4 ms·

I've been in both sides, and what they did to you was horrible. Just last week I had a call with someone who did the take home assigment very badly, but I wante

by 101008 4y ago

I've been in both sides, and what they did to you was horrible. Just last week I had a call with someone who did the take home assigment very badly, but I wanted to give him some feedback and showed him a better solution. Nonetheless, I can't think of a better solution for this. Hiring someone is a big commitment (for both parts), so I want to be completely sure that I am hiring the right person. How do you that? How do you measure the quality of the other person in an area such as IT where it's so easy to lie about knowledge and experience?

dcminter 4y ago
Do pair-programming exercises. When the hiring company is investing a proportionate amount of their time in the process then I'm much more willing to participate. It's much the same vein as that Canonical recruitment questionnaire that was doing the rounds a while ago - if you want to sit with me (virtually or IRL) and ask me questions, that's fine. If you want me to submit an essay that takes me hours to write then you're going to have to be offering me something I cannot possibly get elsewhere! In the end it's about mutual respect.
- 101008 4y ago
  The problem is that the pair programming exercises are not proof of a real work enviroment. Some of the problems or challenges at work won't get an answer in 2 o 3 minutes, sometimes you need to think more of them (in work, maybe one or two days, in the excercise, maybe 30 minutes). Secondly, some candidates get very nervous/anxious when they have to answer code in an interview and can't show they real knowledge, etc. Pair programming hasn't worked for me because you get a lot of false negatives that are hard to distinguish from the real false.
  - dcminter 4y ago
    To your first point - sure, but if you're not willing to invest the one-or-two-days in the exercise why should the candidate? If you're offering a top-tier salary, or something so technically exciting that it can't be resisted, then sure, you get to set the bar as high as they'll jump. Otherwise "Are we willing to invest this much" is a good rule of thumb for what you can reasonably expect of the candidate. To your second point - any hiring exercise is going to be stressful for the candidate. False negatives are better than false positives (for the hiring party). If you're certain that this is going to cost you too many good candidates, then you're going to have to find some other way to demonstrate good faith up front - offer to pay them, offer to host them on your premises, something like that.
sumtechguy 4y ago
What I find fascinating is that we ended up here. Where doing 2+ hours of work to show 'you can do it'. When the reality is can you get along with them, I have found, is more more important. The original fizz buzz type test was to weed out the fakers. It is something most people with a bit of skill can pull off. But as an industry we did what engineers do. We over think it. We blow it way out of the bounds of what it should do. We ended up with enterprise style fizz buzz testing as a filter. Honestly, at this point you really can not expect more. But can they bash out any code, can they read code (and understand it), are they cool with your 'culture'. There are 2 things you do not want on your team, a jerk (they can usually hide it in a few hours of interview), or someone who does not 'get it' (they can become help vampires). But I will take a dozen help vampires over a jerk every day of the week. It is not like most people are going to 'hit the ground running'. In many places it takes a few weeks just to figure out who to talk to so you can check in code, or get your computer setup correctly. I have yet to come into a job and not have to wait on getting a computer (first day), then a few days of getting access to everything. Let alone beginning to comprehend the problem they are trying to solve.
collyw 4y ago
Ask if they have any code that they would be willing to bring in and discuss.

by 101008 4y ago

dcminter 4y ago

Do pair-programming exercises. When the hiring company is investing a proportionate amount of their time in the process then I'm much more willing to participate. It's much the same vein as that Canonical recruitment questionnaire that was doing the rounds a while ago - if you want to sit with me (virtually or IRL) and ask me questions, that's fine. If you want me to submit an essay that takes me hours to write then you're going to have to be offering me something I cannot possibly get elsewhere! In the end it's about mutual respect.

101008 4y ago
The problem is that the pair programming exercises are not proof of a real work enviroment. Some of the problems or challenges at work won't get an answer in 2 o 3 minutes, sometimes you need to think more of them (in work, maybe one or two days, in the excercise, maybe 30 minutes). Secondly, some candidates get very nervous/anxious when they have to answer code in an interview and can't show they real knowledge, etc. Pair programming hasn't worked for me because you get a lot of false negatives that are hard to distinguish from the real false.
- dcminter 4y ago
  To your first point - sure, but if you're not willing to invest the one-or-two-days in the exercise why should the candidate? If you're offering a top-tier salary, or something so technically exciting that it can't be resisted, then sure, you get to set the bar as high as they'll jump. Otherwise "Are we willing to invest this much" is a good rule of thumb for what you can reasonably expect of the candidate. To your second point - any hiring exercise is going to be stressful for the candidate. False negatives are better than false positives (for the hiring party). If you're certain that this is going to cost you too many good candidates, then you're going to have to find some other way to demonstrate good faith up front - offer to pay them, offer to host them on your premises, something like that.

sumtechguy 4y ago

What I find fascinating is that we ended up here. Where doing 2+ hours of work to show 'you can do it'. When the reality is can you get along with them, I have found, is more more important. The original fizz buzz type test was to weed out the fakers. It is something most people with a bit of skill can pull off. But as an industry we did what engineers do. We over think it. We blow it way out of the bounds of what it should do. We ended up with enterprise style fizz buzz testing as a filter. Honestly, at this point you really can not expect more. But can they bash out any code, can they read code (and understand it), are they cool with your 'culture'. There are 2 things you do not want on your team, a jerk (they can usually hide it in a few hours of interview), or someone who does not 'get it' (they can become help vampires). But I will take a dozen help vampires over a jerk every day of the week. It is not like most people are going to 'hit the ground running'. In many places it takes a few weeks just to figure out who to talk to so you can check in code, or get your computer setup correctly. I have yet to come into a job and not have to wait on getting a computer (first day), then a few days of getting access to everything. Let alone beginning to comprehend the problem they are trying to solve.

collyw 4y ago

Ask if they have any code that they would be willing to bring in and discuss.