5 ms·

My company gives a take-home test. When the candidate comes in for the interview I go over their code with them and ask questions about it: Why did you take th

by deeg 7y ago

My company gives a take-home test. When the candidate comes in for the interview I go over their code with them and ask questions about it: Why did you take this approach? How could you test this method? I don't care how much help they got if they can discuss their solution coherently. This also shows the candidate that we took their solution seriously.

NeverFade 7y ago
And how many candidates spend hours of their valuable time in those take-home assignments, only to get beaten by a purchased solution? It's wonderful you don't care about the fact that these solutions are purchased. I'm sure your attitude is a great comfort for all the honest professionals who worked hard to find the time to do a 5 hour take-home, only to see their job taken away by dishonest candidates who paid for the solution. Taken to its logical conclusions, if your attitude is representative, then everyone should just buy take-home solutions and just spend a bit of time understanding them before the onsite. Now we're back to square one, except at least we're not actively screening for dishonesty anymore.
- shivawu 7y ago
  That's not the problem that take home assignment is facing right now. As you said, it's the experience issue, people feel shit after doing it, rejected without any reason. If copying/buying solution is actually a problem, that means take home project is a thing that's happening, and copying is the new problem to solve along the way. We're far from there.
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    > If copying/buying solution is actually a problem, that means take home project is a thing that's happening, and copying is the new problem to solve along the way. In case you didn't know this: take-home is very much happening. I was job-searching not too long ago, and roughly 10% of the places I talked to insisted on take-home assignments. I declined all these requests because I'm a senior engineer with many options, but clearly many candidates are taking them. There really is a problem with people buying solutions for take-home assignments, I saw that when I was hiring. It just isn't acknowledged, so effectively it has become a competitive advantage for dishonest candidates who are willing to cheat.
    - entee 7y ago
      I was worried about that for senior candidates, and if I had a good recommendation or had some sort of screen call with them I’d usually skip the takehome. Very occasionally the candidate came in and just was wildly off, but usually it was fine. Later on we changed to having all candidates submit the takehome under the logic that if they’re a, “positive” candidate that they’ll be inclined to see this as an opportunity to strut their stuff. I was a little unsure about this approach but we went with it. I’m curious how senior folks feel about these different attitudes.
      - NeverFade 7y ago
        > I’m curious how senior folks feel about these different attitudes. It's quite simple: I'm a senior engineer and I will never do a takehome assignment. Every time I'm on the job market, there's a certain percentage of positions that require a take home. I just skip them. I don't explain my position, since I learned long ago that it just leads to arguments and confrontations with the very same recruiter who just a hours ago cold-called you begging you to interview. I just terminate the process as quietly and unobtrusively as I can. I wish I could comfort you by saying I ever regret this decision, but the truth is that the best jobs out there - the Google, Netflix, Airbnb jobs - do not require a take-home assignments. I guess they know better than to restrict their candidate pool in this competitive market. It tends to be the below-average and (often) crappiest jobs that require take-homes, to the point it became a red flag to me. Now I often wonder "what kind of a desperate crappy senior engineer had to jump through all your hoops in this market, especially when you're just one anonymous company out of tens of thousands to be hiring engineers, with nothing special to recommend you this early in the process?". In short, to insist on take-home tasks in this market is to give up on your strongest candidates. Neither me nor many senior engineers I know will at all consider spending 5+ hours on takehomes when we can easily get dozens (!) of onsites with short, fun remote screens. I will also be very skeptical of any engineer who in this market is willing to do these hours of takehomes after a long, hard day of coding at work. One last point: it seems quite unfair rude to me for a potential employer to ask me to unilaterally dedicate 5+ hours of my rare valuable time, when we barely begun the process. It's especially out of place and comical when the same recruiter who literally begged you to interview in the first cold-call, is suddenly demanding you do 5+ hours of unpaid work. At least in remote screens, I know the employer is investing some of their own resources into this process as well.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > And how many candidates spend hours of their valuable time in those take-home assignments, only to get beaten by a purchased solution? In the few hiring processes where I've participated as a hiring consultant, take at home tests were only used in the initial stages of a hiring process to filter out blatantly incompetent candidates, who in some cases represented about 90% of all applicants. We're talking about basic fizzbuzz stuff. Even so, in subsequent stages the candidates who made the cut were again evaluated based on their technical skills, mostly to weed out candidates who might have cheated their way through the first stage. This meant that it was impossible for dishonest candidates to eat the lunch of candidates who were cut due to their performance of the take at home test because anyone who failed that test was obviously not a competent developer. I mean, are you expecting to be hired as a professional software developer if you can't write a for loop?
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    Have you read any of the comments in this thread? We are talking about take-home tasks that take 5 to 10 hours or more, not fizzbuzz. You are naive if you think you solved cheating by checking technical skills on the onsite. What if I'm a 7/10 candidate, and someone else is a 9/10, but I cheat and submit the solution of my friend who is a 10/10. I'll get the flight ticket to the onsite, the better qualified guy will not, and you will have to choose from a smaller pool of candidates, in which I might be the best one.
- RandallBrown 7y ago
  I think the previous post wasn't literally saying they would be okay with someone purchasing a solution. Just that it's okay if they had help with the problem, even it's quite a bit, as long as they actually understand the code. I can't imagine a scenario where a person can't solve the problem, so hires someone to do it, then explains it as well as the person that actually wrote the code. If you can explain it that well, with reasoning for tradeoffs and design decisions, you might as well have written the code yourself and saved some money.

by deeg 7y ago

NeverFade 7y ago

And how many candidates spend hours of their valuable time in those take-home assignments, only to get beaten by a purchased solution? It's wonderful you don't care about the fact that these solutions are purchased. I'm sure your attitude is a great comfort for all the honest professionals who worked hard to find the time to do a 5 hour take-home, only to see their job taken away by dishonest candidates who paid for the solution. Taken to its logical conclusions, if your attitude is representative, then everyone should just buy take-home solutions and just spend a bit of time understanding them before the onsite. Now we're back to square one, except at least we're not actively screening for dishonesty anymore.

shivawu 7y ago
That's not the problem that take home assignment is facing right now. As you said, it's the experience issue, people feel shit after doing it, rejected without any reason. If copying/buying solution is actually a problem, that means take home project is a thing that's happening, and copying is the new problem to solve along the way. We're far from there.
- NeverFade 7y ago
  > If copying/buying solution is actually a problem, that means take home project is a thing that's happening, and copying is the new problem to solve along the way. In case you didn't know this: take-home is very much happening. I was job-searching not too long ago, and roughly 10% of the places I talked to insisted on take-home assignments. I declined all these requests because I'm a senior engineer with many options, but clearly many candidates are taking them. There really is a problem with people buying solutions for take-home assignments, I saw that when I was hiring. It just isn't acknowledged, so effectively it has become a competitive advantage for dishonest candidates who are willing to cheat.
  - entee 7y ago
    I was worried about that for senior candidates, and if I had a good recommendation or had some sort of screen call with them I’d usually skip the takehome. Very occasionally the candidate came in and just was wildly off, but usually it was fine. Later on we changed to having all candidates submit the takehome under the logic that if they’re a, “positive” candidate that they’ll be inclined to see this as an opportunity to strut their stuff. I was a little unsure about this approach but we went with it. I’m curious how senior folks feel about these different attitudes.
    - NeverFade 7y ago
      > I’m curious how senior folks feel about these different attitudes. It's quite simple: I'm a senior engineer and I will never do a takehome assignment. Every time I'm on the job market, there's a certain percentage of positions that require a take home. I just skip them. I don't explain my position, since I learned long ago that it just leads to arguments and confrontations with the very same recruiter who just a hours ago cold-called you begging you to interview. I just terminate the process as quietly and unobtrusively as I can. I wish I could comfort you by saying I ever regret this decision, but the truth is that the best jobs out there - the Google, Netflix, Airbnb jobs - do not require a take-home assignments. I guess they know better than to restrict their candidate pool in this competitive market. It tends to be the below-average and (often) crappiest jobs that require take-homes, to the point it became a red flag to me. Now I often wonder "what kind of a desperate crappy senior engineer had to jump through all your hoops in this market, especially when you're just one anonymous company out of tens of thousands to be hiring engineers, with nothing special to recommend you this early in the process?". In short, to insist on take-home tasks in this market is to give up on your strongest candidates. Neither me nor many senior engineers I know will at all consider spending 5+ hours on takehomes when we can easily get dozens (!) of onsites with short, fun remote screens. I will also be very skeptical of any engineer who in this market is willing to do these hours of takehomes after a long, hard day of coding at work. One last point: it seems quite unfair rude to me for a potential employer to ask me to unilaterally dedicate 5+ hours of my rare valuable time, when we barely begun the process. It's especially out of place and comical when the same recruiter who literally begged you to interview in the first cold-call, is suddenly demanding you do 5+ hours of unpaid work. At least in remote screens, I know the employer is investing some of their own resources into this process as well.
rumanator 7y ago
> And how many candidates spend hours of their valuable time in those take-home assignments, only to get beaten by a purchased solution? In the few hiring processes where I've participated as a hiring consultant, take at home tests were only used in the initial stages of a hiring process to filter out blatantly incompetent candidates, who in some cases represented about 90% of all applicants. We're talking about basic fizzbuzz stuff. Even so, in subsequent stages the candidates who made the cut were again evaluated based on their technical skills, mostly to weed out candidates who might have cheated their way through the first stage. This meant that it was impossible for dishonest candidates to eat the lunch of candidates who were cut due to their performance of the take at home test because anyone who failed that test was obviously not a competent developer. I mean, are you expecting to be hired as a professional software developer if you can't write a for loop?
- NeverFade 7y ago
  Have you read any of the comments in this thread? We are talking about take-home tasks that take 5 to 10 hours or more, not fizzbuzz. You are naive if you think you solved cheating by checking technical skills on the onsite. What if I'm a 7/10 candidate, and someone else is a 9/10, but I cheat and submit the solution of my friend who is a 10/10. I'll get the flight ticket to the onsite, the better qualified guy will not, and you will have to choose from a smaller pool of candidates, in which I might be the best one.
RandallBrown 7y ago
I think the previous post wasn't literally saying they would be okay with someone purchasing a solution. Just that it's okay if they had help with the problem, even it's quite a bit, as long as they actually understand the code. I can't imagine a scenario where a person can't solve the problem, so hires someone to do it, then explains it as well as the person that actually wrote the code. If you can explain it that well, with reasoning for tradeoffs and design decisions, you might as well have written the code yourself and saved some money.