5 ms·

P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

42 points by kemayo 15y ago

kemayo 15y ago
I wanted to submit this, because in the recent hiring thread [1] I got some responses complaining that we'd been posting for ages now, without apparently hiring anyone. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060406 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060406
- JoeCortopassi 15y ago
  Just tossing this out there, cause I was one of the people making those comments. I don't think anyone is frustrated with not getting hired, I think it's just weird seeing the same monthly "We really want to hire people" post, but zero response to (what seems like)a lot of people that apply. I feel like this is indicative of one of three scenarios: 1) For whatever reason, there is a high turn over rate at your company. This isn't always a bad thing, but if a company is always hiring, it's usually because they are consistently losing people as well. 2) You are experiencing crazy explosive growth, so much so that every month you need to hire more of the exact same positions. 3) The requirements for the job are poorly defined. This would lead to a lot of people (mistakenly) applying to a job that they have no hope of filling the requirements for. Whatever the case may be, I really think the only reason you guys are getting any kind of backlash is just because it is becoming a common theme to apply to DeviantArt and never receive at the very least a "Sorry, not what we're looking for". Do it to enough people, and there's bound to be a response. EDIT: There is a 3 month period in which 20% of new people get fired?! No wonder you are always hiring. You are effectively telling people to leave whatever job/security that they have, then cutting a non-trivial amount of them loose because they weren't a good fit? That's not their fault, thats a problem with the hiring process. Who knows what it does to the moral of the other workers. Oh wait, they are all remote. No one ever finds out...
  - JoeCortopassi 15y ago
    By the way, none of what I said is meant to be a personal attack on you. I'm sure that you are a great person just doing their job. I would just take all this as food for thought to re-fine your application/hiring process. That puzzle you mention in your post, would be a great way to give people an example of the kind of problems they will face before they choose to apply.
  - latch 15y ago
    It's mind boggling that your parent, your OP, missed that people were mainly disappointed with the lack of feedback. It's also disappointing that, despite a number of signs, they don't even consider that they/their process might be the problem. There's a disconnect.
    - JoeCortopassi 15y ago
      It's funny that they don't get it though. If you want a community (HN) to help you with something (finding help), you need to be nice/polite to them. Otherwise people start getting vocal.
  - drwxrwxrwt 15y ago
    1 and 2. we are a tech company, yes we are growing, and like most serious places in this industry we never stop hiring qualified developers. this is not a monthly ad for same single job. we are growing the team, and have been successful doing that. 3. we get very few off-topic applications. most who apply do have some level of experience to qualify for the position. yes, the first screen is subjective, and we clearly make mistakes if all we have to go on is the CV without a single link to one's work. Thats why the position description suggests submitting code samples like a link to the github account would be very beneficial. we do respond with an automated message acknowledging the receipt of the application and it spells out what to expect. We contact again to request code sample and exercise of those who pass initial screen. unfortunately sometimes those emails get trapped in spam filters. We did used to send rejection messages in the past, but this also did not work very well because many applicants expected very personal response and coaching on what went wrong. As all of us are also full time developers, we just dont have bandwidth to do that. but based on your guys's comments we'll see how we can do it again.
justin_vanw 15y ago
P(I'm impressed) ~= Nope Turning down a lot of candidates is not the same as finding good candidates. If you are turning down that many applicants, all it means is that your applicant pool is almost entirely bad candidates. That merely implies you are failing where it matters most, getting awesome candidates interested and excited about working for you. I bet you could drive the P down even more. You could write worse job descriptions that get even more of the wrong people to apply. You could post the job listing on job boards like Monster or Dice, where there is a huge pool of un-hirable candidates who will apply to 20-30 jobs per day. I bet you could make it so bad you will have to hire someone to be the initial filter of candidates. Congratulations! You now have an HR department. They will arbitrarily filter candidates before the people actually competent to filter candidates get to see them, based entirely on buzzword bingo and 'number of years of experience'. You are failing and you're proud of it!
- latch 15y ago
  Interviewing process is something which, to my astonishment, companies don't tweak or experiment with. They have a process and they stick with it...this is as true of large corporations as it is of small startups. There's no attempt at being better or trying something different, even though everyone acknowledges how difficult and important it is. Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poorly.
  - randomdata 15y ago
    Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poorly. You would think the 0.16% success rate would be a pretty big indicator. Based on my own experience, there were a number of points in the article that I have found to be not effective ways to hire programmers. And that is fine. They are free to hire people as they wish. But placing all of the blame on 99% of programmers being unqualified seems to miss the mark. It is more likely the hiring process causes them to miss out on the really good programmers.
- AndrewMoffat 15y ago
  What's interesting to me is the opening paragraph of the blog post: "It turns out to be quite difficult to hire good developers. I’m involved in the hiring process at deviantART, and it has opened my eyes to just how unqualified the majority of applicants to these jobs are." There seems to be a complete lack of connecting the dots from "this is unusually difficult" to "what can be done to make this better/easier/more efficient." And given that this failure is centered around software developer positions... it doesn't say good things about the kinds of problem-solving that goes on in their culture.
lowglow 15y ago
Super disappointed that this isn't David Lynch the director.
- kemayo 15y ago
  I have a big thing on the front page of my site explaining that I'm not the director. I still get a surprising number of emails who think I'm him. :D
  - jrockway 15y ago
    I get the occasional email asking about "jrock recommendations". I have no idea why anyone would think that emailing me is a good idea; to find my email address from jrock.us you have to scroll past a page and a half of programming presentations I've given. People are weird.
jrockway 15y ago
That seems like a lot of work. The last thing I want to do when applying for a job is open up some random code and hack it. I have many other things I'd rather do, like sleeping or working on some code I care about. Google doesn't do it, Amazon doesn't do it, so if that's who you're competing against for developers, why would you do it?
- shoota 15y ago
  Actually, Amazon will sometimes give out "homework" assignments after the initial phone interview usually comprising of 2-6 hours of work.
  - gensym 15y ago
    Fair enough. The difference between giving out homework after giving a potential candidate a change to talk with future coworkers than doing it before is huge. Companies that bitch about how hard it is to find skilled programmers shouldn't be making it harder for skilled programmers find out why they should be interested in working for said companies.
  - earl 15y ago
    That's fair, but that's after the initial phone screen. I'm with jrockway: if you want me to complete a coding exercise before both (1) the initial phone screen with an internal recruiter and (2) a technical phone screen, then I just stop responding to emails. Companies get zero work before they give me a reason to be interested, and I am absolutely not going to take a test just to try to talk someone into looking at my resume. You have to sell me before I donate hours of my time. And I don't think I'm the only candidate that feels this way...
- thomaspaine 15y ago
  I've never actually applied for a job at Google, but going to 7 interviews (or however many it is now) seems like a lot more work than what they're asking for. I'd rather spend 30 minutes writing code than 7 hours on interviews, and either way you're going to have to answer technical questions at some point in the process. Also, if you can't be bothered to spend 30 minutes proving that you can code, how much do you really want to work there? The only time I've done one of these challenges was for a company that I was really excited about working for.
cletus 15y ago
You have two steps round the wrong way: 1. Do the phone screen first. Frankly, in my experience, you can filter out a lot of people in the first minute; and 2. Then do the test. Speaking of the test, I had a quick look and it takes time. How much time? I'm not sure as I didn't look at the starting code, just the list of tasks. Maybe it only takes 30 minutes. Maybe it might take hours. I really don't know. Either way, these sorts of things are huge barriers to entry because, as someone looking for a job, I also have to decide on how much time to spend on you. The fact that this test is just to get to the phone screen lowers the amount of effort I'm willing to put in. Also, you don't need terribly complicated coding problems to weed out early stage candidates. Honestly, getting someone to code a relatively efficient (at worst O(n) space and time) factorial function will tell you ~95% of what you need to know from this test if you can witness them actually doing it. Seriously. So screenshare with them and get them to do it. No editor. Just a Google doc or similar. That all being said, I'm really shocked how woefully unqualified an awful lot of programmers are at... programming. The sort of acceptance numbers talked about here and at places like Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) are more testament to the number of clueless cowboys infect our industry than anything else. Also, bear in mind that an interview is a two-way street. The more effort you expect from the candidate the more they need to want to work for you before they even start interviewing. Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like have this kind of developer gravitas. Do you? I don't know. Lastly, the three month trial thing is, for me, a huge problem. After all this there's a 20% chance I might lose my job for no reason other than you may not like me? One reason Google is so selective is we take employment seriously. Leaks and criminal offences notwithstanding, it's actually pretty hard to get fired from Google and those decisions are not made lightly. That may have some negative side effects but overall I think it's a good thing that engineers aren't constantly worried about being fired.
- latch 15y ago
  I agree re the test. I'm sure it would have been different if I was interested in the job, but I didn't even finish reading what they wanted me to do before I said "screw this".
  - arctangent 15y ago
yesimahuman 15y ago
I understand the benefit of a "trial period" for the hiring company, but for prospective hires this sounds terrible. Is this common?
- latch 15y ago
  yes, it's common...though I agree with the OP that in most places it's very..easy going. It's particularly useful in places which don't have at-will employment (read, most places) so that you can fire someone who really doesn't work out without having the burden that's normally associated with firing someone.
suivix 15y ago
Are you guys really bragging about having a faulty interview process that wastes over 99% of people's time?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kabdib 15y ago
My thoughts: 1. Another programming problem. Okay, if it doesn't take too long, I'd do it. 2. 60 day fuse. No way. I've worked under a Sword-of-Damoclese clause before, and I won't do it again. This is a deal-breaker, and it's probably sending a very bad message to a large group of good engineers, and you're missing out. Fire for cause, or whatever, if you have to. But I won't work in an environment like that, and (I guess you'll just have to take it on faith) it's your loss, not mine.
- kemayo 15y ago
  I can understand not wanting to work with the trial period; that's why we're really up front about it. There's a whole "no, we're not kidding; are you sure you want to take the job even given this?" segment to the offer.
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    > There's a whole "no, we're not kidding; are you sure you want to take the job even given this?" segment to the offer So, your strategy is to deliberately make your job offer sound as unappealing as possible in order to find the people-who-call-themselves-programmers so unemployable and desperate for work they'll subject themselves to a trial period? Well, I would say that strategy, in terms of achieving its goal of attracting the desperate, is working out wonderfully for you all. From my own experience watching as my manager tries to find good people and from everything I've read, it IS hard to hire good developers. But it seems like you guys are making it much harder on yourselves.
  - kabdib 15y ago
    When I make a hiring decision, I am damned sure. The recommendation to hire is the point where I commit to doing my best to make things work out. I have screwed up before. It sucks. It is painful and horrible to deal with someone who is not working out. But I haven't blown a "hire" vote in 18 years. Hundreds of interviewees, dozens of "hire" recommendations, zero bozos. It sounds to me like you are insecure in your hiring practices, to the point where you tell people "Quit your job, move your family, turn your life inside out, whatever; but you're on probation here and you're gone if you blink funny." Maybe it's just my past, where I was in this position (and it worked out really well, btw). But I wouldn't do that again, and I wouldn't do it /to/ anyone. Good luck. I hope it works out. But I cannot imagine a worse way to enter a job.
linuxhansl 15y ago
We do a simple programming test too, but we do after a phone screen and after we decided to invite you to come in. It's simply part of the 1/2-1 day interview that we do. You get 2 hours, a problem that doesn't take more than 30-60 mins to solve, and an internet connection in case you want to look something up. I agree with other posters here that a very simple problems weeds out a large chunk of the inept folks. We had people just sit in that room for two hours and all they did was remove some lines from the skeleton that we have them. Or people who just left this simple exercise and went home. I disagree with others about doing it life via a shared session. Programming and thinking is a private affair (IMHO), there is some exploration component in it. Nobody will want to explore in front of a panel. In the end we don't even look at the test unless there is disagreement between the interviewers, or we identified a specific concern about problem solving.
veritas9 15y ago
Also worth mentioning, DeviantArt has a challenge up at CodeEval.com Here's the direct link: http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/47/ http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/47/ Give it a shot.
jefflinwood 15y ago
Looking at your job description, I'm guessing that you are trying to hire junior PHP/MySQL programmers at maybe a $50,000/yr US range. Nothing wrong with that. Looking at your coding exercise, it's a small set of code, but it would be more than an hour or two for me (or presumably anyone) to do all of the improvements, find all the bugs, fix them, do the extra credit, make sure it's not sloppy before I turn it in, etc. So way more commitment than just sending in a resume or writing you an email. Reading your blog post, you guys seem to want rock star technical candidates, but with that job description, you're going to attract people who have done a few PHP web sites, maybe customized a Drupal or or Joomla or Wordpress site. When I've interviewed and hired developers, our best ones always came from friends or recommendations, never from job postings or job boards.
pyre 15y ago
As I stated in the thread kemayo referred to: 1. I got as far as a promise of a second interview that never materialized. I found it annoying to be told that they wanted to give me another interview, then that they 'moved forward with another candidate,' then to see that the position is seemingly unfilled months later. (I'll note that they were posting in the "We're Hiring" threads within a week or two) 2. Between stages in the interview process I would be told that I would be hearing back from them 'shortly' or 'soon.' This ended up being an average of 3 weeks between stages in the process. Which was rather frustrating. [edit] I'll at some other notes: 1. The programming problem doesn't have to be perfect. Mine wasn't. They pointed out that my code was susceptible to SQL injection during the first interview. And I also missed a JavaScript gotcha (that was obviously placed there intentionally). [Obviously you want to do as well as you can on this, just sayin' that they aren't requiring 100% on the problem to get your foot in the door.] 2. I was able to get an interview with little PHP experience.
- throwaway100111 15y ago
  I got an offer a few months ago from deviantART after doing the coding test and phone interview; I replied with some questions about salary/benefits and never heard back. Highly frustrating. (Throwaway account, as I would rather not publicize that I'm looking for a different job. If you're looking for the same type of person dA is looking for though, feel free to reply to my comment with contact info.)
  - mkopinsky 15y ago
    They dropped the ball on contact _after_ making an offer? Shocking.
botj 15y ago
"I’d worked places with a trial period before, but it was always just a matter of not..." Will you be on probation after that grammatical "bug"? By the way, you guys sound pretentious as hell. I'm surprised you don't lose more than 20% in the three month trial. What's the point in the trial? If it's not working out, just fire them.
maxwin 15y ago
I think it might be because good developers filter you out before you filter them out. They might spend time working on the code because they happen to be interested in the problem, but a good developer would not waste their time on dull problems just to get a phone interview because they don't need to. Especially if they have never heard of your company. If you are selecting people who are desperate for jobs, your P is not surprising. Perhaps your should fix your own (hiring process) bugs first? Maybe P(great developers applying)=~ 0.00016? Just kidding :D
rorrr 15y ago
I've been doing interviews for a large corporation. I can tell you right away that your process is designed to weed out the best of the best. You see, the best candidates stay on the market for maybe a week. You'd be lucky to interview them once. Nobody who is truly good will jump through your hoops. You're just hiring the best of the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers who are barely good enough to pass your tests. And a 3 month probation - no way in the world, I would only do it if you paid $200K + bonus. The market is desperate for good developers, I'd have to be completely desperate to be treated like that.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  You're hiring... the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers That's EXACTLY the employees they want.
  - getsat 15y ago
    I went through this application process before I had this test dropped on me. I simply didn't have time to complete it. I was desperate enough to actually warrant writing PHP again, but I was able to find a better position elsewhere. One without a "trial" period.

42 points by kemayo 15y ago

I wanted to submit this, because in the recent hiring thread [1] I got some responses complaining that we'd been posting for ages now, without apparently hiring anyone. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060406 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060406

JoeCortopassi 15y ago
Just tossing this out there, cause I was one of the people making those comments. I don't think anyone is frustrated with not getting hired, I think it's just weird seeing the same monthly "We really want to hire people" post, but zero response to (what seems like)a lot of people that apply. I feel like this is indicative of one of three scenarios: 1) For whatever reason, there is a high turn over rate at your company. This isn't always a bad thing, but if a company is always hiring, it's usually because they are consistently losing people as well. 2) You are experiencing crazy explosive growth, so much so that every month you need to hire more of the exact same positions. 3) The requirements for the job are poorly defined. This would lead to a lot of people (mistakenly) applying to a job that they have no hope of filling the requirements for. Whatever the case may be, I really think the only reason you guys are getting any kind of backlash is just because it is becoming a common theme to apply to DeviantArt and never receive at the very least a "Sorry, not what we're looking for". Do it to enough people, and there's bound to be a response. EDIT: There is a 3 month period in which 20% of new people get fired?! No wonder you are always hiring. You are effectively telling people to leave whatever job/security that they have, then cutting a non-trivial amount of them loose because they weren't a good fit? That's not their fault, thats a problem with the hiring process. Who knows what it does to the moral of the other workers. Oh wait, they are all remote. No one ever finds out...
- JoeCortopassi 15y ago
  By the way, none of what I said is meant to be a personal attack on you. I'm sure that you are a great person just doing their job. I would just take all this as food for thought to re-fine your application/hiring process. That puzzle you mention in your post, would be a great way to give people an example of the kind of problems they will face before they choose to apply.
- latch 15y ago
  It's mind boggling that your parent, your OP, missed that people were mainly disappointed with the lack of feedback. It's also disappointing that, despite a number of signs, they don't even consider that they/their process might be the problem. There's a disconnect.
  - JoeCortopassi 15y ago
    It's funny that they don't get it though. If you want a community (HN) to help you with something (finding help), you need to be nice/polite to them. Otherwise people start getting vocal.
- drwxrwxrwt 15y ago
  1 and 2. we are a tech company, yes we are growing, and like most serious places in this industry we never stop hiring qualified developers. this is not a monthly ad for same single job. we are growing the team, and have been successful doing that. 3. we get very few off-topic applications. most who apply do have some level of experience to qualify for the position. yes, the first screen is subjective, and we clearly make mistakes if all we have to go on is the CV without a single link to one's work. Thats why the position description suggests submitting code samples like a link to the github account would be very beneficial. we do respond with an automated message acknowledging the receipt of the application and it spells out what to expect. We contact again to request code sample and exercise of those who pass initial screen. unfortunately sometimes those emails get trapped in spam filters. We did used to send rejection messages in the past, but this also did not work very well because many applicants expected very personal response and coaching on what went wrong. As all of us are also full time developers, we just dont have bandwidth to do that. but based on your guys's comments we'll see how we can do it again.

justin_vanw 15y ago

P(I'm impressed) ~= Nope Turning down a lot of candidates is not the same as finding good candidates. If you are turning down that many applicants, all it means is that your applicant pool is almost entirely bad candidates. That merely implies you are failing where it matters most, getting awesome candidates interested and excited about working for you. I bet you could drive the P down even more. You could write worse job descriptions that get even more of the wrong people to apply. You could post the job listing on job boards like Monster or Dice, where there is a huge pool of un-hirable candidates who will apply to 20-30 jobs per day. I bet you could make it so bad you will have to hire someone to be the initial filter of candidates. Congratulations! You now have an HR department. They will arbitrarily filter candidates before the people actually competent to filter candidates get to see them, based entirely on buzzword bingo and 'number of years of experience'. You are failing and you're proud of it!

latch 15y ago
Interviewing process is something which, to my astonishment, companies don't tweak or experiment with. They have a process and they stick with it...this is as true of large corporations as it is of small startups. There's no attempt at being better or trying something different, even though everyone acknowledges how difficult and important it is. Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poorly.
- randomdata 15y ago
  Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poorly. You would think the 0.16% success rate would be a pretty big indicator. Based on my own experience, there were a number of points in the article that I have found to be not effective ways to hire programmers. And that is fine. They are free to hire people as they wish. But placing all of the blame on 99% of programmers being unqualified seems to miss the mark. It is more likely the hiring process causes them to miss out on the really good programmers.
AndrewMoffat 15y ago
What's interesting to me is the opening paragraph of the blog post: "It turns out to be quite difficult to hire good developers. I’m involved in the hiring process at deviantART, and it has opened my eyes to just how unqualified the majority of applicants to these jobs are." There seems to be a complete lack of connecting the dots from "this is unusually difficult" to "what can be done to make this better/easier/more efficient." And given that this failure is centered around software developer positions... it doesn't say good things about the kinds of problem-solving that goes on in their culture.

lowglow 15y ago

Super disappointed that this isn't David Lynch the director.

kemayo 15y ago
I have a big thing on the front page of my site explaining that I'm not the director. I still get a surprising number of emails who think I'm him. :D
- jrockway 15y ago
  I get the occasional email asking about "jrock recommendations". I have no idea why anyone would think that emailing me is a good idea; to find my email address from jrock.us you have to scroll past a page and a half of programming presentations I've given. People are weird.

jrockway 15y ago

That seems like a lot of work. The last thing I want to do when applying for a job is open up some random code and hack it. I have many other things I'd rather do, like sleeping or working on some code I care about. Google doesn't do it, Amazon doesn't do it, so if that's who you're competing against for developers, why would you do it?

shoota 15y ago
Actually, Amazon will sometimes give out "homework" assignments after the initial phone interview usually comprising of 2-6 hours of work.
- gensym 15y ago
  Fair enough. The difference between giving out homework after giving a potential candidate a change to talk with future coworkers than doing it before is huge. Companies that bitch about how hard it is to find skilled programmers shouldn't be making it harder for skilled programmers find out why they should be interested in working for said companies.
- earl 15y ago
  That's fair, but that's after the initial phone screen. I'm with jrockway: if you want me to complete a coding exercise before both (1) the initial phone screen with an internal recruiter and (2) a technical phone screen, then I just stop responding to emails. Companies get zero work before they give me a reason to be interested, and I am absolutely not going to take a test just to try to talk someone into looking at my resume. You have to sell me before I donate hours of my time. And I don't think I'm the only candidate that feels this way...
thomaspaine 15y ago
I've never actually applied for a job at Google, but going to 7 interviews (or however many it is now) seems like a lot more work than what they're asking for. I'd rather spend 30 minutes writing code than 7 hours on interviews, and either way you're going to have to answer technical questions at some point in the process. Also, if you can't be bothered to spend 30 minutes proving that you can code, how much do you really want to work there? The only time I've done one of these challenges was for a company that I was really excited about working for.

cletus 15y ago

You have two steps round the wrong way: 1. Do the phone screen first. Frankly, in my experience, you can filter out a lot of people in the first minute; and 2. Then do the test. Speaking of the test, I had a quick look and it takes time. How much time? I'm not sure as I didn't look at the starting code, just the list of tasks. Maybe it only takes 30 minutes. Maybe it might take hours. I really don't know. Either way, these sorts of things are huge barriers to entry because, as someone looking for a job, I also have to decide on how much time to spend on you. The fact that this test is just to get to the phone screen lowers the amount of effort I'm willing to put in. Also, you don't need terribly complicated coding problems to weed out early stage candidates. Honestly, getting someone to code a relatively efficient (at worst O(n) space and time) factorial function will tell you ~95% of what you need to know from this test if you can witness them actually doing it. Seriously. So screenshare with them and get them to do it. No editor. Just a Google doc or similar. That all being said, I'm really shocked how woefully unqualified an awful lot of programmers are at... programming. The sort of acceptance numbers talked about here and at places like Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) are more testament to the number of clueless cowboys infect our industry than anything else. Also, bear in mind that an interview is a two-way street. The more effort you expect from the candidate the more they need to want to work for you before they even start interviewing. Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like have this kind of developer gravitas. Do you? I don't know. Lastly, the three month trial thing is, for me, a huge problem. After all this there's a 20% chance I might lose my job for no reason other than you may not like me? One reason Google is so selective is we take employment seriously. Leaks and criminal offences notwithstanding, it's actually pretty hard to get fired from Google and those decisions are not made lightly. That may have some negative side effects but overall I think it's a good thing that engineers aren't constantly worried about being fired.

latch 15y ago
I agree re the test. I'm sure it would have been different if I was interested in the job, but I didn't even finish reading what they wanted me to do before I said "screw this".
- arctangent 15y ago

yesimahuman 15y ago

I understand the benefit of a "trial period" for the hiring company, but for prospective hires this sounds terrible. Is this common?

latch 15y ago
yes, it's common...though I agree with the OP that in most places it's very..easy going. It's particularly useful in places which don't have at-will employment (read, most places) so that you can fire someone who really doesn't work out without having the burden that's normally associated with firing someone.

suivix 15y ago

Are you guys really bragging about having a faulty interview process that wastes over 99% of people's time?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

kabdib 15y ago

My thoughts: 1. Another programming problem. Okay, if it doesn't take too long, I'd do it. 2. 60 day fuse. No way. I've worked under a Sword-of-Damoclese clause before, and I won't do it again. This is a deal-breaker, and it's probably sending a very bad message to a large group of good engineers, and you're missing out. Fire for cause, or whatever, if you have to. But I won't work in an environment like that, and (I guess you'll just have to take it on faith) it's your loss, not mine.

kemayo 15y ago
I can understand not wanting to work with the trial period; that's why we're really up front about it. There's a whole "no, we're not kidding; are you sure you want to take the job even given this?" segment to the offer.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  > There's a whole "no, we're not kidding; are you sure you want to take the job even given this?" segment to the offer So, your strategy is to deliberately make your job offer sound as unappealing as possible in order to find the people-who-call-themselves-programmers so unemployable and desperate for work they'll subject themselves to a trial period? Well, I would say that strategy, in terms of achieving its goal of attracting the desperate, is working out wonderfully for you all. From my own experience watching as my manager tries to find good people and from everything I've read, it IS hard to hire good developers. But it seems like you guys are making it much harder on yourselves.
- kabdib 15y ago
  When I make a hiring decision, I am damned sure. The recommendation to hire is the point where I commit to doing my best to make things work out. I have screwed up before. It sucks. It is painful and horrible to deal with someone who is not working out. But I haven't blown a "hire" vote in 18 years. Hundreds of interviewees, dozens of "hire" recommendations, zero bozos. It sounds to me like you are insecure in your hiring practices, to the point where you tell people "Quit your job, move your family, turn your life inside out, whatever; but you're on probation here and you're gone if you blink funny." Maybe it's just my past, where I was in this position (and it worked out really well, btw). But I wouldn't do that again, and I wouldn't do it /to/ anyone. Good luck. I hope it works out. But I cannot imagine a worse way to enter a job.

linuxhansl 15y ago

We do a simple programming test too, but we do after a phone screen and after we decided to invite you to come in. It's simply part of the 1/2-1 day interview that we do. You get 2 hours, a problem that doesn't take more than 30-60 mins to solve, and an internet connection in case you want to look something up. I agree with other posters here that a very simple problems weeds out a large chunk of the inept folks. We had people just sit in that room for two hours and all they did was remove some lines from the skeleton that we have them. Or people who just left this simple exercise and went home. I disagree with others about doing it life via a shared session. Programming and thinking is a private affair (IMHO), there is some exploration component in it. Nobody will want to explore in front of a panel. In the end we don't even look at the test unless there is disagreement between the interviewers, or we identified a specific concern about problem solving.

veritas9 15y ago

Also worth mentioning, DeviantArt has a challenge up at CodeEval.com Here's the direct link: http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/47/ http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/47/ Give it a shot.

jefflinwood 15y ago

Looking at your job description, I'm guessing that you are trying to hire junior PHP/MySQL programmers at maybe a $50,000/yr US range. Nothing wrong with that. Looking at your coding exercise, it's a small set of code, but it would be more than an hour or two for me (or presumably anyone) to do all of the improvements, find all the bugs, fix them, do the extra credit, make sure it's not sloppy before I turn it in, etc. So way more commitment than just sending in a resume or writing you an email. Reading your blog post, you guys seem to want rock star technical candidates, but with that job description, you're going to attract people who have done a few PHP web sites, maybe customized a Drupal or or Joomla or Wordpress site. When I've interviewed and hired developers, our best ones always came from friends or recommendations, never from job postings or job boards.

pyre 15y ago

As I stated in the thread kemayo referred to: 1. I got as far as a promise of a second interview that never materialized. I found it annoying to be told that they wanted to give me another interview, then that they 'moved forward with another candidate,' then to see that the position is seemingly unfilled months later. (I'll note that they were posting in the "We're Hiring" threads within a week or two) 2. Between stages in the interview process I would be told that I would be hearing back from them 'shortly' or 'soon.' This ended up being an average of 3 weeks between stages in the process. Which was rather frustrating. [edit] I'll at some other notes: 1. The programming problem doesn't have to be perfect. Mine wasn't. They pointed out that my code was susceptible to SQL injection during the first interview. And I also missed a JavaScript gotcha (that was obviously placed there intentionally). [Obviously you want to do as well as you can on this, just sayin' that they aren't requiring 100% on the problem to get your foot in the door.] 2. I was able to get an interview with little PHP experience.

throwaway100111 15y ago
I got an offer a few months ago from deviantART after doing the coding test and phone interview; I replied with some questions about salary/benefits and never heard back. Highly frustrating. (Throwaway account, as I would rather not publicize that I'm looking for a different job. If you're looking for the same type of person dA is looking for though, feel free to reply to my comment with contact info.)
- mkopinsky 15y ago
  They dropped the ball on contact _after_ making an offer? Shocking.

botj 15y ago

"I’d worked places with a trial period before, but it was always just a matter of not..." Will you be on probation after that grammatical "bug"? By the way, you guys sound pretentious as hell. I'm surprised you don't lose more than 20% in the three month trial. What's the point in the trial? If it's not working out, just fire them.

maxwin 15y ago

I think it might be because good developers filter you out before you filter them out. They might spend time working on the code because they happen to be interested in the problem, but a good developer would not waste their time on dull problems just to get a phone interview because they don't need to. Especially if they have never heard of your company. If you are selecting people who are desperate for jobs, your P is not surprising. Perhaps your should fix your own (hiring process) bugs first? Maybe P(great developers applying)=~ 0.00016? Just kidding :D

rorrr 15y ago

I've been doing interviews for a large corporation. I can tell you right away that your process is designed to weed out the best of the best. You see, the best candidates stay on the market for maybe a week. You'd be lucky to interview them once. Nobody who is truly good will jump through your hoops. You're just hiring the best of the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers who are barely good enough to pass your tests. And a 3 month probation - no way in the world, I would only do it if you paid $200K + bonus. The market is desperate for good developers, I'd have to be completely desperate to be treated like that.

wavephorm 15y ago
You're hiring... the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers That's EXACTLY the employees they want.
- getsat 15y ago
  I went through this application process before I had this test dropped on me. I simply didn't have time to complete it. I was desperate enough to actually warrant writing PHP again, but I was able to find a better position elsewhere. One without a "trial" period.