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Is there a single interview method on Earth that will satisfy HN? These are all arguments I've heard in the last few weeks on here: - Whiteboard coding is too

Is there a single interview method on Earth that will satisfy HN? These are all arguments I've heard in the last few weeks on here: - Whiteboard coding is too far removed from "real work", not effective at testing general aptitude, and is demeaning. - Asking to see side projects presupposes an unhealthy amount of focus on work, discriminates against people with lives, and is demeaning. - Asking for a custom piece of real-world code that matches the company's actual stack is exploitative, should be illegal, and is demeaning. - Basing everything on answers to 'soft' questions about previous experience discriminates against people who aren't interested in showmanship, leads to too many suits and bros, and is demeaning. What on Earth should we be doing, then? Everyone on Hacker News is so enlightened and skilled at their job, that any form of verification is demeaning and beneath their dignity. Apparently I should make my hiring decision based on their comment history or something.

imgabe 9y ago
Whatever it is, I think we can all agree that "Work unpaid for 3 months and then maybe have a job" is so far from the mark as to be laughable. This is not HN being picky about interviews. This is a delusional company making absurd demands for which they are rightly being mocked.
grzm 9y ago
> ”Is there a single interview method on Earth that will satisfy HN?” The simple answer is “no”. The HN community is not a monolithic block. You might as well ask if there’s one that would satisfy everyone. The key is to find one that works effectively for your organization.
ohthehugemanate 9y ago
I mean, I agree that HN find's it much easier to shit on interview methods than come up with something reasonable... But read the post. They're asking him to build a complete application, front and back, that does just what their app is supposed to do... Before he gets a phone interview. And then they offer 3 months uncompensated "onboarding" before ever paying for work. There's bad interview practices, and then there's abuse.
- apetresc 9y ago
  > They're asking him to build a complete application, front and back, that does just what their app is supposed to do Are we reading the same post? They want basically two API endpoints, one to receive a POST upload and another to return all the things that were uploaded. You could do this in Django (which they want you to use) in significantly less than 100 lines of code. It seems like an ideal little sandbox.
  - astura 9y ago
    Even if that was reasonable, did you stop reading after the first sentence? >...Authentication system that only allows authenticated users to upload photos but all users to view photos -Automated testing -Code coverage does not need to be complete, just generate that some critical functions of the system have tests attached to them. -Write-up on the systems design pattern choices They are basically saying "make our entire product."
    - apetresc 9y ago
      Yes, of course. Authentication is a single Django module, and they want unit tests (not even code coverage). Those are all scaffolding around the code that everyone agrees should be there. When people complain about whiteboard interviews, this is exactly the kind of stuff they argue is missing.
      - lovich 9y ago
        Bruh, they are asking for a well put together app with all the features you'd have in production. From an intern. You are right in that a senior dev could bang this out, but it would still take them a day at least. Interns generally don't know what they are doing. If they did they would be going for the higher paid job already. How does asking for an entire MVP from an intern ever make sense? Even if they paid him to make this app it would stop being unethical but it would still be silly.
jprince 9y ago
This, absolutely. If I were looking to get my foot in the door, I would totally code a week for free. Hell, my first freelancing gig, I made 8$/hour. The three months without pay thing...that's a little different. I'd tell them no way.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  "If I were looking to get my foot in the door, I would totally code a week for free." I absolutely would not. They're a company; they can afford to pay me. Me, however, my landlord isn't going to accept "I had to work for free" in lieu of rent.
- mustacheemperor 9y ago
  I think there's also a big difference in coding for a week for free for a qualified company and doing it for three college students, one of whom claims to be one of "the world's leading react developers" after a 3-month internship.
adamnemecek 9y ago
You come in and hack with the team for a couple hours. You know, the activity that you'll be paid to do. How is this that hard?
- reikonomusha 9y ago
  How often can that really be productive?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    You are right, we should do white board interviews mixed with "how many golf balls can you fit into a school bus". Now that's what I programming skill assessment.
- rglullis 9y ago
  You are saying that an engineer from my already resource-constrained team should be allocated to: - make a quick onboarding of the candidate - explain the general architecture of the system - find an issue/story that is "superficial" enough to be taken by someone with zero-experience at that job, but "deep" enough that you can test their experience and knowledge (oh, and that story better not involve anything that might be related to core company IP.) - do a pair-programming session with the candidate, and be the main driver ALL OF THE TIME (because the candidate does not have any git access, so their development environment is useless) - evaluate the candidate You really think that is something for "a couple hours"? Even if it were, do you think it is a good use of the time of the engineer that is going to be allocated to the task?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Never said it needs to be the current system. Make a simplified version if you want. Or something completely different that uses the similar languages/paradigms? > Even if it were, do you think it is a good use of the time of the engineer that is going to be allocated to the task? So what exactly is the alternative? Look, if you can't prioritize hiring, don't be surprised that you aren't able to hire. Yes, the engineers should be able to do this.
idbehold 9y ago
I think the more upsetting thing is the part where even if the candidate passes the "interview" and gets "hired" they must be trained (see: work) for three months w/o pay.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  I wouldn't at all be surprised if all interns are let go after three months for a bogus reason ("you're toxic!") so that the company can continuously get free work from unwitting internship candidates.
lightbyte 9y ago
> Asking to see side projects presupposes an unhealthy amount of focus on work, discriminates against people with lives This argument is so ridiculous, because I enjoy programming it means I don't have a life? Is this an actual argument people make?
- apetresc 9y ago
  Yes, this was the overwhelming sentiment from a post that was on the front page just yesterday.
  - dx034 9y ago
    When you have a family and full time job it could be that you simply don't find the time for side projects even if you love programming.
    - lightbyte 9y ago
      That's fine, but the argument was that it "discriminates against people with lives". That's offensively wrong, as you're saying I don't have a life because I enjoy to program.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  My takeaway is that it's more a mark against someone who doesn't want to do their job function in their non-working times as well. To me, not wanting to code outside of work if you're coding all day is perfectly reasonable and shouldn't count against you during an interview process, an expectation that you have side projects just feels unreasonable. There's obviously not gonna be anything wrong with someone who also likes to code their own projects outside of work for fun. That's my view from the outside as a non-dev, anyway.
  - lightbyte 9y ago
    That wasn't the argument though, the argument was it "discriminates against people with lives". That's an offensively wrong argument. If the argument was that it discriminates against people who don't hobby program, than yes I'd say that's correct.
dkersten 9y ago
There’s a difference between “shitty interview” and “predatory, unethincal (and possibly illegal depending on where they are) practices”.
astura 9y ago
This isn't about the larger issues of interviewing methods. This "company" is 1) Not a company at all, just 4 cocky and extremely naïve college students who think doing a 3 month internship at Amazon makes you "one of the leading React developers in the world." 2) is asking "interns" to build their entire product before they even consider "hiring" them 3) Has a weird idea what "hiring" means because they won't even bother to pay people they "hire" for 3 months because they think expecting a paycheck in return for labor is "toxic."
dajohnson89 9y ago
There's a lot of complaining, but it's commonly held even outside of HN that tech interviewing is badly broken.
reikonomusha 9y ago
This presupposes there are actually issues with some of the aforementioned examples. The ultimate determiners of success are on the side of the company, not the applicant. A successful interview process is one that leads to a successful candidate, and really nothing else. (N.B., The linked Reddit post is indicative of abuse, so I’m not talking about that.) A lot of SW engineers complain after an interview process, especially a rejection, because of some “if only”-hypothetical. “If only they tested my real skills and not whiteboards. If only they saw that I’m a hard worker at work and I just don’t have time for side projects. If only they read my resume and know that I don’t need no stinkin’ coding test.” This is a strong aversion to false-negatives. But it generally seems to be in the company’s interest to over-reject according to some “stupid” rules than to over-hire. I’m not saying that there are no wrong interview styles, but I think there is a supposition and sensitivity of a problem that isn’t being framed correctly—around applicant satisfaction and not company success. I think if more folks ended up being hiring managers, they’d understand the inherent difficulty in the construction of these supposed silver bullet interview styles. (PS, I say this as someone who has complained very loudly and publicly about mistreatment at Google interviews.)
rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
Best interview I ever had was a $300 contract to add a feature to a company's API. It was the only time I felt a fair exchange of time and money was tendered and I also felt that it adequately demonstrated my skills to the company and their codebase (and impression of future work) to me. I didn't get the job but the company will always have my respect.
- danyim 9y ago
  I agree, this is the right way to compensate for work that can potentially be used in production as a means of interviewing the candidate. I faced something similar to the OP and posted the results on Workplace https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/88138/working-on-live-dev-code-in-the-interview-process-ethical https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/88138/working-...
obstacle1 9y ago
What does your post have to do with the OP? The company in question is asking for someone to do actual work that they will use as part of the job interview, and then to work for free for 3 months, "non-negotiable". You somehow think that is reasonable, and that anyone on HN who complains about it is simply whiny?
- reikonomusha 9y ago
  There have been a good number of posts on HN as of recent about hiring, interviewing, etc. Generally, the post lands, and many folks on HN come out of the woodwork to criticize the method or approach negatively. The same happened with this post. (Of course I think in this case the behavior is exploitative and abusive. But do notice that not all folks in the thread disagree with the practice. Unfortunately they’re getting downvoted for disagreeing.)
- apetresc 9y ago
  You either didn't read the post, or you are taking their informal problem statement ("our frontend will call your endpoint [..]") WAY too literally. Hint: their frontend will NOT actually be calling your endpoint. They will probably never even run your endpoint once. It's just a way to describe where in the flow they want you to plug into. They want an HTTP endpoint that takes a file over POST. Then they want an HTTP endpoint that returns the list of files over GET. They would also like basic things like a way to take an auth token to check if you have permission to upload, some unit testing, etc. If you think this is anywhere even near to the ballpark of "actual work that they will use in their product", you're insane. This is basically 95% Django boilerplate that an experienced Django dev would be able to type out faster than it takes me to write this comment. To suggest that "write and read a .jpg" is somehow a part of their system that they're outsourcing (rather than the kind of thing you can find written out in dozens of Stack Overflow answers) is absurd.
  - obstacle1 9y ago
    I think it's a) really bizarre how invested you are in defending this obviously exploitative process -- do real work for us and then work for free for 3 months, sure, all the Django devs line up, it's easy game; and b) ridiculous the extent to which you are minimizing the requirements of the exercise. It's a code screen -- reasonable is making sure the candidate can write code, not that the candidate ships you a full stack functional product with a test suite and design pattern justification document. What is insane is trying to justify this with "its ok Django is basically magic lol". I don't think we have anything further to productively discuss.
z0r 9y ago
What do you expect from a new hire? What kind of time to productivity curve do you have in mind? I think all 4 forms of interviewing you are suggesting are reasonable and whether or not they are demeaning for the interviewee depends mostly on the attitudes of those involved. If the interviewer is a jerk setting out to dominate the interviewee, and does not even bother to conceal how they think the interview is going, it's going to be a demeaning experience. If the interviewer is polite, empathetic to the interviewee, and probes without hinting at the opinion they are forming, even a terrible candidate should be able to leave without feeling like they were unfairly treated.
spmurrayzzz 9y ago
Making a candidate do actual company-related work during the interview process without compensation violates minimum wage laws in many states. It also could potentially violate IRS laws around employer obligations (tax disclosures, I-9, etc). I don't see how objectively criticizing the above practice lands squarely in this ivory tower strawman you're invoking.
ska 9y ago
What on Earth should we be doing, then? You should accept that the process is going to cost you, and that there are going to be both false positives and false negatives. Trial periods solve false positives, and you eat the cost of onboarding someone and their 1st 3 months or whatever. It sucks, but make the decision and move on. If you have this happen multiple times, your interview process isn't rigorous enough. To improve false negatives you need a mix of inputs in your interview process. One way to get this is long/multistaged interview, but you will lose people this way too. Accept that if you are asking an interviewee to do real work (e.g. real world code) independently you should pay them for the time, and know that you'll lose some good candidates if you ask.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Its almost like it's a large community, with many different people having different opinions. However, it does appear as if the community is pretty united on the idea that asking for free labor like this means you deserve to go get fucked.
segmondy 9y ago
It's not HN, It's just tech. I might offend folks but I don't care. I believe it's the new influx of over night programmers. Programming is now fashionable, pays well, everyone must learn to code. Take a class for 4 weeks and you are good to go. These folks then don't want to be subjected to the rigor of interviews. Then there's the set that have refused to keep up with the changes and believe that because they have been in the industry for a while and it worked out for them at one company they should get an easier pass.
pryelluw 9y ago
Im currently interviewing (and looking for a job (resume link on profile)) and Ive gotten multiple approaches. Most time consuming one has been "do this test before we even talk to you on the phone". Which I get given all the phony devs out there. But it does get a bit tiring. One thing Ive noticed is that asking for the hardest interview they have or can do usually gets them excited to talk with me. Which I like because there is nothing worse than a boring "reverde a linked list" type of interview.
mygo 9y ago
making your hiring decision based on their comment history is not effective at testing operational development skills, and is demeaning.

imgabe 9y ago

Whatever it is, I think we can all agree that "Work unpaid for 3 months and then maybe have a job" is so far from the mark as to be laughable. This is not HN being picky about interviews. This is a delusional company making absurd demands for which they are rightly being mocked.

grzm 9y ago

> ”Is there a single interview method on Earth that will satisfy HN?” The simple answer is “no”. The HN community is not a monolithic block. You might as well ask if there’s one that would satisfy everyone. The key is to find one that works effectively for your organization.

ohthehugemanate 9y ago

I mean, I agree that HN find's it much easier to shit on interview methods than come up with something reasonable... But read the post. They're asking him to build a complete application, front and back, that does just what their app is supposed to do... Before he gets a phone interview. And then they offer 3 months uncompensated "onboarding" before ever paying for work. There's bad interview practices, and then there's abuse.

apetresc 9y ago
> They're asking him to build a complete application, front and back, that does just what their app is supposed to do Are we reading the same post? They want basically two API endpoints, one to receive a POST upload and another to return all the things that were uploaded. You could do this in Django (which they want you to use) in significantly less than 100 lines of code. It seems like an ideal little sandbox.
- astura 9y ago
  Even if that was reasonable, did you stop reading after the first sentence? >...Authentication system that only allows authenticated users to upload photos but all users to view photos -Automated testing -Code coverage does not need to be complete, just generate that some critical functions of the system have tests attached to them. -Write-up on the systems design pattern choices They are basically saying "make our entire product."
  - apetresc 9y ago
    Yes, of course. Authentication is a single Django module, and they want unit tests (not even code coverage). Those are all scaffolding around the code that everyone agrees should be there. When people complain about whiteboard interviews, this is exactly the kind of stuff they argue is missing.
    - lovich 9y ago
      Bruh, they are asking for a well put together app with all the features you'd have in production. From an intern. You are right in that a senior dev could bang this out, but it would still take them a day at least. Interns generally don't know what they are doing. If they did they would be going for the higher paid job already. How does asking for an entire MVP from an intern ever make sense? Even if they paid him to make this app it would stop being unethical but it would still be silly.

jprince 9y ago

This, absolutely. If I were looking to get my foot in the door, I would totally code a week for free. Hell, my first freelancing gig, I made 8$/hour. The three months without pay thing...that's a little different. I'd tell them no way.

s73ver_ 9y ago
"If I were looking to get my foot in the door, I would totally code a week for free." I absolutely would not. They're a company; they can afford to pay me. Me, however, my landlord isn't going to accept "I had to work for free" in lieu of rent.
mustacheemperor 9y ago
I think there's also a big difference in coding for a week for free for a qualified company and doing it for three college students, one of whom claims to be one of "the world's leading react developers" after a 3-month internship.

adamnemecek 9y ago

You come in and hack with the team for a couple hours. You know, the activity that you'll be paid to do. How is this that hard?

reikonomusha 9y ago
How often can that really be productive?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  You are right, we should do white board interviews mixed with "how many golf balls can you fit into a school bus". Now that's what I programming skill assessment.
rglullis 9y ago
You are saying that an engineer from my already resource-constrained team should be allocated to: - make a quick onboarding of the candidate - explain the general architecture of the system - find an issue/story that is "superficial" enough to be taken by someone with zero-experience at that job, but "deep" enough that you can test their experience and knowledge (oh, and that story better not involve anything that might be related to core company IP.) - do a pair-programming session with the candidate, and be the main driver ALL OF THE TIME (because the candidate does not have any git access, so their development environment is useless) - evaluate the candidate You really think that is something for "a couple hours"? Even if it were, do you think it is a good use of the time of the engineer that is going to be allocated to the task?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Never said it needs to be the current system. Make a simplified version if you want. Or something completely different that uses the similar languages/paradigms? > Even if it were, do you think it is a good use of the time of the engineer that is going to be allocated to the task? So what exactly is the alternative? Look, if you can't prioritize hiring, don't be surprised that you aren't able to hire. Yes, the engineers should be able to do this.

idbehold 9y ago

I think the more upsetting thing is the part where even if the candidate passes the "interview" and gets "hired" they must be trained (see: work) for three months w/o pay.

slantyyz 9y ago
I wouldn't at all be surprised if all interns are let go after three months for a bogus reason ("you're toxic!") so that the company can continuously get free work from unwitting internship candidates.

lightbyte 9y ago

> Asking to see side projects presupposes an unhealthy amount of focus on work, discriminates against people with lives This argument is so ridiculous, because I enjoy programming it means I don't have a life? Is this an actual argument people make?

apetresc 9y ago
Yes, this was the overwhelming sentiment from a post that was on the front page just yesterday.
- dx034 9y ago
  When you have a family and full time job it could be that you simply don't find the time for side projects even if you love programming.
  - lightbyte 9y ago
    That's fine, but the argument was that it "discriminates against people with lives". That's offensively wrong, as you're saying I don't have a life because I enjoy to program.
deadmetheny 9y ago
My takeaway is that it's more a mark against someone who doesn't want to do their job function in their non-working times as well. To me, not wanting to code outside of work if you're coding all day is perfectly reasonable and shouldn't count against you during an interview process, an expectation that you have side projects just feels unreasonable. There's obviously not gonna be anything wrong with someone who also likes to code their own projects outside of work for fun. That's my view from the outside as a non-dev, anyway.
- lightbyte 9y ago
  That wasn't the argument though, the argument was it "discriminates against people with lives". That's an offensively wrong argument. If the argument was that it discriminates against people who don't hobby program, than yes I'd say that's correct.

dkersten 9y ago

There’s a difference between “shitty interview” and “predatory, unethincal (and possibly illegal depending on where they are) practices”.

astura 9y ago

This isn't about the larger issues of interviewing methods. This "company" is 1) Not a company at all, just 4 cocky and extremely naïve college students who think doing a 3 month internship at Amazon makes you "one of the leading React developers in the world." 2) is asking "interns" to build their entire product before they even consider "hiring" them 3) Has a weird idea what "hiring" means because they won't even bother to pay people they "hire" for 3 months because they think expecting a paycheck in return for labor is "toxic."

dajohnson89 9y ago

There's a lot of complaining, but it's commonly held even outside of HN that tech interviewing is badly broken.

reikonomusha 9y ago

This presupposes there are actually issues with some of the aforementioned examples. The ultimate determiners of success are on the side of the company, not the applicant. A successful interview process is one that leads to a successful candidate, and really nothing else. (N.B., The linked Reddit post is indicative of abuse, so I’m not talking about that.) A lot of SW engineers complain after an interview process, especially a rejection, because of some “if only”-hypothetical. “If only they tested my real skills and not whiteboards. If only they saw that I’m a hard worker at work and I just don’t have time for side projects. If only they read my resume and know that I don’t need no stinkin’ coding test.” This is a strong aversion to false-negatives. But it generally seems to be in the company’s interest to over-reject according to some “stupid” rules than to over-hire. I’m not saying that there are no wrong interview styles, but I think there is a supposition and sensitivity of a problem that isn’t being framed correctly—around applicant satisfaction and not company success. I think if more folks ended up being hiring managers, they’d understand the inherent difficulty in the construction of these supposed silver bullet interview styles. (PS, I say this as someone who has complained very loudly and publicly about mistreatment at Google interviews.)

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

Best interview I ever had was a $300 contract to add a feature to a company's API. It was the only time I felt a fair exchange of time and money was tendered and I also felt that it adequately demonstrated my skills to the company and their codebase (and impression of future work) to me. I didn't get the job but the company will always have my respect.

danyim 9y ago
I agree, this is the right way to compensate for work that can potentially be used in production as a means of interviewing the candidate. I faced something similar to the OP and posted the results on Workplace https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/88138/working-on-live-dev-code-in-the-interview-process-ethical https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/88138/working-...

obstacle1 9y ago

What does your post have to do with the OP? The company in question is asking for someone to do actual work that they will use as part of the job interview, and then to work for free for 3 months, "non-negotiable". You somehow think that is reasonable, and that anyone on HN who complains about it is simply whiny?

reikonomusha 9y ago
There have been a good number of posts on HN as of recent about hiring, interviewing, etc. Generally, the post lands, and many folks on HN come out of the woodwork to criticize the method or approach negatively. The same happened with this post. (Of course I think in this case the behavior is exploitative and abusive. But do notice that not all folks in the thread disagree with the practice. Unfortunately they’re getting downvoted for disagreeing.)
apetresc 9y ago
You either didn't read the post, or you are taking their informal problem statement ("our frontend will call your endpoint [..]") WAY too literally. Hint: their frontend will NOT actually be calling your endpoint. They will probably never even run your endpoint once. It's just a way to describe where in the flow they want you to plug into. They want an HTTP endpoint that takes a file over POST. Then they want an HTTP endpoint that returns the list of files over GET. They would also like basic things like a way to take an auth token to check if you have permission to upload, some unit testing, etc. If you think this is anywhere even near to the ballpark of "actual work that they will use in their product", you're insane. This is basically 95% Django boilerplate that an experienced Django dev would be able to type out faster than it takes me to write this comment. To suggest that "write and read a .jpg" is somehow a part of their system that they're outsourcing (rather than the kind of thing you can find written out in dozens of Stack Overflow answers) is absurd.
- obstacle1 9y ago
  I think it's a) really bizarre how invested you are in defending this obviously exploitative process -- do real work for us and then work for free for 3 months, sure, all the Django devs line up, it's easy game; and b) ridiculous the extent to which you are minimizing the requirements of the exercise. It's a code screen -- reasonable is making sure the candidate can write code, not that the candidate ships you a full stack functional product with a test suite and design pattern justification document. What is insane is trying to justify this with "its ok Django is basically magic lol". I don't think we have anything further to productively discuss.

z0r 9y ago

What do you expect from a new hire? What kind of time to productivity curve do you have in mind? I think all 4 forms of interviewing you are suggesting are reasonable and whether or not they are demeaning for the interviewee depends mostly on the attitudes of those involved. If the interviewer is a jerk setting out to dominate the interviewee, and does not even bother to conceal how they think the interview is going, it's going to be a demeaning experience. If the interviewer is polite, empathetic to the interviewee, and probes without hinting at the opinion they are forming, even a terrible candidate should be able to leave without feeling like they were unfairly treated.

spmurrayzzz 9y ago

Making a candidate do actual company-related work during the interview process without compensation violates minimum wage laws in many states. It also could potentially violate IRS laws around employer obligations (tax disclosures, I-9, etc). I don't see how objectively criticizing the above practice lands squarely in this ivory tower strawman you're invoking.

ska 9y ago

What on Earth should we be doing, then? You should accept that the process is going to cost you, and that there are going to be both false positives and false negatives. Trial periods solve false positives, and you eat the cost of onboarding someone and their 1st 3 months or whatever. It sucks, but make the decision and move on. If you have this happen multiple times, your interview process isn't rigorous enough. To improve false negatives you need a mix of inputs in your interview process. One way to get this is long/multistaged interview, but you will lose people this way too. Accept that if you are asking an interviewee to do real work (e.g. real world code) independently you should pay them for the time, and know that you'll lose some good candidates if you ask.

s73ver_ 9y ago

Its almost like it's a large community, with many different people having different opinions. However, it does appear as if the community is pretty united on the idea that asking for free labor like this means you deserve to go get fucked.

segmondy 9y ago

It's not HN, It's just tech. I might offend folks but I don't care. I believe it's the new influx of over night programmers. Programming is now fashionable, pays well, everyone must learn to code. Take a class for 4 weeks and you are good to go. These folks then don't want to be subjected to the rigor of interviews. Then there's the set that have refused to keep up with the changes and believe that because they have been in the industry for a while and it worked out for them at one company they should get an easier pass.

pryelluw 9y ago

Im currently interviewing (and looking for a job (resume link on profile)) and Ive gotten multiple approaches. Most time consuming one has been "do this test before we even talk to you on the phone". Which I get given all the phony devs out there. But it does get a bit tiring. One thing Ive noticed is that asking for the hardest interview they have or can do usually gets them excited to talk with me. Which I like because there is nothing worse than a boring "reverde a linked list" type of interview.

mygo 9y ago

making your hiring decision based on their comment history is not effective at testing operational development skills, and is demeaning.