4 ms·

It's not that simple. Many good engineers, especially those who aren't young men, don't have existing work samples they are able to share. Perhaps, by choice o

It's not that simple. Many good engineers, especially those who aren't young men, don't have existing work samples they are able to share. Perhaps, by choice or otherwise, they have a personal life that does not allow them to write code for free. And their employers won't allow them to share work code. And many good engineers are not willing to spend an unpaid weekend writing code auditioning for a job they aren't yet sure they want. And, as you know if you've ever worked with a disruptive colleague, or had customers, engineering in a team for a product is much more than just writing code.

softawre 9y ago
You are allowed to pay somebody for a work sample.
angersock 9y ago
> don't have existing work samples they are able to share. This, at least, should be fixable. Don't work at places that won't let you talk about your work and demonstrate your competence.
- pm90 9y ago
  I don't think that's always possible. What if you worked for Healthcare or Security or Finance, where there are strict laws for keeping code/design private?
  - angersock 9y ago
    What are examples of such laws? There are laws allowing prosecution if you break agreements, sure, but the agreements themselves are what can be fixed by encouraging the market that they're incorrect.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      In the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act_1989
      - angersock 9y ago
        That seems targeted at .gov employees, which is a little different.
tptacek 9y ago
That's not what a work sample is. A work sample is a (usually, hopefully) standardized piece of work you request from all candidates that mirrors the actual work they'd be doing on the job. There's no reason a work sample needs to be so onerous that it costs you a weekend. What people forget when this comes up for discussion is that interviews are work. In fact, they are themselves onerous work, since they require you to be on-site and intensely engaged in ways you don't have to be to do the actual work of a job. A work sample, on the other hand, can be done from your home, with a beer next to your laptop if that's how you roll. The notion of audition work has definitely been abused in our industry. People get work samples that aren't standardized. They get work samples that are later ignored. Work samples don't have objective scoring rubrics. Some annoying companies assign new features for their products as "work samples". Done carefully, though, with objective and predictable grading and calibrated to offset in-person interviewing time, they're superior to any process we have.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  As an applicant, I'd be all for going the work sample route, but only if it's paid for and if it were used in lieu of the typical face-to-face hazing session rather than in addition. I notice more and more companies are asking for work samples (or "homework assignments" or whatever they want to call them), but they just pile it onto their already onerous process. The major pain point in interviewing (at least for me) is the massive time sink for a very small chance of success. I'm spending a few hours on the application, then a few more doing phone screens, then a weekend doing a work sample, then I blow a VACATION day (which has monetary value and of which I have only 10 per year), and at the end of it all who knows what my odds even are? Multiply that by, lets say 10 companies per year, and: I've invested 31 days of my life, have no vacation left, and I still may end up with nothing.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I think paying for interviews is problematic for a bunch of reasons. On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with people who reject "homework assignments" layered on top of a standard interview process. The onus is on people who want to take advantage of work samples to: * Ensure that the time they're asking of candidates is offset by lowered time demands elsewhere * Ensure that they're using the work samples objectively, so that people aren't asked to do coding work as part of a crap-shoot application process. The process we used at Matasano and NCC was less demanding than typical job interview processes. The challenges were simple and self-contained, and when they were completed we could tell you with a decent degree of confidence whether you were likely to be offered a job at your (shortened) on-site interview.
potatolicious 9y ago
I don't mean to propose that people spend their off hours writing work samples - that's unreasonable for all the reasons you've given and more. What I mean to propose is that we dramatically alter the current on-site interview process used by most companies. Instead of 5-7 interviews, consisting of 5-7 independent but ultimately equally contrived algorithms questions on a whiteboard, use the several hours you have the candidate to produce real, working code that reflects the work that your company does. Which is to say, this requires no more time commitment than the existing interview processes at typical tech companies. If the work your company does is deeply algorithmic, this will be reflected in the work sample produced via this process. If the work your company does is more heavily UX-oriented, this will be reflected in the work sample produced, also. Instead of "over the course of a full-day on-site round of interviews, candidate produced several short snippets of hand-scrawled code solving various CS textbook problems, which we will now use to infer general engineering ability"... ... you can say "over the course of a full-day on-site round of interviews, candidate designed and produced a module of code that does [X small thing that company does], which can be assessed with the same rigor and methodology we already apply to our existing work and employees"
sidlls 9y ago
While I agree that a focus on "work samples" is inappropriate, I must emphatically agree with the parent's broader point. The way companies in this industry conduct interviews and measure performance is like an aerospace engineering company testing candidates for satellite engineering on their understanding of the Standard Model (physics) or group theory or some such. There's too narrow a focus on what is required of an engineer in the software industry.

softawre 9y ago

You are allowed to pay somebody for a work sample.

angersock 9y ago

> don't have existing work samples they are able to share. This, at least, should be fixable. Don't work at places that won't let you talk about your work and demonstrate your competence.

pm90 9y ago
I don't think that's always possible. What if you worked for Healthcare or Security or Finance, where there are strict laws for keeping code/design private?
- angersock 9y ago
  What are examples of such laws? There are laws allowing prosecution if you break agreements, sure, but the agreements themselves are what can be fixed by encouraging the market that they're incorrect.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    In the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act_1989
    - angersock 9y ago
      That seems targeted at .gov employees, which is a little different.

tptacek 9y ago

That's not what a work sample is. A work sample is a (usually, hopefully) standardized piece of work you request from all candidates that mirrors the actual work they'd be doing on the job. There's no reason a work sample needs to be so onerous that it costs you a weekend. What people forget when this comes up for discussion is that interviews are work. In fact, they are themselves onerous work, since they require you to be on-site and intensely engaged in ways you don't have to be to do the actual work of a job. A work sample, on the other hand, can be done from your home, with a beer next to your laptop if that's how you roll. The notion of audition work has definitely been abused in our industry. People get work samples that aren't standardized. They get work samples that are later ignored. Work samples don't have objective scoring rubrics. Some annoying companies assign new features for their products as "work samples". Done carefully, though, with objective and predictable grading and calibrated to offset in-person interviewing time, they're superior to any process we have.

ryandrake 9y ago
As an applicant, I'd be all for going the work sample route, but only if it's paid for and if it were used in lieu of the typical face-to-face hazing session rather than in addition. I notice more and more companies are asking for work samples (or "homework assignments" or whatever they want to call them), but they just pile it onto their already onerous process. The major pain point in interviewing (at least for me) is the massive time sink for a very small chance of success. I'm spending a few hours on the application, then a few more doing phone screens, then a weekend doing a work sample, then I blow a VACATION day (which has monetary value and of which I have only 10 per year), and at the end of it all who knows what my odds even are? Multiply that by, lets say 10 companies per year, and: I've invested 31 days of my life, have no vacation left, and I still may end up with nothing.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I think paying for interviews is problematic for a bunch of reasons. On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with people who reject "homework assignments" layered on top of a standard interview process. The onus is on people who want to take advantage of work samples to: * Ensure that the time they're asking of candidates is offset by lowered time demands elsewhere * Ensure that they're using the work samples objectively, so that people aren't asked to do coding work as part of a crap-shoot application process. The process we used at Matasano and NCC was less demanding than typical job interview processes. The challenges were simple and self-contained, and when they were completed we could tell you with a decent degree of confidence whether you were likely to be offered a job at your (shortened) on-site interview.

potatolicious 9y ago

I don't mean to propose that people spend their off hours writing work samples - that's unreasonable for all the reasons you've given and more. What I mean to propose is that we dramatically alter the current on-site interview process used by most companies. Instead of 5-7 interviews, consisting of 5-7 independent but ultimately equally contrived algorithms questions on a whiteboard, use the several hours you have the candidate to produce real, working code that reflects the work that your company does. Which is to say, this requires no more time commitment than the existing interview processes at typical tech companies. If the work your company does is deeply algorithmic, this will be reflected in the work sample produced via this process. If the work your company does is more heavily UX-oriented, this will be reflected in the work sample produced, also. Instead of "over the course of a full-day on-site round of interviews, candidate produced several short snippets of hand-scrawled code solving various CS textbook problems, which we will now use to infer general engineering ability"... ... you can say "over the course of a full-day on-site round of interviews, candidate designed and produced a module of code that does [X small thing that company does], which can be assessed with the same rigor and methodology we already apply to our existing work and employees"

sidlls 9y ago

While I agree that a focus on "work samples" is inappropriate, I must emphatically agree with the parent's broader point. The way companies in this industry conduct interviews and measure performance is like an aerospace engineering company testing candidates for satellite engineering on their understanding of the Standard Model (physics) or group theory or some such. There's too narrow a focus on what is required of an engineer in the software industry.