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If the software development industry was the home building industry... I'm a general contractor (Unicorn Homes Inc.) and I'm currently building a number of spe

If the software development industry was the home building industry... I'm a general contractor (Unicorn Homes Inc.) and I'm currently building a number of spec homes. We're going to need electrical work done in all the homes and I'm in the process of sub-contracting out that work. What I need from you, Joe Electrician, is for you to go wire the kitchen of one of these homes. Once you're done I will inspect your work and let you know if I'm interested in hiring you for more work.

azinman2 9y ago
I wish that’d be a possibility.. there’s no good other way to really evaluate what happens with GCs.
Epenthesis 9y ago
I've never seen a take home coding challenge that had even the possibility of being used as production code. For me it's always been a standardized, self-contained example problem. Maybe there're scummy companies that try to push job applicants' work to production, but I'd be shocked if that was anywhere close to the modal case. So it's more like "What I need from you, Joe Electrician, is for you to go wire up this demo kitchen frame that I've set up. Once you're done I will inspect your work and let you know if I'm interested in hiring you to wire up the actual houses I'm building.".
- conover 9y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. We offer candidates a choice of initial step before an onsite interview: - A short phone interview using a collaborative editing tool like CoderPad. - An example project they can complete independently and turn in. We've designed this project to take about 2 hours to complete. Almost universally, candidates choose the "take home" project option.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > We've designed this project to take about 2 hours to complete. Then you've got it right. It's good to see people admit whiteboard interviews are a crummy system, I think you can learn way more from X hours of "do a task on a real computer with the internet" than you can from the same X hours of "do algorithms work on a whiteboard". The objection, for me at least, is to "do 10*X hours of work on a real computer". It's bizarrely common to massively scale up the time investment when moving to this sort of task. And the answer is so easy - just don't do that!
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  I've definitely seen some prompts that looked suspiciously production-ready. It's usually not "build out our new feature", because spinup time is a thing, but some companies do seem to throw around "build our new one-off microservice". Stuff like "given this incoming data, set up intake, a storage layer, and a backend layer that applies formula X". If the data and the formula look business-relevant, it's at least enough to raise an eyebrow. That said, I'm not sure how much I care, provided the interview is sincere and not some kind of bizarre scam to farm out work. My main concern is much more with scale. I totally see the merit of replacing 5 hours of whiteboard interviews with 5 hours of "build a toy project at home". I don't so much appreciate "take a week of your life and build a substantial project so we don't have to do any legwork".
  - gowld 9y ago
    Wow the pendulum has swung from "employers don't ask any relevant questions" to "I mistrust employers who ask relevant questions".
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      I should maybe have gone into more detail on that example. If BigCompany or even AcceleratorCompany asks for product-relevant work, I'm not going to assume they're having random people off the street write production code. What I've seen is something like "this is a startup in market X, whose product doesn't do Y but could, and they're asking candidates to write code that does Y, and sign over all rights to everything provided during the interview process". Optimistically, it means that if whoever they hire will be told "hey, first assignment is Y, you've already made progress!" Pessimistically, it goes in the same category as "Whartonite seeks codemonkey" and "sign this NDA to interview" - it's a matter of ego and ambition exceeding skill.
maxerickson 9y ago
It's the other way around. If the homebuilding industry were like the software industry. If software were like homebuilding, there would be legally enforced licensing.
- hinkley 9y ago
  And when someone tells me to do something dangerous or illegal I can tell them to fuck off because it’s not to code. Would it be so bad?
zero_intp 9y ago
For contractors in properties I own I do this, but the initial work is paid.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Which makes perfect sense and isn't controversial. You're simply hiring them for a small job to evaluate their performance before you hire them on for a much bigger job. It happens all the time and is normal.
gowld 9y ago
You are welcome to go work in an industry where all the projects are essentially identical so once you've done it once you can do it for anyone anywhere. Enjoy your pay cut and ease of getting hired, unless there is an oversupply .

azinman2 9y ago

I wish that’d be a possibility.. there’s no good other way to really evaluate what happens with GCs.

Epenthesis 9y ago

I've never seen a take home coding challenge that had even the possibility of being used as production code. For me it's always been a standardized, self-contained example problem. Maybe there're scummy companies that try to push job applicants' work to production, but I'd be shocked if that was anywhere close to the modal case. So it's more like "What I need from you, Joe Electrician, is for you to go wire up this demo kitchen frame that I've set up. Once you're done I will inspect your work and let you know if I'm interested in hiring you to wire up the actual houses I'm building.".

conover 9y ago
I agree with this sentiment. We offer candidates a choice of initial step before an onsite interview: - A short phone interview using a collaborative editing tool like CoderPad. - An example project they can complete independently and turn in. We've designed this project to take about 2 hours to complete. Almost universally, candidates choose the "take home" project option.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  > We've designed this project to take about 2 hours to complete. Then you've got it right. It's good to see people admit whiteboard interviews are a crummy system, I think you can learn way more from X hours of "do a task on a real computer with the internet" than you can from the same X hours of "do algorithms work on a whiteboard". The objection, for me at least, is to "do 10*X hours of work on a real computer". It's bizarrely common to massively scale up the time investment when moving to this sort of task. And the answer is so easy - just don't do that!
Bartweiss 9y ago
I've definitely seen some prompts that looked suspiciously production-ready. It's usually not "build out our new feature", because spinup time is a thing, but some companies do seem to throw around "build our new one-off microservice". Stuff like "given this incoming data, set up intake, a storage layer, and a backend layer that applies formula X". If the data and the formula look business-relevant, it's at least enough to raise an eyebrow. That said, I'm not sure how much I care, provided the interview is sincere and not some kind of bizarre scam to farm out work. My main concern is much more with scale. I totally see the merit of replacing 5 hours of whiteboard interviews with 5 hours of "build a toy project at home". I don't so much appreciate "take a week of your life and build a substantial project so we don't have to do any legwork".
- gowld 9y ago
  Wow the pendulum has swung from "employers don't ask any relevant questions" to "I mistrust employers who ask relevant questions".
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    I should maybe have gone into more detail on that example. If BigCompany or even AcceleratorCompany asks for product-relevant work, I'm not going to assume they're having random people off the street write production code. What I've seen is something like "this is a startup in market X, whose product doesn't do Y but could, and they're asking candidates to write code that does Y, and sign over all rights to everything provided during the interview process". Optimistically, it means that if whoever they hire will be told "hey, first assignment is Y, you've already made progress!" Pessimistically, it goes in the same category as "Whartonite seeks codemonkey" and "sign this NDA to interview" - it's a matter of ego and ambition exceeding skill.

maxerickson 9y ago

It's the other way around. If the homebuilding industry were like the software industry. If software were like homebuilding, there would be legally enforced licensing.

hinkley 9y ago
And when someone tells me to do something dangerous or illegal I can tell them to fuck off because it’s not to code. Would it be so bad?

zero_intp 9y ago

For contractors in properties I own I do this, but the initial work is paid.

nkrisc 9y ago
Which makes perfect sense and isn't controversial. You're simply hiring them for a small job to evaluate their performance before you hire them on for a much bigger job. It happens all the time and is normal.

gowld 9y ago

You are welcome to go work in an industry where all the projects are essentially identical so once you've done it once you can do it for anyone anywhere. Enjoy your pay cut and ease of getting hired, unless there is an oversupply .