4 ms·

5-6 years ago, I went for an interview in a real estate company. The introductions lasted all of 2 mins. Then they took me to a computer, showed me a bug in the

by akudha 8y ago

5-6 years ago, I went for an interview in a real estate company. The introductions lasted all of 2 mins. Then they took me to a computer, showed me a bug in the code base that I would be working on, if I got hired. Then they said "please fix this". Took me about half hour or so to hunt the bug down and fix (it wasn't hard, but it wasn't a cosmetic bug either). Then they asked me how I found the bug. I explained, they told me I'm hired, and the paperwork will follow in a day or two. No other questions were asked, they didn't look at the resume at all. The entire experience lasted less than an hour - from the time I walked into the reception till I walked out. Best job interview ever! This codebase was probably 0.0000001% as complex compared to Google's (I can only imagine). Still, there is no reason more companies can't follow this style, at least for one of the several "rounds" of interviews, instead of whiteboard, trivia etc.

kaidax 8y ago
Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.
- swypych 8y ago
  Sounds like a pretty inefficient way to fix bugs.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    My dad used it as a pretty efficient way to avoid accepting that he hadn't done well in an interview.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  People claim this all the time but is there any actual evidence? It would be one of the worst possible grifts of all time.
  - zymhan 8y ago
    I know right can you imagine just deploying patches written by some person that wrote the patches for an interview test? I'll take that module that auto-completes code with Stack Overflow answers first, thank you very much.
  - unstuckdev 8y ago
    I think it's more common in creative fields. Companies even solicit free design work (for example) under the guise of contests.
  - hpcjoe 8y ago
    I gave 4 examples of this in an above comment. Yes, it happens. Yes, its wrong. No, people and companies don't care. At the end of the day, this is what sucked the optimism out of me at my previous company. We had lots of people trying to steal from us. Even after I closed it down, I had two people in particular, ask me to help them design something, or give them detail domain/design knowledge, for free. Yes, it happens. Far too often. Makes people like me jaded.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      "Fire your worst customers," and don't look back.
- Sacho 8y ago
  How is this useful? The interviewer still needs to evaluate the code and conduct the follow-through questionnaire. They could just spend that time fixing the bug instead.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  That would be hilarious. Most of the value of a developer doesn’t straight out come from the code they wrote, but everything around that (design, maintenance, hardening). Getting free code isn’t actually that helpful without a lot of other stuff around it.
  - geodel 8y ago
    Not that you are wrong, but you are underestimating the dumb assholes who assume they would be cruising right on path only if someone could solve this tiny niggling problem for them. I had to tell one moron on phone interview that they are looking for free consulting or what because they keep harping a very specific project (Java/xml etc) setting that they were struggling with. It could of course be solved in hour or so by closely looking at product documents instead of endless googling.
  - hpcjoe 8y ago
    I think you misunderstand the definition of hilarious. This is not an attack, but an observation. When you are the guy who has to meet payroll for your team, and some (insert appropriate NSFW description here) person/company deprives you of pay for the work they are taking advantage of to further their goals ... think how that makes you feel. There are many adjectives. None of them are synonymous with hilarious.
- corpMaverick 8y ago
  I would imagine they would let every person hunt the same bug so they can compare candidates in the same circumstances.
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  I had this happen in a previous life, when I was working on designing/building/selling HPC and storage systems. Two of the worst offenders were universities, one was a prop-shop, one a semiconductor processing firm. One uni called me up to tell me they liked my bid, but they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do, so they could buy from the other company. The second uni issued an RFP, required that they get to keep all the docs, including detailed design specs. After interviewing all the companies, mine included, they selected 2 finalists, us and someone else. They probed us hard for details. Wound up buying our design from the other guys. The prop shop did a similar thing, though we won the RFP. But then custy went silent while working on PO. They then awarded it to our competitor, as long as they used our design. The semiconductor firm had a problem they claimed they could solve internally (they couldn't), and wanted to see what we could do. We met all of their (aggressive) performance, capacity objectives. But they kept pumping us for "free work" with the promise of a very large contract later. Against my business partner's recommendation, I called them on it, indicating that we'd be happy to work on the project with them. But not for free. So they "fired" us, as in asked us to stop working on it. Now, 4 years later, they are still struggling with the task. Sadly, this is far too common.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    These seem to be contract negotiations rather than tech interviews, and you learned important lessons about protecting yourself from unscrupulous actors in the process. > they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do Here one might triple? their rate for a much shorter hourly design contract and leave implementation to someone else. The other two examples might have creative solutions as well.
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  My last company was accused of this constantly. We would ask a very contrived, simplistic problem that was themed along with the domain of our business. Most good candidates would know this and solve it quickly. Many awful candidates would accuse us of using candidates for "free labor," and threaten to report us to whatever agency they think deals with this sort of thing. I've seen this accusation thrown around dozens of times. I'm convinced that it's not really an actual issue, and just another way for bad candidates to transfer blame elsewhere.
- akudha 8y ago
  I don't know if you are joking or serious. How much work do you think you can extract out of a normal developer in an hour or less, especially when he/she hasn't seen the codebase before? And how much effort do you think it would take to schedule the interview in the first place, starting with posting an ad, then screening resumes, scheduling time...? Not to mention someone has to vet/test the bug fix ... This doesn't seem reasonable to me at all. On the other hand, I can believe if this happens with those "take home assignments". Those tend to be larger (few hours to a few days) amount of work. BTW, at least in this case, I did get the offer as they promised, within 48 hours. So I don't think they were doing anything shady. My guess is that they simply got tired of normal style interviewing and found this to be an efficient way to hire.
tomschlick 8y ago
My current company does this. But instead of leaving the interviewee on their own, we do it as a pair programming session where they are the brain and the interviewer is the hands implementing it. Gives you a sense of how they think and a better look into how they work day to day.
jandrewrogers 8y ago
Netflix hired me in a similar fashion. I would also characterize it as the "best interview ever". I had a two-hour session with senior tech leads solely about solving a specific severe scalability issue in one of their database systems that they had not made much progress on. I showed them how I'd solve it using a technique unfamiliar to them. Next day, I get a "when do you want to start?" call -- they tried my proposed solution in a test environment and it had worked as advertised. Two hours solving one real-world design problem in my area of expertise. Simple and on point, without any trace of culture fit, leet code, random whiteboarding puzzles, etc.

by akudha 8y ago

kaidax 8y ago

Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.

swypych 8y ago
Sounds like a pretty inefficient way to fix bugs.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  My dad used it as a pretty efficient way to avoid accepting that he hadn't done well in an interview.
kasey_junk 8y ago
People claim this all the time but is there any actual evidence? It would be one of the worst possible grifts of all time.
- zymhan 8y ago
  I know right can you imagine just deploying patches written by some person that wrote the patches for an interview test? I'll take that module that auto-completes code with Stack Overflow answers first, thank you very much.
- unstuckdev 8y ago
  I think it's more common in creative fields. Companies even solicit free design work (for example) under the guise of contests.
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  I gave 4 examples of this in an above comment. Yes, it happens. Yes, its wrong. No, people and companies don't care. At the end of the day, this is what sucked the optimism out of me at my previous company. We had lots of people trying to steal from us. Even after I closed it down, I had two people in particular, ask me to help them design something, or give them detail domain/design knowledge, for free. Yes, it happens. Far too often. Makes people like me jaded.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    "Fire your worst customers," and don't look back.
Sacho 8y ago
How is this useful? The interviewer still needs to evaluate the code and conduct the follow-through questionnaire. They could just spend that time fixing the bug instead.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
That would be hilarious. Most of the value of a developer doesn’t straight out come from the code they wrote, but everything around that (design, maintenance, hardening). Getting free code isn’t actually that helpful without a lot of other stuff around it.
- geodel 8y ago
  Not that you are wrong, but you are underestimating the dumb assholes who assume they would be cruising right on path only if someone could solve this tiny niggling problem for them. I had to tell one moron on phone interview that they are looking for free consulting or what because they keep harping a very specific project (Java/xml etc) setting that they were struggling with. It could of course be solved in hour or so by closely looking at product documents instead of endless googling.
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  I think you misunderstand the definition of hilarious. This is not an attack, but an observation. When you are the guy who has to meet payroll for your team, and some (insert appropriate NSFW description here) person/company deprives you of pay for the work they are taking advantage of to further their goals ... think how that makes you feel. There are many adjectives. None of them are synonymous with hilarious.
corpMaverick 8y ago
I would imagine they would let every person hunt the same bug so they can compare candidates in the same circumstances.
hpcjoe 8y ago
I had this happen in a previous life, when I was working on designing/building/selling HPC and storage systems. Two of the worst offenders were universities, one was a prop-shop, one a semiconductor processing firm. One uni called me up to tell me they liked my bid, but they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do, so they could buy from the other company. The second uni issued an RFP, required that they get to keep all the docs, including detailed design specs. After interviewing all the companies, mine included, they selected 2 finalists, us and someone else. They probed us hard for details. Wound up buying our design from the other guys. The prop shop did a similar thing, though we won the RFP. But then custy went silent while working on PO. They then awarded it to our competitor, as long as they used our design. The semiconductor firm had a problem they claimed they could solve internally (they couldn't), and wanted to see what we could do. We met all of their (aggressive) performance, capacity objectives. But they kept pumping us for "free work" with the promise of a very large contract later. Against my business partner's recommendation, I called them on it, indicating that we'd be happy to work on the project with them. But not for free. So they "fired" us, as in asked us to stop working on it. Now, 4 years later, they are still struggling with the task. Sadly, this is far too common.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  These seem to be contract negotiations rather than tech interviews, and you learned important lessons about protecting yourself from unscrupulous actors in the process. > they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do Here one might triple? their rate for a much shorter hourly design contract and leave implementation to someone else. The other two examples might have creative solutions as well.
seattle_spring 8y ago
My last company was accused of this constantly. We would ask a very contrived, simplistic problem that was themed along with the domain of our business. Most good candidates would know this and solve it quickly. Many awful candidates would accuse us of using candidates for "free labor," and threaten to report us to whatever agency they think deals with this sort of thing. I've seen this accusation thrown around dozens of times. I'm convinced that it's not really an actual issue, and just another way for bad candidates to transfer blame elsewhere.
akudha 8y ago
I don't know if you are joking or serious. How much work do you think you can extract out of a normal developer in an hour or less, especially when he/she hasn't seen the codebase before? And how much effort do you think it would take to schedule the interview in the first place, starting with posting an ad, then screening resumes, scheduling time...? Not to mention someone has to vet/test the bug fix ... This doesn't seem reasonable to me at all. On the other hand, I can believe if this happens with those "take home assignments". Those tend to be larger (few hours to a few days) amount of work. BTW, at least in this case, I did get the offer as they promised, within 48 hours. So I don't think they were doing anything shady. My guess is that they simply got tired of normal style interviewing and found this to be an efficient way to hire.

tomschlick 8y ago

My current company does this. But instead of leaving the interviewee on their own, we do it as a pair programming session where they are the brain and the interviewer is the hands implementing it. Gives you a sense of how they think and a better look into how they work day to day.

jandrewrogers 8y ago

Netflix hired me in a similar fashion. I would also characterize it as the "best interview ever". I had a two-hour session with senior tech leads solely about solving a specific severe scalability issue in one of their database systems that they had not made much progress on. I showed them how I'd solve it using a technique unfamiliar to them. Next day, I get a "when do you want to start?" call -- they tried my proposed solution in a test environment and it had worked as advertised. Two hours solving one real-world design problem in my area of expertise. Simple and on point, without any trace of culture fit, leet code, random whiteboarding puzzles, etc.