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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
by 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 agoWow the pendulum has swung from "employers don't ask any relevant questions" to "I mistrust employers who ask relevant questions".
- Bartweiss 9y agoI 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.