3 ms·

How to (Fucking) Hire Developers

35 points by frankdenbow 15y ago

T_S_ 15y ago
Recommended. Especially 5. Don’t you fucking dare ask me a riddle. An unbelievable time waster.
- t3mp3st 15y ago
  Amen. I utterly despise riddles.
rpwilcox 15y ago
Yes yes yes: 4. Don’t give me any bullshit homework. I have a thousands of lines of open source software, created over 8 years of doing open source work... it really does feel like a waste of time when a potential employeer asks me to spend "2 days coding up this thing in C++" as an entrance exam.
- t3mp3st 15y ago
  Hells yes. The worst is when they ask you to build something for their product. For free. On your own time. And then don't give you the job. WTF?
- lpolovets 15y ago
  Ok, I'll bite. In the same way that you might be applying for many jobs, the employer has to sort through many applicants. A "bullshit homework" exercise is a great way to get a calibrated measure of an applicant's abilities and code quality. It's also a great opportunity for the applicant to show off: you can write awesome documentation, implement several variations of an algorithm to see which works best, add unit tests, etc. You can also half-ass the exercise and submit something that works but is mediocre in most ways. Of course, you would not want to spend 4 hours on a problem for each of 50 job applications, but you might pick 2-3 companies that really interest you and spend more time on those. As luck would have it, those are the ones you'll most likely get offers from once you dazzle on the code test. Open source code is awesome, and I really enjoy looking at people's GitHub pages, but it's hard to learn what you need to learn from those pages. If it's a solo project, I know that the person wrote all of the code, but many times it's not and I don't want to run "blame" on each file. It's also unclear if the code I'm looking at is an example of the person's "best" work, or what how they program day-to-day, or something else. Furthermore, the code could be in Haskell or C# or Jython or whatever, which might have nothing to do with what I'm looking for.* On another note, the employer runs a big risk when hiring someone. They are potentially paying salary, benefits, relocation expenses, etc. If they're wrong, they lose a lot of money, team morale goes down, and they might have to spend time cleaning up after bad work instead of implementing new stuff. Asking for a small homework assignment seems like a reasonable request when the consequences of a false positive are so dramatic. Finally, a coding test likely means one of the following: 1) the company has so many applicants that they want to set up a wall that only the really interested applicants get through. 2) the company has high standards and wants to make sure they are not making stupid hiring mistakes. I think both of these are pros rather than cons for a potential employer. Just my two cents.. * I realize that a good developer can learn any language, but if I'm interested in technology X, and a developer knows X and Y, then it's not as interesting to me to see what they have open sourced with Y as it would be to see what they can do with X.
thomasgerbe 15y ago
Not a developer, but this is related. I'm pretty surprised by how many companies in SV ask me to do design exercises for them. I've won industry awards, built giant sites that millions of people use, endured some of the toughest board meetings on Wall Street, had to endure killer hours, won millions of dollars worth of work for my old company, shown you my portfolio, and you want me to do work for your funded company for free? My old company in NY hired me at a competitive rate for three months before bringing me onboard full-time. How difficult is that? Just hire me for a day or a few days to get a glimpse and then make your judgement. Otherwise, it's just spec work and absolutely insulting. I don't get my mechanic to fix my car once for free to test his expertise, nor get free first-time haircuts from hair stylists.
unshift 15y ago
the place i used to work prided themselves on having a large puzzle collection that candidates had to suffer through before even submitting an application. i wanted to work there, so i put up with it, and write a fairly decent solution to a problem. took me about 10-15 hours by the time it was written and tested. "make sure it scales", said the doc. ok, async i/o and home grown select() loop it is! all this just to submit an application; no guarantees of even a phone screen. fast forward a couple months, i'm sitting in the office with my team, and the subject of the puzzle comes up -- i asked if anyone noticed anything about the one i submitted. NOBODY HAD LOOKED AT IT. HR didn't even send it over. probably the last time i'll ever do one of those. they're supposed to attract "passionate" people under the bullshit guise of "we'd like to hire the kind of people who like to do these puzzles in their spare time" -- code words for "we'd like to hire the kind of people who want to live at the office"

35 points by frankdenbow 15y ago

T_S_ 15y ago

Recommended. Especially 5. Don’t you fucking dare ask me a riddle. An unbelievable time waster.

t3mp3st 15y ago
Amen. I utterly despise riddles.

rpwilcox 15y ago

Yes yes yes: 4. Don’t give me any bullshit homework. I have a thousands of lines of open source software, created over 8 years of doing open source work... it really does feel like a waste of time when a potential employeer asks me to spend "2 days coding up this thing in C++" as an entrance exam.

t3mp3st 15y ago
Hells yes. The worst is when they ask you to build something for their product. For free. On your own time. And then don't give you the job. WTF?
lpolovets 15y ago
Ok, I'll bite. In the same way that you might be applying for many jobs, the employer has to sort through many applicants. A "bullshit homework" exercise is a great way to get a calibrated measure of an applicant's abilities and code quality. It's also a great opportunity for the applicant to show off: you can write awesome documentation, implement several variations of an algorithm to see which works best, add unit tests, etc. You can also half-ass the exercise and submit something that works but is mediocre in most ways. Of course, you would not want to spend 4 hours on a problem for each of 50 job applications, but you might pick 2-3 companies that really interest you and spend more time on those. As luck would have it, those are the ones you'll most likely get offers from once you dazzle on the code test. Open source code is awesome, and I really enjoy looking at people's GitHub pages, but it's hard to learn what you need to learn from those pages. If it's a solo project, I know that the person wrote all of the code, but many times it's not and I don't want to run "blame" on each file. It's also unclear if the code I'm looking at is an example of the person's "best" work, or what how they program day-to-day, or something else. Furthermore, the code could be in Haskell or C# or Jython or whatever, which might have nothing to do with what I'm looking for.* On another note, the employer runs a big risk when hiring someone. They are potentially paying salary, benefits, relocation expenses, etc. If they're wrong, they lose a lot of money, team morale goes down, and they might have to spend time cleaning up after bad work instead of implementing new stuff. Asking for a small homework assignment seems like a reasonable request when the consequences of a false positive are so dramatic. Finally, a coding test likely means one of the following: 1) the company has so many applicants that they want to set up a wall that only the really interested applicants get through. 2) the company has high standards and wants to make sure they are not making stupid hiring mistakes. I think both of these are pros rather than cons for a potential employer. Just my two cents.. * I realize that a good developer can learn any language, but if I'm interested in technology X, and a developer knows X and Y, then it's not as interesting to me to see what they have open sourced with Y as it would be to see what they can do with X.

thomasgerbe 15y ago

Not a developer, but this is related. I'm pretty surprised by how many companies in SV ask me to do design exercises for them. I've won industry awards, built giant sites that millions of people use, endured some of the toughest board meetings on Wall Street, had to endure killer hours, won millions of dollars worth of work for my old company, shown you my portfolio, and you want me to do work for your funded company for free? My old company in NY hired me at a competitive rate for three months before bringing me onboard full-time. How difficult is that? Just hire me for a day or a few days to get a glimpse and then make your judgement. Otherwise, it's just spec work and absolutely insulting. I don't get my mechanic to fix my car once for free to test his expertise, nor get free first-time haircuts from hair stylists.

unshift 15y ago

the place i used to work prided themselves on having a large puzzle collection that candidates had to suffer through before even submitting an application. i wanted to work there, so i put up with it, and write a fairly decent solution to a problem. took me about 10-15 hours by the time it was written and tested. "make sure it scales", said the doc. ok, async i/o and home grown select() loop it is! all this just to submit an application; no guarantees of even a phone screen. fast forward a couple months, i'm sitting in the office with my team, and the subject of the puzzle comes up -- i asked if anyone noticed anything about the one i submitted. NOBODY HAD LOOKED AT IT. HR didn't even send it over. probably the last time i'll ever do one of those. they're supposed to attract "passionate" people under the bullshit guise of "we'd like to hire the kind of people who like to do these puzzles in their spare time" -- code words for "we'd like to hire the kind of people who want to live at the office"