4 ms·

I do not want to work for a company that does NOT test my technical skills; if they don't verify my skills that means they don't verify others and I'd prefer to

by deeg 7y ago

I do not want to work for a company that does NOT test my technical skills; if they don't verify my skills that means they don't verify others and I'd prefer to work skilled engineers (with exceptions for entry-level or junior engineers). Most people seem to agree that white-boarding is a poor way to judge technical skills. Coding challenges seem a good compromise, assuming they don't require more than a few hours of time.

kemiller2002 7y ago
I do get what you're saying, but what I'm really interested in is what are their skills? Any moron can tell me I'm good whether I am or not.
- recursive 7y ago
  But the chance of getting it right goes down if they don't have direct evidence of their conclusion.
kevin_nisbet 7y ago
I agree. I kind of wish https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/ had taken off, as instead of doing a coding challenge for every company, you can do one really well designed challenge, and use that challenge with multiple companies. Note: I'm an employee of gravitational.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
noirbot 7y ago
I had a similar process recently. Went from recruiter through to offer with only a couple design problems and generally talking about projects I'd worked on, no code whatsoever. If anything, it made me want to work for the company less. I didn't feel like they had a great idea if I was actually good at my job, since almost everything I'd shown in interviews was things I could have easily made up to make myself look good. That's especially worrying to me because it was a company that was still building out the team I'd be working for, so it would be hard for me to be really confident in the skills of my coworkers. Maybe the interviewers were just really good judges of character and skill (I think I probably was a good fit for the position), but it was hard to look past the fact that I didn't think I'd proven that I fit the role to them. Not doing any technical/coding problems makes me worry that the company doesn't see technical skill as important at all. Maybe they could preface the process with an explanation of why they don't, and that could be persuasive, but outside that, even a basic FizzBuzz makes me feel like their hiring philosophy is considering those skills.
- inimino 7y ago
  > Maybe the interviewers were just really good judges of character and skill (I think I probably was a good fit for the position), but it was hard to look past the fact that I didn't think I'd proven that I fit the role to them. It's also possible that they are simply willing to fire people who are incompetent and prove to have lied about their accomplishments. If that's the case, it shouldn't be necessary for you to "prove" your skill, which is much, much harder to evaluate than most interviewers think.
didibus 7y ago
I find as both an interviewer and an interviewee that I prefer whiteboarding. But, it depends who you need to hire. If you need someone to just do the job. A coding challenge is fine. If you want someone who's above the rest in their CS knowledge, and problem solving skills, than a whiteboard interview is best. Just my opinion. I have no data for this. A whiteboard interview is pretty much a coding challenge where I can observe the candidate's methodology and their general approach to tackling problems. That's super valuable information. From being a candidate myself, I've found that having someone watch me and being in a room with the stress and all motivates me to show my best. Whereas coding challenges I really lack the motivation and I end up rushing them, doing them last minute, and really not showing my best. Ultimately, I think they both aren't ideal, but we don't have anything better short of an internship (and even those don't always pan out, since interns are treated differently and provided more hand holding). In the end, it's just hard to reduce work that in practice spans multiple weeks per project, and involve all kinds of side process, to something you can test for in under a day.
- shantly 7y ago
  > From being a candidate myself, I've found that having someone watch me and being in a room with the stress and all motivates me to show my best. Whereas coding challenges I really lack the motivation and I end up rushing them, doing them last minute, and really not showing my best. OTOH, whiteboards or live-coding under interview conditions is a great way to watch me do worse work than I did when I was less than a year out from writing my first hello world. And yeah, I'm cool & collected under normal shit's-broken pressure, or client's-pissed-off pressure, on the actual job, which is totally different.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    Same, I can't code while being watched, but I can do a take home assessment. My favorites have been real world stuff like ... build x by creating your own MVC w/ x, y, and z as a base... like x router, y templating engine, etc...
    - 7y ago
jjav 7y ago
> I do not want to work for a company that does NOT test my technical skills; if they don't verify my skills that means they don't verify others and I'd prefer to work skilled engineers (with exceptions for entry-level or junior engineers). This statement is assuming that short coding challenges measure something relevant to job performance. If everyone agreed that is true, this debate would not exist. We'd all agree it is filtering for the correct skills, we'd all hire the right people. But the fact that it is such a perpetual debate is because a substantial percentage of developers disagree. I have certainly never seen any coding challenge (whether whiteboard or not) that has any relevance to the job. So as an interviewer I don't subject people to it.

by deeg 7y ago

kemiller2002 7y ago

I do get what you're saying, but what I'm really interested in is what are their skills? Any moron can tell me I'm good whether I am or not.

recursive 7y ago
But the chance of getting it right goes down if they don't have direct evidence of their conclusion.

kevin_nisbet 7y ago

I agree. I kind of wish https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/ had taken off, as instead of doing a coding challenge for every company, you can do one really well designed challenge, and use that challenge with multiple companies. Note: I'm an employee of gravitational.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

noirbot 7y ago

I had a similar process recently. Went from recruiter through to offer with only a couple design problems and generally talking about projects I'd worked on, no code whatsoever. If anything, it made me want to work for the company less. I didn't feel like they had a great idea if I was actually good at my job, since almost everything I'd shown in interviews was things I could have easily made up to make myself look good. That's especially worrying to me because it was a company that was still building out the team I'd be working for, so it would be hard for me to be really confident in the skills of my coworkers. Maybe the interviewers were just really good judges of character and skill (I think I probably was a good fit for the position), but it was hard to look past the fact that I didn't think I'd proven that I fit the role to them. Not doing any technical/coding problems makes me worry that the company doesn't see technical skill as important at all. Maybe they could preface the process with an explanation of why they don't, and that could be persuasive, but outside that, even a basic FizzBuzz makes me feel like their hiring philosophy is considering those skills.

inimino 7y ago
> Maybe the interviewers were just really good judges of character and skill (I think I probably was a good fit for the position), but it was hard to look past the fact that I didn't think I'd proven that I fit the role to them. It's also possible that they are simply willing to fire people who are incompetent and prove to have lied about their accomplishments. If that's the case, it shouldn't be necessary for you to "prove" your skill, which is much, much harder to evaluate than most interviewers think.

didibus 7y ago

I find as both an interviewer and an interviewee that I prefer whiteboarding. But, it depends who you need to hire. If you need someone to just do the job. A coding challenge is fine. If you want someone who's above the rest in their CS knowledge, and problem solving skills, than a whiteboard interview is best. Just my opinion. I have no data for this. A whiteboard interview is pretty much a coding challenge where I can observe the candidate's methodology and their general approach to tackling problems. That's super valuable information. From being a candidate myself, I've found that having someone watch me and being in a room with the stress and all motivates me to show my best. Whereas coding challenges I really lack the motivation and I end up rushing them, doing them last minute, and really not showing my best. Ultimately, I think they both aren't ideal, but we don't have anything better short of an internship (and even those don't always pan out, since interns are treated differently and provided more hand holding). In the end, it's just hard to reduce work that in practice spans multiple weeks per project, and involve all kinds of side process, to something you can test for in under a day.

shantly 7y ago
> From being a candidate myself, I've found that having someone watch me and being in a room with the stress and all motivates me to show my best. Whereas coding challenges I really lack the motivation and I end up rushing them, doing them last minute, and really not showing my best. OTOH, whiteboards or live-coding under interview conditions is a great way to watch me do worse work than I did when I was less than a year out from writing my first hello world. And yeah, I'm cool & collected under normal shit's-broken pressure, or client's-pissed-off pressure, on the actual job, which is totally different.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  Same, I can't code while being watched, but I can do a take home assessment. My favorites have been real world stuff like ... build x by creating your own MVC w/ x, y, and z as a base... like x router, y templating engine, etc...
  - 7y ago

jjav 7y ago

> I do not want to work for a company that does NOT test my technical skills; if they don't verify my skills that means they don't verify others and I'd prefer to work skilled engineers (with exceptions for entry-level or junior engineers). This statement is assuming that short coding challenges measure something relevant to job performance. If everyone agreed that is true, this debate would not exist. We'd all agree it is filtering for the correct skills, we'd all hire the right people. But the fact that it is such a perpetual debate is because a substantial percentage of developers disagree. I have certainly never seen any coding challenge (whether whiteboard or not) that has any relevance to the job. So as an interviewer I don't subject people to it.