7 ms·

A recent experience I've had with programming screens, not whiteboard interviews specifically, is the lack of feedback. I'm given a programming problem (or a se

by frfl 8y ago

A recent experience I've had with programming screens, not whiteboard interviews specifically, is the lack of feedback. I'm given a programming problem (or a set of problem), given about 2 hours to do it, I do it in the allotted time, check my code, verify to the best of my ability that what I've come up with in the limited time is correct, I verify I'm passing the provided test cases and some test cases I come up with. Then it's basically a coin flip whether anyone follows up. No feedback, no reason why they're not moving forward besides maybe some generic HR response about my qualifications or 'decided to go in another direction'. Quite annoying and a waste of time on my end. Is this it? Is this really the best way to filter down the pool of resumes? Feels like it's a very high false positive rate and one that pushes all the time costs onto the applicant (multiply ~2hr by say 5 companies that want you to do a coding challenge).

Novashi 8y ago
>Feels like it's a very high false positive rate and one that pushes all the time costs onto the applicant (multiply ~2hr by say 5 companies that want you to do a coding challenge). It is, I wouldn't entertain companies that do this unless you really need a position. This is the trifecta of bad interviewing tests: - No compensation - Stupidly restrictive time limit - High chance of not getting feedback Personally I would turn them down and then explain these three things. There are plenty of companies with less annoying hoops.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  > - Stupidly restrictive time limit This one kills the chance of my applying by itself. Turns what could be a interesting coding challenge into an exam, ruining the fun of it. I could see junior devs going through this to get some experience but why would anyone past that point in their career bother when there are so many options?
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    Because the companies that do the coding exams pay well, have high prestige, use tech that he likes, etc. It's not always so simple to just refuse to go through an annoying interview process, even if it sucks.
    - eikenberry 8y ago
      Of course there will be exceptions to any rule. But in general it is still a good rule.
- sys_64738 8y ago
  > - No compensation Curious if anybody has ever billed the interviewing company for their time if they didn't get the job.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    Not the same thing but I’ve read that Square pays people for coming to their on site interview because it’s a full day. Unsure if that is still the case.
bitwize 8y ago
As a rule, do not expect feedback from companies. On the company's end, it's just not worth the risk of opening themselves up to potential legal liability to provide detailed feedback to any candidate. The new standard for responding to a rejected candidate is ghosting. The company has extended you a profound courtesy by bothering to respond at all.
- drunkpotato 8y ago
  Everything about this response is a poisonous and stupid lie. Detailed feedback is fine. There is no legal liability if you’re not discriminating against a protected class. Companies and individuals that behave this way are poisonous and stupid and best avoided.
  - chrisbennet 8y ago
    Maybe you wish this was so, but it does not appear to be in practice. https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feedback https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feed...
  - standardUser 8y ago
    Sure, and since companies aren't paranoid about discrimination lawsuits... oh wait.
vilifiedtwin 8y ago
You get feedback - either they liked you or not. If you need any more than that then it means you need to learn more.
chrisseaton 8y ago
I've gotten feedback, and even more frustrating than no feedback is demonstrably false feedback. Google said I should try contributing to an open source project to improve my resume... when I had literally a million lines of code in a major open source project, and that was written on my resume. Was it a mistake? Was there a mixup and had they interviewed me thinking I was someone else? Did they have a corrupt copy of my resume? More likely was it a throwaway comment from someone just saying something to be polite? No idea, but it's more frustrating than just 'no thanks' because it didn't even make any sense. Imagine if you tried to improve yourself based on that feedback, applied again, and then they overlooked it again and gave you the same feedback!
- badfrog 8y ago
  How do you get to a million lines of code on an open source project? At my full time job, 5k lines in a week would be a lot, and even at that fast pace it would take four years of full time work to get to a million.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    A million lines diff yeah, not standing code, over a few years of basically full time as my PhD on a fast moving greenfield project. A lot of refactoring causes churn.
- frfl 8y ago
  I could see how this might be an issue with someone early in their career who has a low-profile project or two, but your resume would stand out very quickly among the rest so for this to happen is alarming. Feels like a very similar occurrence to what happened to the homebrew dev who got reject by google (albeit different circumstance to your false feedback)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tom_ 8y ago
    The homebrew guy was subsequently hired by Apple, but later left, saying in a (now deleted) tweet that big company life wasn't his bag. Link from around that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12276219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12276219 There's a non-zero chance that the Google interviewers were able to pick up on this. Those of us not directly involved only ever got one side of this particular story.
wwweston 8y ago
There's not much you can do about the fact that most prospective employers won't have a particularly good idea how to optimize the hiring process and even if they did, their incentives wouldn't always be aligned with applicants when it comes to questions of investing time. But in a market like the current one, many developers can do some filtering of their own. When I'm asked to complete a test or exercise, over time I've made it a habit to ask questions like these: - Do you have reference solutions that someone at the company completed on company time? - Exactly how long did it take them? - Do you have a rubric for evaluating submitted solutions? - Will you share the reference solutions and/or rubric once I've submitted mine? I don't need 100% positive/detailed answers to each one of these -- I know from the other side why they're not always there -- but how people respond seems to improve my early feel for (a) how the organization approaches process and problem-solving and (b) whether my solutions are likely to get a serious examination and useful feedback, which I can then use to inform my choice about whether putting in the time is worth it.
hermitdev 8y ago
I recently went through interviewing at a number of companies. One had a hackerrank problem to solve. I was fine with it, took me a couple of hours to complete. What frustrated me is that my solution passed all of the disclosed scenarios, but failed about half of the non disclosed. Neither the input nor output was disclosed. How do you expect someone to solve a problem when you dont disclose either the inputs or the expected output?

by frfl 8y ago

Novashi 8y ago

>Feels like it's a very high false positive rate and one that pushes all the time costs onto the applicant (multiply ~2hr by say 5 companies that want you to do a coding challenge). It is, I wouldn't entertain companies that do this unless you really need a position. This is the trifecta of bad interviewing tests: - No compensation - Stupidly restrictive time limit - High chance of not getting feedback Personally I would turn them down and then explain these three things. There are plenty of companies with less annoying hoops.

eikenberry 8y ago
> - Stupidly restrictive time limit This one kills the chance of my applying by itself. Turns what could be a interesting coding challenge into an exam, ruining the fun of it. I could see junior devs going through this to get some experience but why would anyone past that point in their career bother when there are so many options?
- dajohnson89 8y ago
  Because the companies that do the coding exams pay well, have high prestige, use tech that he likes, etc. It's not always so simple to just refuse to go through an annoying interview process, even if it sucks.
  - eikenberry 8y ago
    Of course there will be exceptions to any rule. But in general it is still a good rule.
sys_64738 8y ago
> - No compensation Curious if anybody has ever billed the interviewing company for their time if they didn't get the job.
- _asummers 8y ago
  Not the same thing but I’ve read that Square pays people for coming to their on site interview because it’s a full day. Unsure if that is still the case.

bitwize 8y ago

As a rule, do not expect feedback from companies. On the company's end, it's just not worth the risk of opening themselves up to potential legal liability to provide detailed feedback to any candidate. The new standard for responding to a rejected candidate is ghosting. The company has extended you a profound courtesy by bothering to respond at all.

drunkpotato 8y ago
Everything about this response is a poisonous and stupid lie. Detailed feedback is fine. There is no legal liability if you’re not discriminating against a protected class. Companies and individuals that behave this way are poisonous and stupid and best avoided.
- chrisbennet 8y ago
  Maybe you wish this was so, but it does not appear to be in practice. https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feedback https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feed...
- standardUser 8y ago
  Sure, and since companies aren't paranoid about discrimination lawsuits... oh wait.

vilifiedtwin 8y ago

You get feedback - either they liked you or not. If you need any more than that then it means you need to learn more.

chrisseaton 8y ago

I've gotten feedback, and even more frustrating than no feedback is demonstrably false feedback. Google said I should try contributing to an open source project to improve my resume... when I had literally a million lines of code in a major open source project, and that was written on my resume. Was it a mistake? Was there a mixup and had they interviewed me thinking I was someone else? Did they have a corrupt copy of my resume? More likely was it a throwaway comment from someone just saying something to be polite? No idea, but it's more frustrating than just 'no thanks' because it didn't even make any sense. Imagine if you tried to improve yourself based on that feedback, applied again, and then they overlooked it again and gave you the same feedback!

badfrog 8y ago
How do you get to a million lines of code on an open source project? At my full time job, 5k lines in a week would be a lot, and even at that fast pace it would take four years of full time work to get to a million.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  A million lines diff yeah, not standing code, over a few years of basically full time as my PhD on a fast moving greenfield project. A lot of refactoring causes churn.
frfl 8y ago
I could see how this might be an issue with someone early in their career who has a low-profile project or two, but your resume would stand out very quickly among the rest so for this to happen is alarming. Feels like a very similar occurrence to what happened to the homebrew dev who got reject by google (albeit different circumstance to your false feedback)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tom_ 8y ago
  The homebrew guy was subsequently hired by Apple, but later left, saying in a (now deleted) tweet that big company life wasn't his bag. Link from around that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12276219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12276219 There's a non-zero chance that the Google interviewers were able to pick up on this. Those of us not directly involved only ever got one side of this particular story.

wwweston 8y ago

There's not much you can do about the fact that most prospective employers won't have a particularly good idea how to optimize the hiring process and even if they did, their incentives wouldn't always be aligned with applicants when it comes to questions of investing time. But in a market like the current one, many developers can do some filtering of their own. When I'm asked to complete a test or exercise, over time I've made it a habit to ask questions like these: - Do you have reference solutions that someone at the company completed on company time? - Exactly how long did it take them? - Do you have a rubric for evaluating submitted solutions? - Will you share the reference solutions and/or rubric once I've submitted mine? I don't need 100% positive/detailed answers to each one of these -- I know from the other side why they're not always there -- but how people respond seems to improve my early feel for (a) how the organization approaches process and problem-solving and (b) whether my solutions are likely to get a serious examination and useful feedback, which I can then use to inform my choice about whether putting in the time is worth it.

hermitdev 8y ago

I recently went through interviewing at a number of companies. One had a hackerrank problem to solve. I was fine with it, took me a couple of hours to complete. What frustrated me is that my solution passed all of the disclosed scenarios, but failed about half of the non disclosed. Neither the input nor output was disclosed. How do you expect someone to solve a problem when you dont disclose either the inputs or the expected output?