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The whole bent against white board questions is that they are unrealistic as to actual working conditions and thus are artificial. So if you are a successful en
by jboy55 8y ago
The whole bent against white board questions is that they are unrealistic as to actual working conditions and thus are artificial. So if you are a successful engineer, using your work time efficiently, and yet, you have family obligations that prevent you from spending enough time as someone else on a take home challenge, is the take home challenge showing realistic 'working conditions'? Or is it a measure of freetime?
>If that's the case, that's a fine, very reasonable trade-off you've made to prioritize your family over your work.
I'd advise that if you are ever involved in a hiring situation you never write that down. "I'm sorry my project wasn't done so well, [my baby, pregnancy, illness, religious service] took most of my weekend".
That is a prime example of age/gender/disability discrimination. You should never assume someone's out side of work life presumes an inability to do the job during work hours.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoThe vast majority of jobs I've worked at have required some flexibility in working off hours. Whether it was something that went down at off hours that needed to be addressed, or an unforeseen (and unforseeable) change in a business that required a last minute scramble, these things happen. True, there may be some jobs that are truly 9-5, and if that's the case, so be it. But frankly, as someone who is willing to put more dedication into my work, it feels like complete discrimination against me if someone willing to do less work then demands the same level of compensation and advancement opportunities.
- akiselev 8y agoHow does someone know that their coworker with family isn't just a better negotiator than them or that they didn't come at an opportune time when their employer was more desperate for the coworker's skillset? There's a reason there's so much room for plausible deniability in these matters.
- LanceH 8y agoTraditionally, having a family is viewed as a positive because you are more likely to get a more stable, longer term worker.
- jboy55 8y agoIf 'Work Hours' require someone to be oncall 24/7, you can ask that as part of your interview, but you can't infer that from other factors. Yes: "Our job requires you to be on-call 24/7, one week a month, can you commit to that?". No: "You said you didn't have time for the take home test because you have a family. The family will get in the way of 24/7 support" Also yes: "you will be traveling 5 days a week for your sales job, can you do this?" No. "We don't hire people with families for this job." And, there's no discrimination towards you putting more time into your work. That's quite a stretch, if all you have going for you is your ability to put in more that 60 hours a week, that's not saying much.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoI agree with all of your examples - it is discrimination if an employer says "your family will get in the way of you working off hours." What I find obnoxious, though, is when an employer has standard rules for everyone (e.g. "all prospective applicants must produce a 3 hour at home project as part of the interview process") and then balk at "discrimination" because you'd rather spend your time at your kid's soccer game. This also strikes me as the height of white-collar privilege, because there are tons of other jobs (e.g. military jobs, oil rig workers, construction jobs, etc.) that require a hell of a lot more family sacrifice, but it's mainly highly paid software developers that protest so much at a couple hour non-9-5 project.
- PeterFBell 8y agoThe challenge with substantial take home tests is that they have the potential skew your applicant pool in a number of ways that are not ideal for your business. Firstly, as a general rule of thumb, the very best developers who are in the highest demand are unlikely to jump through the hoops, so immediately you're filtering out the very best applicants. As a business owner, that's not something I want to do. Secondly, and equally importantly, you are likely to get more, young financially stable people with less outside of work commitments (including families which naturally correlate with age which in turn correlates with experience). If you want to over-index on people with less experience and at the same time reduce the number of applications from people for whom the time commitment is problematic (including but not limited to females who statistically take on a disproportionate percentage of child care responsibilities and some members of traditionally under represented minorities) all you do is reduce the likely diversity of talent you might otherwise get to pick from for your dev team.
- fouc 8y ago"some" being the keyword. It's understandable if there's a scramble if the codebase you're directly responsible for goes down. I think it depends on how much sysops/devops is involved in your job or if that's a separate team. And how robust your codebase is etc.
- cortesoft 8y agoCouldn't you use the time that you would have been doing the whiteboard interview to do the take home work? If you have time to go to an interview in the middle of the day, you should have time in the middle of the day to do a take home project.
- jboy55 8y agoA take home test rarely means there is no in person interview. You will still get 'soft' questions from managers, product managers etc for half a day.
- aichi 8y agowhiteboard = artificial. I don't agree. When I interview I don't expect working code on WB, I expect discussion about what is written there. Also I expect when interviewed that there will be discussion about approach I took. WB usage is also testing presentation skills. It is used in companies when you want to present your ideas to others, etc.