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We've had existing devs do the take home tests, not to make sure that they were capable of it, or if the test was too hard, but mostly to check if the test coul

We've had existing devs do the take home tests, not to make sure that they were capable of it, or if the test was too hard, but mostly to check if the test could be completed by someone in a reasonable timeframe and not unneccasarily waste a persons time. My advice for these sorts of tests is to make it as short as possible, and use the test to give you something to talk about in the follow up in person interview. Replace "Invert a binary tree/solve this riddle" with "Why did you do this in the take home? What would you do differently if $FOO was now a requirement". I find it effective. To answer the OG question, I'm sure I would do well. Depends on the other candidates on whether I would get the job though.

dunefox 5y ago
> We've had existing devs do the take home tests ... and?
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Sorry, I realize I never elaborated on the results. Some people could do a reasonable job in 30 minutes, others would take 2 hours (but would be more thorough). Neither end of the spectrum seemed "Too long", and so we thought it is a reasonable ask. It takes the devs that inevitably have to look at this, and potentially run the applicants solution, a chunk of time as well, so it's in our interest to keep it simple. I wasn't suggesting that we had existing devs do the take home, realize it took 30 hours, and then thought that was a reasonable request :D
  - Sholmesy 5y ago
    Also; on the various lengths and "thoroughness", it's hard to control bias, but we explicitly tell people that this will be used as a jumping off point for discussion. This gives the opportunityfor those who "did less" in terms of thoroughness more opportunity to talk about what they would change/do better if it was to be producitonized etc etc. The worst case scenario for us is someone who has clearly spent a long time on it, against our wishes, and done a poor job. Optimizing to not have the happen is a comms challenge.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
halfdan 5y ago
The company I work for uses a take home project that can be summarized as: Consume some data from a public API, store id somewhere and then build a visual representation for the data you consumed. The goal is to spend less than four hours on this. I really liked this since it gives plenty of room for discussion, leaves you a lot of freedom to chose your tech stack and make a case for it.
- wiredfool 5y ago
  We do something similar -- here's a dataset, give us a cli/api/library that finds things in it, and give us a run through of what/how you did. It's shallow enough that you can do it in 10 lines of code, deep enough that you could build a business around it (with more/better data). We have a rubric of about 15 things that are successively more rare/good approaches (ranging from "returns some data" to "successful approach I haven't seen before") , and 3 that are anti-points. The thing that I find the most useful are the responses I get when I point something out and ask "why did you take this approach" or "what would you do to go faster" or if there's a bug, "I don't think this is doing what you want it to". I absolutely grade this on a curve -- Entry level and data science backgrounds almost always go to pandas right off, front end people will be focused more on the UI side of it. But if you're senior and come at me with an O(N) or O(N^2) solution then I'm going to really want to know what you have to say about the performance question.
- samstave 5y ago
  Are there lessons of such that one can follow?
- bryan0 5y ago
  Our company does something similar. I've found it to be very effective. We do this instead of leetcode, which I have found to be pretty irrelevant throughout my career.
mattkrause 5y ago
The expectations for the take-home work also need to be crystal clear. I've gotten data science ones where you could spend anywhere from an hour to an entire career working on that one particular problem. If it's meant to be a simple pass-fail exercise, say so up front and reserve the interview for discussing how the solution could be improved.
- fabatka 5y ago
  I have recently had similar experience, but sending an email with my questions solved this problem. Of course if their HR or team is slow to answer it isn't worth that much, but still better than not writing that email (you can still point to it later). I was even thinking, maybe this is part of the test, to see how comfortable/proactive the candidate is with asking/clarifying a task.
thunkshift1 5y ago
Hi.. slightly off topic but what is the meaning of OG here
- vgel 5y ago
  OriGinal

dunefox 5y ago

> We've had existing devs do the take home tests ... and?

Sholmesy 5y ago
Sorry, I realize I never elaborated on the results. Some people could do a reasonable job in 30 minutes, others would take 2 hours (but would be more thorough). Neither end of the spectrum seemed "Too long", and so we thought it is a reasonable ask. It takes the devs that inevitably have to look at this, and potentially run the applicants solution, a chunk of time as well, so it's in our interest to keep it simple. I wasn't suggesting that we had existing devs do the take home, realize it took 30 hours, and then thought that was a reasonable request :D
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Also; on the various lengths and "thoroughness", it's hard to control bias, but we explicitly tell people that this will be used as a jumping off point for discussion. This gives the opportunityfor those who "did less" in terms of thoroughness more opportunity to talk about what they would change/do better if it was to be producitonized etc etc. The worst case scenario for us is someone who has clearly spent a long time on it, against our wishes, and done a poor job. Optimizing to not have the happen is a comms challenge.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

halfdan 5y ago

The company I work for uses a take home project that can be summarized as: Consume some data from a public API, store id somewhere and then build a visual representation for the data you consumed. The goal is to spend less than four hours on this. I really liked this since it gives plenty of room for discussion, leaves you a lot of freedom to chose your tech stack and make a case for it.

wiredfool 5y ago
We do something similar -- here's a dataset, give us a cli/api/library that finds things in it, and give us a run through of what/how you did. It's shallow enough that you can do it in 10 lines of code, deep enough that you could build a business around it (with more/better data). We have a rubric of about 15 things that are successively more rare/good approaches (ranging from "returns some data" to "successful approach I haven't seen before") , and 3 that are anti-points. The thing that I find the most useful are the responses I get when I point something out and ask "why did you take this approach" or "what would you do to go faster" or if there's a bug, "I don't think this is doing what you want it to". I absolutely grade this on a curve -- Entry level and data science backgrounds almost always go to pandas right off, front end people will be focused more on the UI side of it. But if you're senior and come at me with an O(N) or O(N^2) solution then I'm going to really want to know what you have to say about the performance question.
samstave 5y ago
Are there lessons of such that one can follow?
bryan0 5y ago
Our company does something similar. I've found it to be very effective. We do this instead of leetcode, which I have found to be pretty irrelevant throughout my career.

mattkrause 5y ago

The expectations for the take-home work also need to be crystal clear. I've gotten data science ones where you could spend anywhere from an hour to an entire career working on that one particular problem. If it's meant to be a simple pass-fail exercise, say so up front and reserve the interview for discussing how the solution could be improved.

fabatka 5y ago
I have recently had similar experience, but sending an email with my questions solved this problem. Of course if their HR or team is slow to answer it isn't worth that much, but still better than not writing that email (you can still point to it later). I was even thinking, maybe this is part of the test, to see how comfortable/proactive the candidate is with asking/clarifying a task.

thunkshift1 5y ago

Hi.. slightly off topic but what is the meaning of OG here

vgel 5y ago
OriGinal