if you want to get into a slightly different area) - Companies don't have to worry about candidates who can't do fizzbuzz - Neither side have to do the horrid live coding (yeah, nobody likes that, even the interviewer) The awkward thing for me is to deal with candidates who seem to be good at _something else_ (that is not a good approximation of the work at hand). I usually ask them why they want the position. Usually it's just that they "want to get into a slightly different area" and fortunately most agree that a take home is fair.

vonmoltke 10y ago
> The awkward thing for me is to deal with candidates who seem to be good at _something else_ (that is not a good approximation of the work at hand). I usually ask them why they want the position. Usually it's just that they "want to get into a slightly different area" and fortunately most agree that a take home is fair. Trying to get companies to even talk to me about positions that are not like whatever I am currently doing is like pulling teeth. I used to work in real-time embedded systems, signal processing specifically. I shifted to NLP and ML for reasons, but one of them was not "I'm tired of/can't hack embedded and want to try something else". I would love for companies to give me take-homes to prove I can still do embedded. Instead they just ignore me.