3 ms·

Ask HN: Has anyone here used HackerRank?

• baash05 5y ago
  I've been subjected to it a few times, and now if it's part of the hiring process I tell the hiring manager I'm not interested. It's a waste of my time. (Many mates do the same) I've found the questions to be too algorithm centric, which does not really represent my day to day. A fresh Uni grad might do well, but as a coder with over 20 years in, the problems are too generic or jargon filled. Also solving problems IRL allows for google searches, and chatting with co-workers. If I can find an answer on SO that is close to my issue, I save the company money, by not rolling my own. So. If you're looking for Uni grads, sure. If you're looking for experienced dev's it's a great way to get a pile of "Nah. I'll pass."
  • baash05 5y ago
    On a side.. a few times I've told the recruiters that I'm not interested in the role, because they offered HackerRank tests.. Most of the time they come back and ask me to come in and chat instead.
• readonthegoapp 5y ago
  not sure what your question is really trying to get at, but i think i tried it a couple times just for practice/learning and it might have been ok. but i was recently going thru an interview process and they sprung a shitrank on me, and i thought seriously about doing it, but not before pushing back. i ended up talking to the hiring manager first, who then still insisted i go thru w/ the shitrank test. i thought i had escaped it. i thought, bro, i literally was on the phone with you for 30 minutes. you could have asked me _anything_. but i guess they just wanted the shitrank. so i started to take it. read thru the first question and was like, 'whut?' it wasn't that is was shockingly easy or difficult - it was that i literally couldn't understand what it was saying. the rage just came over me as i was reading something like, "Johnny had an apple but wanted a pear.." -- some weird shit. i think it was scheduled to be a 30-min quiz thing, and it was just pick whatever language you want and shuffle some words and println() or something. i think all of the things that make people pissed off about having to take shitranks just hit me at once and i was like FUCK these people. so i told them, actually-politely i think, that i'd changed my mind and was withdrawing my candidacy and good luck, etc. i tried not to be passive-aggressive - not just because i don't know what that phrase means, but also because i just didn't want to be that way - it sounds bad. HR pinged me back to ask for details but i ghosted. don't play stupid, people. i do think it's a good weed-out test for companies. and if they lose a good candidate? there will be another tomorrow. or ten more already in the pipeline. i feel like i've learned at least that much over the years -- we're all expendable -- much moreso than most of us would like to believe. skipping shitranks, and thus jobs, is prob much worse for candidates on the whole. if you got a piece of paper from stanford or mit, you can walk away from anything without feeling the effects, but normal people like me will pay -- we'll feel it -- employers are not beating down my door. i've been thinking about shitrank and homework and things a bit - mainly b/c i'm interviewing right now - i'm straight _in_ the shit - but i kind of think of jobs, not work, as being anti-human anyways, so what if i _do_ perform this little humiliating dance just to get hired? is it going to be worse than the 40 hours a week of humiliation i'm going to go thru for the next however many months or years? granted, most of that is not _that_ humiliating, especially if i'm mostly the one subjecting others to the humiliation -- during my stand-ups -- but it's still a job, still renting yourself, etc. so, then why not just do the test/homework? in my case, it was 30 minutes. that's not bad. a previous interviewer was asking me to take 10 or so hours, i think, to do homework. a different company, mlops, was asking me to spend the turkey day weekend ("not the _whole_ weekend, hahahaha") doing homework. these are not even for real tech positions -- they're like tech support-related. but back to my 30 minutes - i thought, if i do this, if i can just grin and bear this 30 minutes of stupidity, i can prob actually get this job, stop interviewing, stop dancing multiple times a day, just get this job and go back to life trying to make one of my side projects successful. nope - couldn't do it. tried, tho! :)