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> The problem with take-home tests is you may have had help I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way int

> The problem with take-home tests is you may have had help I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way into the job. The worst case is you just fire them when they are unable to do the work, and that's on them. Besides, what environment discourages help? I ask friends for help with my job all the time. The cost of over optimizing for avoiding those false positives (ie: bad candidate marked good) is a huge drop in true positives (ie: good candidate marked good). It's silly.

SilasX 7y ago
>I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way into the job. The worst case is you just fire them when they are unable to do the work, and that's on them. The whole reason for the long hiring process is that firing is hard (legally, financially, emotionally). If you're willing to dismiss this difficulty, you're assuming away the core problem.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  I'm not saying to not interview people I'm saying that the existing process is petrified of a bad apple making their way through it, at almost all costs. How many people can truly, reliably, "fake" their way through a take home? How many people could then do an in person code review and fake their way through that as well? I doubt it's that many, but you'll get way better returns on good candidates, in my opinion.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Firing somebody can set you back $100,000 (or more if they're in a protected class). Worse, a bad hire can wreck your schedule. I've encountered programmers who know their stuff, can talk about it intelligently and knowledgeably, but cannot write code worth spit. It's not as rare as you might think. It's sort of like someone with an art degree who has no talent for actually painting.
    - staticassertion 7y ago
      So, to be clear, firing is not the goal, it's just the worst case. 100k sounds high but honestly, not something I'm familiar with. I wonder how much money is lost on recruiting being so ineffective? Given that the current process is about ~6-7 hours of eng time per on-site candidate, I'm not convinced that the cost of firing is going to outway the costs of recruiting being considerably optimized. I'm not sure I see how someone is going to: a) Write a take home project b) Explain their design decisions, respond to code review, etc, in person and somehow not be able to "write code worth spit" or otherwise game the system consistently. edit: Would love to hear (in the US) where that 100k comes from. At-will state means I can fire you for whatever reason, can't imagine it really comes close to 100k tbh.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Don''t know why you're being downvoted, but 100k is definitely not the cost of firing a just-hired employee in the US. If you're paying a new-hire-fast-fire more than the salary due to them for the period worked (and any other amounts listed in their offer letter, if one existed), then you need to talk to a labor lawyer because you're definitely doing something wrong...unless you're paying them to shut up about the experience.
        WalterBright 7y ago
        Lots of costs: 1. relocation expenses 2. starting bonus 3. headhunter fees 4. severance pay 5. COBRA 6. it can take a while to determine they're incompetent if they're good at the facade 7. if they're in a protected class, you have to go through a period (often 6 months or more) of documenting their incompetence and leaving a trail of trying to help them improve 8. firing someone always comes with it the risk of a lawsuit, and meritless lawsuits are commonplace, but they still cost a LOT of money to defend. 9. disruption to your team, scheduling slippage, having to allocate someone else to fix the incompetent work, etc.
        staticassertion 7y ago
  - irq11 7y ago
    It’s because everyone is copying Google. FAANG companies have this problem: when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal. When you are startupbro.com, you don’t have this problem, but you’re desperately cargo-culting your way to success, and doing anything in a way that goes against the grain causes the other bros to accuse you of “bad signaling”. See also: why tech companies cram together in San Francisco.
    - suzzer99 7y ago
      Couldn't agree more. Almost every startup in LA I interviewed with seemed to suffer from some sort of imposter syndrome. Even a hint of a question about their technology choices or their business model and they look at you like you just ran over their dog. HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE GREAT AND WISE WIZARD?!??
    - astura 7y ago
      >when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal. My friend's employer is currently hiring thousands of people a year with a single interview lasting 1-2 hours without problems. Some highly technical and some manual laborers. Then do this by putting new employees on a probationary period for the first six months. Many of their employees are union, and it still works out, the unions agree to this arrangement.
- Clubber 7y ago
  It's really not that hard at all to fire someone, at least in the U.S. I think most companies do it because they don't know any better and they heard that's what Google does.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  In the US, where most startups are based, firing is actually quite easy. For a brand new employee, it's especially easy. All that BS about it being hard financially or legally? Not true. At all. It's just an excuse startups use because they don't understand basic HR functions. And that's why every company of a reasonable size (i.e., more than a few dozen people) has an HR department, even if it's just one person. Because they know how to do this stuff.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    So every company is wrong and you’re right?
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      My comments are based on what nearly every major company in the US actually does, not what people in Silicon Valley think other companies do. Since all those other companies have HR departments and most of the startups in SV don't, I'm pretty comfortable with my stance. After all, managing hiring and firing are literally the primary reasons HR departments exist in every company making more than a few million $/year. Especially the profitable ones.
      - SilasX 7y ago
        Every company in the US has an aversion to firing that leads them to use expensive defensive measures (in the case of the larger ones: severance pay, PIPs, standardized performance reviews, diversity training) for when they feel they have to go though with it. Whether or not you’re talking about Silicon Valley, you’ve endorsed a much stronger claim, that such measures are pointless because firing is just so easy. If you’re not ready to defend that claim, then maybe you should walk back on your original. Or at least show some some sign that you recognize things aren’t as easy or simple as your original blithe dismissal implies. Remember, you didn’t even think the emotional side merited an acknowledgement.
        gamblor956 7y ago
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > firing is hard (legally, financially, emotionally) How is it that, simultaneously, firing is hard and job security sucks?
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Job security doesn't suck, at least not for developers in a strong economy.
gumby 7y ago
> I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way into the job. The worst case is you just fire them when they are unable to do the work, and that's on them. The problem is once you offer them a job you stop searching for a candidate. Then you get a bad hire and even if it's quick you won't really know for a while, so then you're really behind. It's bad enough when you hire someone who really wasn't qualified but didn't do anything bad. Now you have to get rid of someone who probably left a previous position and, like above, you have to go get someone to do the job you were hiring for in the first place. Worst of all possible worlds. Perhaps the calculus is different in a big company, but for a startup your approach sounds pretty bad.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that my approach will actually let more "bad" people through. My personal opinion is that you will improve both your rate of good candidate hiring and lower your rate of good candidate rejection. I believe that the existing system intends to optimize heavily for "reject bad candidates" and actually fails at that too. Give candidates a take home, then review it with them. I have a lot of reasons for believing this approach would be far superior to the "sit in a room and get interrogated for 7 hours" approach.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > hire someone who really wasn't qualified but didn't do anything bad This sounds like a contradiction to me. How are you defining "unqualified" and "bad" here?

SilasX 7y ago

>I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way into the job. The worst case is you just fire them when they are unable to do the work, and that's on them. The whole reason for the long hiring process is that firing is hard (legally, financially, emotionally). If you're willing to dismiss this difficulty, you're assuming away the core problem.

staticassertion 7y ago
I'm not saying to not interview people I'm saying that the existing process is petrified of a bad apple making their way through it, at almost all costs. How many people can truly, reliably, "fake" their way through a take home? How many people could then do an in person code review and fake their way through that as well? I doubt it's that many, but you'll get way better returns on good candidates, in my opinion.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Firing somebody can set you back $100,000 (or more if they're in a protected class). Worse, a bad hire can wreck your schedule. I've encountered programmers who know their stuff, can talk about it intelligently and knowledgeably, but cannot write code worth spit. It's not as rare as you might think. It's sort of like someone with an art degree who has no talent for actually painting.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    So, to be clear, firing is not the goal, it's just the worst case. 100k sounds high but honestly, not something I'm familiar with. I wonder how much money is lost on recruiting being so ineffective? Given that the current process is about ~6-7 hours of eng time per on-site candidate, I'm not convinced that the cost of firing is going to outway the costs of recruiting being considerably optimized. I'm not sure I see how someone is going to: a) Write a take home project b) Explain their design decisions, respond to code review, etc, in person and somehow not be able to "write code worth spit" or otherwise game the system consistently. edit: Would love to hear (in the US) where that 100k comes from. At-will state means I can fire you for whatever reason, can't imagine it really comes close to 100k tbh.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Don''t know why you're being downvoted, but 100k is definitely not the cost of firing a just-hired employee in the US. If you're paying a new-hire-fast-fire more than the salary due to them for the period worked (and any other amounts listed in their offer letter, if one existed), then you need to talk to a labor lawyer because you're definitely doing something wrong...unless you're paying them to shut up about the experience.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Lots of costs: 1. relocation expenses 2. starting bonus 3. headhunter fees 4. severance pay 5. COBRA 6. it can take a while to determine they're incompetent if they're good at the facade 7. if they're in a protected class, you have to go through a period (often 6 months or more) of documenting their incompetence and leaving a trail of trying to help them improve 8. firing someone always comes with it the risk of a lawsuit, and meritless lawsuits are commonplace, but they still cost a LOT of money to defend. 9. disruption to your team, scheduling slippage, having to allocate someone else to fix the incompetent work, etc.
        staticassertion 7y ago
- irq11 7y ago
  It’s because everyone is copying Google. FAANG companies have this problem: when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal. When you are startupbro.com, you don’t have this problem, but you’re desperately cargo-culting your way to success, and doing anything in a way that goes against the grain causes the other bros to accuse you of “bad signaling”. See also: why tech companies cram together in San Francisco.
  - suzzer99 7y ago
    Couldn't agree more. Almost every startup in LA I interviewed with seemed to suffer from some sort of imposter syndrome. Even a hint of a question about their technology choices or their business model and they look at you like you just ran over their dog. HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE GREAT AND WISE WIZARD?!??
  - astura 7y ago
    >when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal. My friend's employer is currently hiring thousands of people a year with a single interview lasting 1-2 hours without problems. Some highly technical and some manual laborers. Then do this by putting new employees on a probationary period for the first six months. Many of their employees are union, and it still works out, the unions agree to this arrangement.
Clubber 7y ago
It's really not that hard at all to fire someone, at least in the U.S. I think most companies do it because they don't know any better and they heard that's what Google does.
gamblor956 7y ago
In the US, where most startups are based, firing is actually quite easy. For a brand new employee, it's especially easy. All that BS about it being hard financially or legally? Not true. At all. It's just an excuse startups use because they don't understand basic HR functions. And that's why every company of a reasonable size (i.e., more than a few dozen people) has an HR department, even if it's just one person. Because they know how to do this stuff.
- SilasX 7y ago
  So every company is wrong and you’re right?
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    My comments are based on what nearly every major company in the US actually does, not what people in Silicon Valley think other companies do. Since all those other companies have HR departments and most of the startups in SV don't, I'm pretty comfortable with my stance. After all, managing hiring and firing are literally the primary reasons HR departments exist in every company making more than a few million $/year. Especially the profitable ones.
    - SilasX 7y ago
      Every company in the US has an aversion to firing that leads them to use expensive defensive measures (in the case of the larger ones: severance pay, PIPs, standardized performance reviews, diversity training) for when they feel they have to go though with it. Whether or not you’re talking about Silicon Valley, you’ve endorsed a much stronger claim, that such measures are pointless because firing is just so easy. If you’re not ready to defend that claim, then maybe you should walk back on your original. Or at least show some some sign that you recognize things aren’t as easy or simple as your original blithe dismissal implies. Remember, you didn’t even think the emotional side merited an acknowledgement.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
vonmoltke 7y ago
> firing is hard (legally, financially, emotionally) How is it that, simultaneously, firing is hard and job security sucks?
- repolfx 7y ago
  Job security doesn't suck, at least not for developers in a strong economy.

gumby 7y ago

> I think we over focus on these scary edge cases where some trickster is trying to con their way into the job. The worst case is you just fire them when they are unable to do the work, and that's on them. The problem is once you offer them a job you stop searching for a candidate. Then you get a bad hire and even if it's quick you won't really know for a while, so then you're really behind. It's bad enough when you hire someone who really wasn't qualified but didn't do anything bad. Now you have to get rid of someone who probably left a previous position and, like above, you have to go get someone to do the job you were hiring for in the first place. Worst of all possible worlds. Perhaps the calculus is different in a big company, but for a startup your approach sounds pretty bad.

staticassertion 7y ago
For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that my approach will actually let more "bad" people through. My personal opinion is that you will improve both your rate of good candidate hiring and lower your rate of good candidate rejection. I believe that the existing system intends to optimize heavily for "reject bad candidates" and actually fails at that too. Give candidates a take home, then review it with them. I have a lot of reasons for believing this approach would be far superior to the "sit in a room and get interrogated for 7 hours" approach.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> hire someone who really wasn't qualified but didn't do anything bad This sounds like a contradiction to me. How are you defining "unqualified" and "bad" here?