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Up front, ghosting is not okay in general. But, a few counterpoints: It seems very unlikely they expected or wanted it to take you 6 hours. Possible, but certai

by pc86 4y ago

Up front, ghosting is not okay in general. But, a few counterpoints: It seems very unlikely they expected or wanted it to take you 6 hours. Possible, but certainly an outlier (and obviously bad actor) if so. If they expected you to spent 1.5-2 hours on it - a reasonable amount of time IMO - but when got it back you clearly spent an entire day working on it, that's enough to fail because you didn't follow the directions. Additionally, software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing. Take home tests are bad and have to be confined to an hour. Whiteboard interviews are bad and don't accurately model the day-to-day. Leetcode is bad because it's 10x harder than anything you'll work on. How exactly do we expect someone to get a sense of our skill at programming if we eschew every opportunity to... program for them to review? The exception might be extremely well-known people who have extensive public histories on GitHub or something similar, but by definition they're in the minority and 99.9% of companies don't need someone of that caliber. I interviewed with a health tech startup and they had a good way to do it. We set up a time ahead of time when I'd be given access to the repo. 90 minutes later the interviewer was going to clone the repo and whatever was there was what he was going to look at. This was after a previous ~hour long interview where we did the "tell me about your experience" rigamarole that some developers seem to think should be enough to get them any job.

xtiansimon 4y ago
> “…software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing.” FYI—Graphic Designers have been “bent out of shape” over spec work in hiring for ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_work
- pc86 4y ago
  LeetCode is not spec work.
bogwog 4y ago
Those aren't "counterpoints", they're assumptions.
RHSeeger 4y ago
> software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing At least in my experience, people in most fields aren't expected to do free work to show they know what they're doing. In general, past jobs, references, and portfolios tend to be used.
cableshaft 4y ago
> If they expected you to spent 1.5-2 hours on it - a reasonable amount of time IMO - but when got it back you clearly spent an entire day working on it, that's enough to fail because you didn't follow the directions. Yeah, let's fail someone who cares about showing their best self for an interview and takes pride in the craftsmanship of their code because we asked them to spend no time on it and probably get something that doesn't even work. Not to mention there are probably other candidates that are taking just as long but not mentioning how long it takes them when turning it in, so the employer might start having an unreasonable expectation of the quality of work that can be done in 1.5-2 hours based on other applicants, and if you actually do follow instructions and only put that time in, you're likely going to be compared unfavorably against those other applicants. Only way to properly enforce that limited time is to bring someone in to take a test in person, which is what my last company did (I barely passed and watched hundreds of people get brought in and not pass in the years since...in fact I saw only a handful of people pass that stupid test, part of the reason we never hired anyone, even though we needed to).
- pc86 4y ago
  Part of evaluating candidates includes, on some level, how quickly they complete work. If I can submit work of quality Q in 2 hours, and you can submit work of quality 1.5Q in 2 hours, you're at a distinct disadvantage if I instead spend an entire day and submit something of 2Q, whether it's couched in "taking pride in craftsmanship" or whatever else. Also, perhaps a bit more reductively, if you're told to spend up to 2 hours on something and you spend 6, that says something about your ability or desire to follow directions. Your last point isn't true at all, it doesn't need to be in person it just needs to be coordinated. I mention one real-life example of this that worked out very well at the end of the comment you're replying to.

by pc86 4y ago

xtiansimon 4y ago

> “…software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing.” FYI—Graphic Designers have been “bent out of shape” over spec work in hiring for ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_work

pc86 4y ago
LeetCode is not spec work.

bogwog 4y ago

Those aren't "counterpoints", they're assumptions.

RHSeeger 4y ago

> software development seems to be the only area where the candidates get bent out of shape being expected to prove they know what they're doing At least in my experience, people in most fields aren't expected to do free work to show they know what they're doing. In general, past jobs, references, and portfolios tend to be used.

cableshaft 4y ago

> If they expected you to spent 1.5-2 hours on it - a reasonable amount of time IMO - but when got it back you clearly spent an entire day working on it, that's enough to fail because you didn't follow the directions. Yeah, let's fail someone who cares about showing their best self for an interview and takes pride in the craftsmanship of their code because we asked them to spend no time on it and probably get something that doesn't even work. Not to mention there are probably other candidates that are taking just as long but not mentioning how long it takes them when turning it in, so the employer might start having an unreasonable expectation of the quality of work that can be done in 1.5-2 hours based on other applicants, and if you actually do follow instructions and only put that time in, you're likely going to be compared unfavorably against those other applicants. Only way to properly enforce that limited time is to bring someone in to take a test in person, which is what my last company did (I barely passed and watched hundreds of people get brought in and not pass in the years since...in fact I saw only a handful of people pass that stupid test, part of the reason we never hired anyone, even though we needed to).

pc86 4y ago
Part of evaluating candidates includes, on some level, how quickly they complete work. If I can submit work of quality Q in 2 hours, and you can submit work of quality 1.5Q in 2 hours, you're at a distinct disadvantage if I instead spend an entire day and submit something of 2Q, whether it's couched in "taking pride in craftsmanship" or whatever else. Also, perhaps a bit more reductively, if you're told to spend up to 2 hours on something and you spend 6, that says something about your ability or desire to follow directions. Your last point isn't true at all, it doesn't need to be in person it just needs to be coordinated. I mention one real-life example of this that worked out very well at the end of the comment you're replying to.