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Forget for a minute who won't get through the "broken tech interviews" and instead consider the types of bad hires that could get through these filters: - Take
by mLuby 6y ago
Forget for a minute who won't get through the "broken tech interviews" and instead consider the types of bad hires that could get through these filters:
- Take-home LeetCode: poor communication skills, bad at workflows, unpleasant personality, poor architecture, write-only, cheaters.
- Live LeetCode: same as take-home LeetCode but at least they have communication skills and aren't cheating so you know they can write efficient functions.
- Resume: all the issues with take-home LeetCode.
- Culture fit/behavioral: all the issues of take-home LeetCode, but at least they're good at communication and have a good personality.
- Take-home project: same as take-home Leetcode but instead of efficient functions you know they can at least architect and implement a small, standard application (if they didn't cheat).
- Show me your side project: Same as take-home project, plus they might work extremely slowly, and might only be passionate about that one side project, but you know they have communication skills.
- Architecture whiteboarding: can't actually code to implement the systems they're drawing, but you know they have communication skills.
So it's no surprise that companies wanting to reduce the risk of a costly bad hire (a bad fit, not necessarily a bad person) evaluate the candidate from different angles to check for red flags.
I sympathize with the frustration of those who present false negatives and are filtered out despite actually being a good fit, for example working parents who can't spend a whole weekend polishing a take-home project.
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoIt is very hard to parse your comment, a bit better formatting may help I guess?
- mLuby 6y agoBetter now? HN's need for extra newlines between bullets always gets me.
- 908B64B197 6y agowith take-home there's also the fact that the great candidates will probably have an offer before they even get to start working on your take-home, unless you are Google/SpaceX or pays extremely well. Students sort companies they are interested in in descending order so your take-home will get done whenever they have some time available.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> with take-home there's also the fact that the great candidates will probably have an offer before they even get to start working on your take-home Are you seeing excessively demanding take-home projects? I've only ever seen take-home challenges in the 1-4 hour range. On the hiring side, I gave candidates a choice between our take-home problem or an on-site interview. Everyone gladly chose the take-home problem. I don't understand why so many people are loathe to spend a few hours in the comfort of their home working on a take-home challenge in their preferred dev environment, when the alternative is to take time off work to handle a mid-day interview with a live person. As much as HN hates take-home problems, I've received near universal approval from candidates on the hiring the side relative to having people do live, in-person tech interviews.
- 908B64B197 6y ago> I've only ever seen take-home challenges in the 1-4 hour range. For college hiring, that's on top of a busy schedule (and everyone interviews roughly at the same time). So the take-homes add up. And it's a long time commitment from the candidate but a potentially very short one from the employer (run some automatic grading/testing then ghost the candidate). Going to an on-site and meeting engineers shows more commitment on the employer's side (talking to the candidate is worth 2 hours of an engineer's time). But if you have a good completion rate for your take-home, that's great.
- dfadsadsf 6y agoProblem with take home test is that it’s asymmetric time commitment - candidate spends time but company does not have to. You can send take home test to 100 people competing for 1 open position because take home takes candidate 4 hours to do but only 10 minutes to check by company engineer (or even recruiter or automated tool). Easy to waste candidate time. With in person interview time commitment is the same for both company and engineer so no sane company will waste candidates time (at least on purpose). Feels much more fair.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoWe pair the take home with a code review the candidate hosts with the SW team.
- pandeiro 6y agoGreat summary of the problematic aspects of each of these approaches!