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Engineers: coding exotic data structures on a whiteboard in a time-crunched interview is high-pressure and unrealistic! ...how about we give you a project that

Engineers: coding exotic data structures on a whiteboard in a time-crunched interview is high-pressure and unrealistic! ...how about we give you a project that more closely reflects problems we solve here day-to-day that you can solve in the comfort of your home on your own hardware in whatever IDE makes you comfortable? Engineers: That's absurd! I've drawn a line in the sand!

zifnab06 7y ago
My favorite so far was the take home followed by a 3 hour non-coding interview (design/architecture).
palisade 7y ago
Ah well the hash table wasn't exotic. But, software engineering interviews are pretty rough. It is a uniquely miserable experience. Since I'm a temp worker I have a lot of them. They don't get easier. I don't know of anyone who likes high pressure time crunch interrogations except maybe the ones getting to do the interrogating part. A take home test isn't so bad. But, ya if you asked me today if I'd be willing to do one like that again I'd say probably not unless I was desperate. The reality is, it is a lot of effort to put in for it to all come crashing down with a rejection anyway. When you're applying at dozens of companies if they're all requiring that level of time and mental commitment from you, you can't swing it really and it's stressful. Interviewing and being under financial pressure at the same time is already a stressful position to be in, let alone being mentally and emotionally flogged for it. All the jobs I was ever hired onto the hiring manager just had a good gut feeling about me and the tests never mattered. And, they were happy with my work. The ones that never hire me usually rely on all the employees to vote on you, if even one says no you're out. Or, the ones that are very fixated on your GPA or whether you can invert a binary tree on the whiteboard while they yell at you "Wrong!" along the way.
- kazinator 7y ago
  > All the jobs I was ever hired onto the hiring manager just had a good gut feeling about me and the tests never mattered. At one, the resume didn't matter! When through the interviews, got the offer, and then "oh, can you send me your resume, so we have it on file?"
  - heelix 7y ago
    Early in my career, I went to an open house sort of thing. Hit it off chatting with one of the chief architects who basically cut through all the red tape and got me a position. A couple weeks after starting work, I get a rejection letter from HR. Was a bit awkward conversation when I went up to their office with the letter to check if I still had a job. (I did, but boy was I sweating at the time)
- vonholstein 7y ago
  > I don't know of anyone who likes high pressure time crunch interrogations except maybe the ones getting to do the interrogating part. As someone who has been through this early career I agree with the sentiment. But being mid-career it is kind of fun to go through one now, the catch being that you shouldn't give a sh/*t if you get through or not. Think of it more as two-way courting instead of a one-way interview, not all of them pan out.
tombert 7y ago
I actually don't have a huge issue with whiteboarding, but I don't think it's a fair comparison. Something that "reflects problems we solve here day-to-day" is missing one feature: you're not paid for it. I have a pretty good job right now, but it's not like I'd keep doing it if they decided to stop paying me. I had an interview a few years ago that I thought did something cool: you spent half a day working with people, and they paid you for your time (around $40/hour, if I recall), and made an offer based on how well you worked with people. I ended up not getting the job, but at least I didn't feel used or like I wasted me time in the process.
Silhouette 7y ago
...how about we give you a project that more closely reflects problems we solve here day-to-day that you can solve in the comfort of your home on your own hardware in whatever IDE makes you comfortable? Me: How about we do something that more closely reflects problems you solve there day-to-day there and during the day? Your interviewer being present throughout means you'll get to see how I work and you'll be able to provide clarifications or answer questions as well. As a convenient side-effect, we'll both know that the exercise is a sufficiently valuable use of everyone's time to give up the equivalent amount of salary over it.
NeverFade 7y ago
> "...how about we give you a project that more closely reflects problems we solve here day-to-day that you can solve in the comfort of your home on your own hardware in whatever IDE makes you comfortable?" "How about you, a highly trained professional, do 5-10+ hours of unpaid work for us, that will be judged against desperate candidates who invested 25+ hours into them and/or bought a solution online, so you will get nothing for hours of work, except a meaningless rejection notice by some overworked programmer who didn't even read much of your code since he had 50 candidates' solutions dumped on his plate?"
- HiJon89 7y ago
  How about working to improve those take home projects since it seems to be more promising than the whiteboard interview which is doomed to suck. For example, my company has a take home project that involves hitting some APIs and doing some stuff with the JSON they return. It shouldnt take more than an hour and we give a time limit of 3 hours just so people don't spend days on it.
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    Who decided that whiteboard interviews are inferior to takehome assignments? Personally, I've hired many great candidates, and got several great jobs, via whiteboard interviews. It's not perfect but it's far superior to takehomes, which are completely one-sided, very hard to get right (by the recruiting company), and often are boring. Whiteboard interviews and (even better) pair-programming with an interviewer are reciprocal and allow me as a candidate to learn about the company rather than just do some work for them for free. Often the tasks are more interesting too. In my opinion, it is the takehome tasks that are "doomed". Their premise is flawed: "we don't want to invest an hour of our engineers' time in talking you worthless candidate, so we'll instead have you spend several hours coding up a task that our engineers will never take the time to check properly, since their time is more valuable." In my opinion, the future is platforms interviewing.io, where candidates are vetted and top candidates get the minimal investment of an hour of the company's engineer time to pair-program, which is far superior and more reliable way of screening.
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
More like: How about we also give you this other project? If it were 5 hours on-site versus 5 hours at home, that would be different than 5 hours on-site plus 10 hours at home.

zifnab06 7y ago

My favorite so far was the take home followed by a 3 hour non-coding interview (design/architecture).

palisade 7y ago

Ah well the hash table wasn't exotic. But, software engineering interviews are pretty rough. It is a uniquely miserable experience. Since I'm a temp worker I have a lot of them. They don't get easier. I don't know of anyone who likes high pressure time crunch interrogations except maybe the ones getting to do the interrogating part. A take home test isn't so bad. But, ya if you asked me today if I'd be willing to do one like that again I'd say probably not unless I was desperate. The reality is, it is a lot of effort to put in for it to all come crashing down with a rejection anyway. When you're applying at dozens of companies if they're all requiring that level of time and mental commitment from you, you can't swing it really and it's stressful. Interviewing and being under financial pressure at the same time is already a stressful position to be in, let alone being mentally and emotionally flogged for it. All the jobs I was ever hired onto the hiring manager just had a good gut feeling about me and the tests never mattered. And, they were happy with my work. The ones that never hire me usually rely on all the employees to vote on you, if even one says no you're out. Or, the ones that are very fixated on your GPA or whether you can invert a binary tree on the whiteboard while they yell at you "Wrong!" along the way.

kazinator 7y ago
> All the jobs I was ever hired onto the hiring manager just had a good gut feeling about me and the tests never mattered. At one, the resume didn't matter! When through the interviews, got the offer, and then "oh, can you send me your resume, so we have it on file?"
- heelix 7y ago
  Early in my career, I went to an open house sort of thing. Hit it off chatting with one of the chief architects who basically cut through all the red tape and got me a position. A couple weeks after starting work, I get a rejection letter from HR. Was a bit awkward conversation when I went up to their office with the letter to check if I still had a job. (I did, but boy was I sweating at the time)
vonholstein 7y ago
> I don't know of anyone who likes high pressure time crunch interrogations except maybe the ones getting to do the interrogating part. As someone who has been through this early career I agree with the sentiment. But being mid-career it is kind of fun to go through one now, the catch being that you shouldn't give a sh/*t if you get through or not. Think of it more as two-way courting instead of a one-way interview, not all of them pan out.

tombert 7y ago

I actually don't have a huge issue with whiteboarding, but I don't think it's a fair comparison. Something that "reflects problems we solve here day-to-day" is missing one feature: you're not paid for it. I have a pretty good job right now, but it's not like I'd keep doing it if they decided to stop paying me. I had an interview a few years ago that I thought did something cool: you spent half a day working with people, and they paid you for your time (around $40/hour, if I recall), and made an offer based on how well you worked with people. I ended up not getting the job, but at least I didn't feel used or like I wasted me time in the process.

Silhouette 7y ago

...how about we give you a project that more closely reflects problems we solve here day-to-day that you can solve in the comfort of your home on your own hardware in whatever IDE makes you comfortable? Me: How about we do something that more closely reflects problems you solve there day-to-day there and during the day? Your interviewer being present throughout means you'll get to see how I work and you'll be able to provide clarifications or answer questions as well. As a convenient side-effect, we'll both know that the exercise is a sufficiently valuable use of everyone's time to give up the equivalent amount of salary over it.

NeverFade 7y ago

> "...how about we give you a project that more closely reflects problems we solve here day-to-day that you can solve in the comfort of your home on your own hardware in whatever IDE makes you comfortable?" "How about you, a highly trained professional, do 5-10+ hours of unpaid work for us, that will be judged against desperate candidates who invested 25+ hours into them and/or bought a solution online, so you will get nothing for hours of work, except a meaningless rejection notice by some overworked programmer who didn't even read much of your code since he had 50 candidates' solutions dumped on his plate?"

HiJon89 7y ago
How about working to improve those take home projects since it seems to be more promising than the whiteboard interview which is doomed to suck. For example, my company has a take home project that involves hitting some APIs and doing some stuff with the JSON they return. It shouldnt take more than an hour and we give a time limit of 3 hours just so people don't spend days on it.
- NeverFade 7y ago
  Who decided that whiteboard interviews are inferior to takehome assignments? Personally, I've hired many great candidates, and got several great jobs, via whiteboard interviews. It's not perfect but it's far superior to takehomes, which are completely one-sided, very hard to get right (by the recruiting company), and often are boring. Whiteboard interviews and (even better) pair-programming with an interviewer are reciprocal and allow me as a candidate to learn about the company rather than just do some work for them for free. Often the tasks are more interesting too. In my opinion, it is the takehome tasks that are "doomed". Their premise is flawed: "we don't want to invest an hour of our engineers' time in talking you worthless candidate, so we'll instead have you spend several hours coding up a task that our engineers will never take the time to check properly, since their time is more valuable." In my opinion, the future is platforms interviewing.io, where candidates are vetted and top candidates get the minimal investment of an hour of the company's engineer time to pair-program, which is far superior and more reliable way of screening.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

More like: How about we also give you this other project? If it were 5 hours on-site versus 5 hours at home, that would be different than 5 hours on-site plus 10 hours at home.