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Can confirm, I bail if you ask any amount of time at all be put into a "weed out" exercise before even talking to a real person. If my resume's not enough to ge

Can confirm, I bail if you ask any amount of time at all be put into a "weed out" exercise before even talking to a real person. If my resume's not enough to get you interested in a conversation, I'll look elsewhere. If you have that many candidates and you find enough of them equally interesting that doing this is necessary, I reckon my odds are terrible anyway, so it's just a waste of time doing work and not just not getting paid, but very likely not seeing any kind of reward whatsoever. Moreover, if this is necessary, I kinda assume the pay is mediocre at best. If you knew how to get enough value out of me to be able to pay me really, really well, and if I look like a good fit for the job, then again, my resume ought to justify our talking. If any of that's not the case, then it seems like the pay's gonna suck or I'm just not a good fit, so I'm out either way. I want someone who's fishing for me with a lure, not by dragging a huge net through the water. Seems like a better sign all around.

martinald 5y ago
I do understand that, but from my experience short coding tests give by far the best signal. We ran an experiment and found that actually not doing a pre interview and straight to code test gave us better results than interview then coding test. Why? Because people tend to hire people with qualities like themselves, and overlook many things. It also then caused people to overrate/underrate the analysis of coding tests based on the previous interview (as they (dis)liked the person). This also massively increased the diversity of our team.
rsyring 5y ago
As a developer, I understand this perspective. But, from an employer's perspective, resumes tell you very little about a candidate and are essentially worthless. The sole usable metric we get from them is years of relevant experience. We respond with a questionnaire that gets us more uniform answers about experience and technologies used. Assuming the above doesn't filter the candidate out, we move on to a 90 min max "take home" exercise. In our case, it's not a coding exercise, but that's not that important for this discussion. Only if all of the above hasn't filtered out the candidate, do we move to a Zoom meeting. In the Zoom meeting, after an initial introduction, we do a few easy coding exercises. Like, reverse a string or sum the integers in a file easy. A few notable things from this experience: 1. The number of candidates who struggle with the Zoom interview coding exercise is surprising. It's a lot higher than expected and almost all of our candidates at that stage have 2+ years of professional development experience. 2. The number of candidates filtered out by the "take home" exercise is very high. 85+% We literally don't have enough time to talk to every candidate that applies with the right amount of experience. And, even if we did, many/most candidates on the market aren't good developers. Our signal to noise ratio is already bad. In that case, it would be terrible. As a developer, I sympathize with your perspective. But you may be passing on some good opportunities by not being willing to "play the game" a bit. Some employers are indeed bad actors and/or terrible at hiring. But given the current market, even those making a valiant effort to do it well, due to sheer volume, are usually going to have an exercise of some kind. We post our salary ranges up-front, don't want to waste anyone's time that way. We also put a ton of effort into a very detailed job description and application process. The hope is that the candidate can see the effort we put in and will be willing to reciprocate. If that doesn't end up being the case, we assume, like you, it probably wouldn't have been a good for anyway. FWIW.
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say many/most candidates on the market are poor developers? Seems crazy that a majority of people applying for any position lack the requisite ability to actually fufull the positions requirements.
  - rsyring 5y ago
    I mean exactly what I said. :) And yes, I agree, it seems crazy. But it's our reality and seems validated by others I know in the industry and anecdotes here on HN. There is just so much demand, it pulls people into the industry that can't really perform as professional developers.
    - MathCodeLove 5y ago
      Wow! That's crazy. As a relatively Jr dev still early in my career, any recommendations for differentiating myself from those people on my resume/portfolio? I have a github, is that enough or are these people plagarizing github repos as well?
      - rsyring 5y ago
        Not exactly what you asked for, but maybe helpful: https://www.level12.io/blog/advice-to-aspiring-developers/ https://www.level12.io/blog/advice-to-aspiring-developers/ I think the frustrating reality is that it's usually not possible to tell the good from the bad at the portfolio/resume level, some kind of skills/competency test must be given. I personally don't look at GitHub repos because I don't know how long it took to write that code. If it's great code, but took 4x to write than it should have, I wouldn't know. There are also a lot of applicants that just don't have much public in GH. Finally, to be clear, I'm not saying they are all bad actors. I'm sure some are and the same for employers. Mostly a result of the current world economics.
- MAGZine 5y ago
  If you sent me a 90m(!) takehome non-coding test I would absolutely nope out of that process. You're not respecting your applicants time. At all. Your funnel is steep because it has bullshit steps. And the only people coming through it are probably desperate, which is why your signal/noise ratio is "already terrible".
garyjlin 5y ago
Yeah we generally discourage users from using Litebulb as a "weed out" exercise, first of all because we just don't agree with that practice as a principle, and second because Litebulb is a terrible pre-screening filter. As a pre-screener, the only people Litebulb would filter out are the good devs that have options. ie: if I have companies A, B, and C that I want to check out and C needs a multi-hour take home before I even talk to someone, you can bet your ass I'm not applying to C. That's not what Litebulb is for though, we're mid/late funnel. As a candidate, if I have to choose between a 4 hour onsite or a 5 hour take home, I'm probably going to do the take home. In terms of pay, I know some really good companies with a healthy eng culture and heavy pay that do take homes (not as a pre-screener, for sure). Btw from my experience, resumes are a pretty weak indication of skill. I have interviewed people with 15+ years of experience, some at MAANG, that couldn't comprehend basic systems infra scenarios, and I've interviewed interns that had production-grade code. You need to actually try it out, one way or another, to be sure.

martinald 5y ago

I do understand that, but from my experience short coding tests give by far the best signal. We ran an experiment and found that actually not doing a pre interview and straight to code test gave us better results than interview then coding test. Why? Because people tend to hire people with qualities like themselves, and overlook many things. It also then caused people to overrate/underrate the analysis of coding tests based on the previous interview (as they (dis)liked the person). This also massively increased the diversity of our team.

rsyring 5y ago

As a developer, I understand this perspective. But, from an employer's perspective, resumes tell you very little about a candidate and are essentially worthless. The sole usable metric we get from them is years of relevant experience. We respond with a questionnaire that gets us more uniform answers about experience and technologies used. Assuming the above doesn't filter the candidate out, we move on to a 90 min max "take home" exercise. In our case, it's not a coding exercise, but that's not that important for this discussion. Only if all of the above hasn't filtered out the candidate, do we move to a Zoom meeting. In the Zoom meeting, after an initial introduction, we do a few easy coding exercises. Like, reverse a string or sum the integers in a file easy. A few notable things from this experience: 1. The number of candidates who struggle with the Zoom interview coding exercise is surprising. It's a lot higher than expected and almost all of our candidates at that stage have 2+ years of professional development experience. 2. The number of candidates filtered out by the "take home" exercise is very high. 85+% We literally don't have enough time to talk to every candidate that applies with the right amount of experience. And, even if we did, many/most candidates on the market aren't good developers. Our signal to noise ratio is already bad. In that case, it would be terrible. As a developer, I sympathize with your perspective. But you may be passing on some good opportunities by not being willing to "play the game" a bit. Some employers are indeed bad actors and/or terrible at hiring. But given the current market, even those making a valiant effort to do it well, due to sheer volume, are usually going to have an exercise of some kind. We post our salary ranges up-front, don't want to waste anyone's time that way. We also put a ton of effort into a very detailed job description and application process. The hope is that the candidate can see the effort we put in and will be willing to reciprocate. If that doesn't end up being the case, we assume, like you, it probably wouldn't have been a good for anyway. FWIW.

MathCodeLove 5y ago
Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say many/most candidates on the market are poor developers? Seems crazy that a majority of people applying for any position lack the requisite ability to actually fufull the positions requirements.
- rsyring 5y ago
  I mean exactly what I said. :) And yes, I agree, it seems crazy. But it's our reality and seems validated by others I know in the industry and anecdotes here on HN. There is just so much demand, it pulls people into the industry that can't really perform as professional developers.
  - MathCodeLove 5y ago
    Wow! That's crazy. As a relatively Jr dev still early in my career, any recommendations for differentiating myself from those people on my resume/portfolio? I have a github, is that enough or are these people plagarizing github repos as well?
    - rsyring 5y ago
      Not exactly what you asked for, but maybe helpful: https://www.level12.io/blog/advice-to-aspiring-developers/ https://www.level12.io/blog/advice-to-aspiring-developers/ I think the frustrating reality is that it's usually not possible to tell the good from the bad at the portfolio/resume level, some kind of skills/competency test must be given. I personally don't look at GitHub repos because I don't know how long it took to write that code. If it's great code, but took 4x to write than it should have, I wouldn't know. There are also a lot of applicants that just don't have much public in GH. Finally, to be clear, I'm not saying they are all bad actors. I'm sure some are and the same for employers. Mostly a result of the current world economics.
MAGZine 5y ago
If you sent me a 90m(!) takehome non-coding test I would absolutely nope out of that process. You're not respecting your applicants time. At all. Your funnel is steep because it has bullshit steps. And the only people coming through it are probably desperate, which is why your signal/noise ratio is "already terrible".

garyjlin 5y ago

Yeah we generally discourage users from using Litebulb as a "weed out" exercise, first of all because we just don't agree with that practice as a principle, and second because Litebulb is a terrible pre-screening filter. As a pre-screener, the only people Litebulb would filter out are the good devs that have options. ie: if I have companies A, B, and C that I want to check out and C needs a multi-hour take home before I even talk to someone, you can bet your ass I'm not applying to C. That's not what Litebulb is for though, we're mid/late funnel. As a candidate, if I have to choose between a 4 hour onsite or a 5 hour take home, I'm probably going to do the take home. In terms of pay, I know some really good companies with a healthy eng culture and heavy pay that do take homes (not as a pre-screener, for sure). Btw from my experience, resumes are a pretty weak indication of skill. I have interviewed people with 15+ years of experience, some at MAANG, that couldn't comprehend basic systems infra scenarios, and I've interviewed interns that had production-grade code. You need to actually try it out, one way or another, to be sure.