4 ms·

Maybe a little off-topic. You wanna solve or avoid millions bugs? Instead of hiring people capable of memorizing how to invert binary trees and similar bs, com

Maybe a little off-topic. You wanna solve or avoid millions bugs? Instead of hiring people capable of memorizing how to invert binary trees and similar bs, companies when interviewing and hiring should focus on real hands-on experience, should value developers who empower and demostrate best practices and good code craftsmanship. Ask candidates to write and review real production code. It is just unbelievable how low is set the bar when it comes to writing high quality code even at so called FAANG. You can just imagine how bad it gets for any other random company out there.

barbazoo 5y ago
> You can just imagine how bad it gets for any other random company out there. Or how surprisingly solid developers can be at non FAANG places. Not everyone aspires to work at Amazon.
dvtrn 5y ago
Ask candidates to write and review real production code. Presumably you pay candidates for this, right, if we're talking about "real production code" and valuing developers?
- aledalgrande 5y ago
  There are companies that pay for your interview work, I think DuckDuckGo is one of them.
- WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago
  it does not take much, I usually ask candidates on-site, to review real production PR. I would also keep around pieces of real production code and ask the candidate to either fill in additional/missing functionalities, or ask them what changes/tests if any they would implement and why. Basically testing real day-to-day job. If you were to work in this company and you were given this task, how would you approach it? You can easily tell which people care, strive for good practices and who have high quality standards vs the ones who tend to just hack things together. It worked well for me, and never regretted any hiring.
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    I would also keep around pieces of real production code and ask the candidate to either fill in additional/missing functionalities So as opposed to a boilerplate test or asking developers to solve a challenge with a few lines of code and discuss their thoughts on it, they're asked to look at real production code that is in use, opine on it, and add/change functionality to it? Can I re-ask my question if I've read you properly and understood: presumably you pay people for this right? I ask because in my mind, solving a coding challenge or talking about something hypothetical/conceptual probably isn't too much different than solving a problem on actual code the company uses from a technical standpoint in as much as they both require effort on my part to think about the problem and bang out a solution... ... but in terms of time spent interviewing and evaluating employers, I'd feel less comfortable contributing anything to production code without the guarantee that the company wont just take the work and implement it, and then later say they hired someone else/went another direction or just decided not to hire at all. Which has happened.
    - WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago
      it is trivial code, but in the context of a real code base. I would never ask a candidate to solve a "hard" problem that no one in the company wasn't able to solve. Just an example: in the context of a spring application, I would ask to add a new api, from the controller all the way down to the database. And of course, I'd gauge the interview according to the experience of the candidate and knowledge of a specific framework etc. They are free to lookup the documentation. Really simulating what would happen if the candidate were to get hired. I mean either that, or you are back at the : implement a linked list, invert binary tree, check palindrome string and similar bs.

barbazoo 5y ago

> You can just imagine how bad it gets for any other random company out there. Or how surprisingly solid developers can be at non FAANG places. Not everyone aspires to work at Amazon.

dvtrn 5y ago

Ask candidates to write and review real production code. Presumably you pay candidates for this, right, if we're talking about "real production code" and valuing developers?

aledalgrande 5y ago
There are companies that pay for your interview work, I think DuckDuckGo is one of them.
WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago
it does not take much, I usually ask candidates on-site, to review real production PR. I would also keep around pieces of real production code and ask the candidate to either fill in additional/missing functionalities, or ask them what changes/tests if any they would implement and why. Basically testing real day-to-day job. If you were to work in this company and you were given this task, how would you approach it? You can easily tell which people care, strive for good practices and who have high quality standards vs the ones who tend to just hack things together. It worked well for me, and never regretted any hiring.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I would also keep around pieces of real production code and ask the candidate to either fill in additional/missing functionalities So as opposed to a boilerplate test or asking developers to solve a challenge with a few lines of code and discuss their thoughts on it, they're asked to look at real production code that is in use, opine on it, and add/change functionality to it? Can I re-ask my question if I've read you properly and understood: presumably you pay people for this right? I ask because in my mind, solving a coding challenge or talking about something hypothetical/conceptual probably isn't too much different than solving a problem on actual code the company uses from a technical standpoint in as much as they both require effort on my part to think about the problem and bang out a solution... ... but in terms of time spent interviewing and evaluating employers, I'd feel less comfortable contributing anything to production code without the guarantee that the company wont just take the work and implement it, and then later say they hired someone else/went another direction or just decided not to hire at all. Which has happened.
  - WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago
    it is trivial code, but in the context of a real code base. I would never ask a candidate to solve a "hard" problem that no one in the company wasn't able to solve. Just an example: in the context of a spring application, I would ask to add a new api, from the controller all the way down to the database. And of course, I'd gauge the interview according to the experience of the candidate and knowledge of a specific framework etc. They are free to lookup the documentation. Really simulating what would happen if the candidate were to get hired. I mean either that, or you are back at the : implement a linked list, invert binary tree, check palindrome string and similar bs.