4 ms·

Asking someone to learn a brand new framework/language in a week as part of a job interview is pretty harsh.

anonytrary 6y ago
Most companies will hire a smart person and give them the time to ramp up on the job... I had to learn 3 languages at my very first backend job. They hired me because I was smart. It took me over a month to get fully onboarded and that was their expectation.
pugio 6y ago
That's actually exactly the kind of skill I'd look for in a new hire. I don't care which crunchy items you list on your resume so much as your ability to learn and integrate new technical information quickly (as well as a host of other skills, of course). That said, learning a new thing does take a lot of time, so if I were asking a person to do that I would either commit to hiring them if they complete the learning challenge, or pay them for their time spent that week.
- siquick 6y ago
  > That's actually exactly the kind of skill I'd look for in a new hire. I don't care which crunchy items you list on your resume so much as your ability to learn and integrate new technical information quickly (as well as a host of other skills, of course). Of course, but asking someone to spend a lot of hours on this in a week, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it is not a direction this industry needs to go. People have full time jobs, and parenting/carer/community responsibilities. I was hired for a job a couple of years ago which required a lot of work on a new framework I had never touched before, and rather than the interview being around the framework, they gave me a month of full time employment to get up to speed - on the understanding that if it just wasn't clicking then we would both walk away with no hard feelings.
  - anonytrary 6y ago
    > Of course, but asking someone to spend a lot of hours on this in a week, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it is not a direction this industry needs to go I have never seen this from any serious employers. If someone is asking you to do this, then go work somewhere else. Employers are expecting that you learn on the job.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I was going to say "Fine as long as you pay me for the effort", no way I would do this for free. I've had friends get scammed by having them "work out this problem" that takes a few days to complete. Usually it's a scam to get free work. Especially in the web and phone app world
donw 6y ago
Pivotal expects this as a matter of course. The interview involves full-time pairing for a day, and you (probably) won't know one of the programming languages. Pivotal does full-time pairing, and an experienced pairs should expected to pick up languages from new teams on-the-fly. After all, the rest of the team knows the language, and you'll get constant real-time mentorship as part of daily rotations. This is perhaps the thing that sold me on full-time pairing: you can join a team, not even know the programming language, and contribute value to your team from day one.
- armandososa 6y ago
  As an introvert working alone and remote for 13 years, full-time pairing sounds like a nightmare.
viraptor 6y ago
It really depends on the experience. If you're a beginner and it's your first web job, sure, that's harsh/unreasonable. If you're coming from years of python/JS like the author and soon for a senior-ish position? I don't see anything wrong with it. (As a task itself. As part of an interview... that's complicated)
dnautics 6y ago
When interviewing juniors, I make them install a new-to-them-language and the job interview exercise is "do this one thing". Since they're juniors, I give them a bulleted list of things to do (so there's no trick). I'm testing to see if they can 1. read and follow directions 2. read other people's documentation 3. ask for help 4. poke around and try things
armandososa 6y ago
I once learned Vue on the go as I reimplemented the company's admin dashboard from static rails-generated templates to a SPA. In a week. As a paid project assignment. It was wild, but super fun. They took too long to make an offer, though, and I ended up somewhere else. I also completely forgot all about Vue in the mean time.

Most companies will hire a smart person and give them the time to ramp up on the job... I had to learn 3 languages at my very first backend job. They hired me because I was smart. It took me over a month to get fully onboarded and that was their expectation.

pugio 6y ago

That's actually exactly the kind of skill I'd look for in a new hire. I don't care which crunchy items you list on your resume so much as your ability to learn and integrate new technical information quickly (as well as a host of other skills, of course). That said, learning a new thing does take a lot of time, so if I were asking a person to do that I would either commit to hiring them if they complete the learning challenge, or pay them for their time spent that week.

siquick 6y ago
> That's actually exactly the kind of skill I'd look for in a new hire. I don't care which crunchy items you list on your resume so much as your ability to learn and integrate new technical information quickly (as well as a host of other skills, of course). Of course, but asking someone to spend a lot of hours on this in a week, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it is not a direction this industry needs to go. People have full time jobs, and parenting/carer/community responsibilities. I was hired for a job a couple of years ago which required a lot of work on a new framework I had never touched before, and rather than the interview being around the framework, they gave me a month of full time employment to get up to speed - on the understanding that if it just wasn't clicking then we would both walk away with no hard feelings.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  > Of course, but asking someone to spend a lot of hours on this in a week, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it is not a direction this industry needs to go I have never seen this from any serious employers. If someone is asking you to do this, then go work somewhere else. Employers are expecting that you learn on the job.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I was going to say "Fine as long as you pay me for the effort", no way I would do this for free. I've had friends get scammed by having them "work out this problem" that takes a few days to complete. Usually it's a scam to get free work. Especially in the web and phone app world

donw 6y ago

Pivotal expects this as a matter of course. The interview involves full-time pairing for a day, and you (probably) won't know one of the programming languages. Pivotal does full-time pairing, and an experienced pairs should expected to pick up languages from new teams on-the-fly. After all, the rest of the team knows the language, and you'll get constant real-time mentorship as part of daily rotations. This is perhaps the thing that sold me on full-time pairing: you can join a team, not even know the programming language, and contribute value to your team from day one.

armandososa 6y ago
As an introvert working alone and remote for 13 years, full-time pairing sounds like a nightmare.

viraptor 6y ago

It really depends on the experience. If you're a beginner and it's your first web job, sure, that's harsh/unreasonable. If you're coming from years of python/JS like the author and soon for a senior-ish position? I don't see anything wrong with it. (As a task itself. As part of an interview... that's complicated)

dnautics 6y ago

When interviewing juniors, I make them install a new-to-them-language and the job interview exercise is "do this one thing". Since they're juniors, I give them a bulleted list of things to do (so there's no trick). I'm testing to see if they can 1. read and follow directions 2. read other people's documentation 3. ask for help 4. poke around and try things

armandososa 6y ago

I once learned Vue on the go as I reimplemented the company's admin dashboard from static rails-generated templates to a SPA. In a week. As a paid project assignment. It was wild, but super fun. They took too long to make an offer, though, and I ended up somewhere else. I also completely forgot all about Vue in the mean time.