5 ms·

I have a different perspective. I feel that specific coding task tells me absolutely nothing about the seniority of the person performing the task and tells me

I have a different perspective. I feel that specific coding task tells me absolutely nothing about the seniority of the person performing the task and tells me very little about their qualifications.

Mistletoe 4y ago
But shouldn't a blacksmith be able to make a nail before he makes me a suit of armor?
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > But shouldn't a blacksmith be able to make a nail before he makes me a suit of armor? Yes. But I think there's a reasonable upper limit to the amount of time a company can expect someone to spend on a job opportunity. If they're burning an appreciable amount of that time on a trivial coding exercise, that's not great.
  - joe_guy 4y ago
    It's 60 minutes as a very high estimate. You might spend a life time together.
    - bboygravity 4y ago
      55 minutes to install the tool-chain and libs and 5 minutes to do the coding?
      - hackertyper69 4y ago
        give them a machine to ssh into with env setup already. or a docker container to ssh into on a port other than 22
  - caminante 4y ago
    !!! You're missing the point. The premise is that someone capable can blast through trivial assignments in no time. Either this is the final proficiency challenge or there are subsequent, harder questions. In the former case, why not see the salary/offer and then decide?
    - eropple 4y ago
      Typically, because one has other opportunities that are no less compelling and where potential employers show respect for candidates' time. I have a GitHub profile with a lot of code on it and on my resume I highlight projects I've done a lot of work on. "What if faked tho?"--there's literally too much there to be worth faking. If a hiring manager looks at my resume, has the option of going to my GitHub profile, and between the two goes "I'm going to hand him a college-level Java problem because I'm not sure," then there probably isn't a way we're going to work together. And that's okay, on both sides of it; there are a lot of developers who aren't bothered by that kind of low-trust relationship. I am. Not a fit. (This is in contrast to, for example, asking a question like that during an interview. Interviews are bidirectional, and are showing an investment in the hiring process on the part of the employer. If a card-deck Java problem is worth addressing with my time, then it's worth addressing with your interviewer's time. The contrapositive is also true.)
      - tsukikage 4y ago
        Personally, I only ever ask people to solve coding/problem-solving questions live. The best experience IMO is when we talk through the problem together, since this approximates what collaborating with this person on real tasks will be like - not very well at all, but about as well as one can do in the amount of time available for a live interview. However, I do understand where the offline exercise idea comes from - it's not necessarily about lack of respect for candidates' time, but is generally done with the best of intentions in response to feedback, because candidates complain that the interview technical exercise scenario is needlessly artificial: in a live interview candidates do not usually have easy access to their usual tools or Google/Stackoverflow, and many feel pressure and panic from having to code/problemsolve live while someone is watching and feel they would do better if left alone to do the same thing for the same length of time. Given the incredibly strong feelings either way, perhaps it might not be a terrible idea to let people choose which approach they prefer; but I've never seen any company's hiring do that, though, thinking about it, there really is no good reason why not (provided I still get to talk through the results of the offline exercise with the candidate during the live bit!)
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  Making direct comparisons of software to trades generally needs to stop. I understand that it's merely an analogy, but it's not a good one. Nails are extremely well understood with little room for improvement while the smallest piece of software is not so well understood and has infinite room for improvement. There are a handful of traits about an engineer that can make them incredibly valuable to an org that you'll never measure by putting the most weight on their ability to balance a binary tree (to use the cliched example).
  - sverhagen 4y ago
    This sub-thread was talking about "that specific coding task", not about binary tasks [edit: trees] in general. You might be very valuable building, say, a database application, while not being able to balance a binary tree, but if you can't do whatever we can all come up with as a small coding assessment ("little deck of cards"). It sounds to me like a good first filter, plus then a good talking piece to have a conversation about in an in-person.
    - sodapopcan 4y ago
      Ya, my bad (and also to your sibling comment), I have trouble with HN comment depth sometimes. Although I experienced recently what you said exactly! I was asked to build a deck of cards for the screening interview. It was a fun back-and-forth and I felt really good about things. Then in the next steps, I was asked to implement Conway's Game of Life. So like, I've been programming professionally for 13 years, I'm well aware of GoL and maybe should know how to do it, but I've never bothered since there are just a mountain of other projects, programming and not, that interest me over that. It's all good if you want your engineers to be able to solve that type of problem as it's your company and you do what you like with it. But like, they were an e-comm company and I have a ton of e-comm experience and was actually pretty into what they were doing, so why were they using something like GoL to assess me? On the flip side of things to get a little tangential, I often feel companies reject me because they just don't like me, and I wish they would just say as much since that hurts way less than being told I'm a not a great engineer, lol. Anyway, maybe a bit too much TMI... interviewing right now is a bit of a shitshow with all the recent layoffs and I'm maybe a little bitter, but also realllllly enjoying unemployment while it lasts.
theamk 4y ago
And it does not have to, that's what the later stages are for. This task is just a pre-filter, something to weed out surpirsingly high number of people who claim to be able to code but actually can't.
- Moru 4y ago
  Now if we could just standardise this so you didn't have to do several coding assignments for every position you apply for. I'm sure most people needs to apply to more than one company to actually get hired, especially with all the layoffs now.

I have a different perspective. I feel that specific coding task tells me absolutely nothing about the seniority of the person performing the task and tells me very little about their qualifications.

Mistletoe 4y ago

But shouldn't a blacksmith be able to make a nail before he makes me a suit of armor?

nordsieck 4y ago
> But shouldn't a blacksmith be able to make a nail before he makes me a suit of armor? Yes. But I think there's a reasonable upper limit to the amount of time a company can expect someone to spend on a job opportunity. If they're burning an appreciable amount of that time on a trivial coding exercise, that's not great.
- joe_guy 4y ago
  It's 60 minutes as a very high estimate. You might spend a life time together.
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    55 minutes to install the tool-chain and libs and 5 minutes to do the coding?
    - hackertyper69 4y ago
      give them a machine to ssh into with env setup already. or a docker container to ssh into on a port other than 22
- caminante 4y ago
  !!! You're missing the point. The premise is that someone capable can blast through trivial assignments in no time. Either this is the final proficiency challenge or there are subsequent, harder questions. In the former case, why not see the salary/offer and then decide?
  - eropple 4y ago
    Typically, because one has other opportunities that are no less compelling and where potential employers show respect for candidates' time. I have a GitHub profile with a lot of code on it and on my resume I highlight projects I've done a lot of work on. "What if faked tho?"--there's literally too much there to be worth faking. If a hiring manager looks at my resume, has the option of going to my GitHub profile, and between the two goes "I'm going to hand him a college-level Java problem because I'm not sure," then there probably isn't a way we're going to work together. And that's okay, on both sides of it; there are a lot of developers who aren't bothered by that kind of low-trust relationship. I am. Not a fit. (This is in contrast to, for example, asking a question like that during an interview. Interviews are bidirectional, and are showing an investment in the hiring process on the part of the employer. If a card-deck Java problem is worth addressing with my time, then it's worth addressing with your interviewer's time. The contrapositive is also true.)
    - tsukikage 4y ago
      Personally, I only ever ask people to solve coding/problem-solving questions live. The best experience IMO is when we talk through the problem together, since this approximates what collaborating with this person on real tasks will be like - not very well at all, but about as well as one can do in the amount of time available for a live interview. However, I do understand where the offline exercise idea comes from - it's not necessarily about lack of respect for candidates' time, but is generally done with the best of intentions in response to feedback, because candidates complain that the interview technical exercise scenario is needlessly artificial: in a live interview candidates do not usually have easy access to their usual tools or Google/Stackoverflow, and many feel pressure and panic from having to code/problemsolve live while someone is watching and feel they would do better if left alone to do the same thing for the same length of time. Given the incredibly strong feelings either way, perhaps it might not be a terrible idea to let people choose which approach they prefer; but I've never seen any company's hiring do that, though, thinking about it, there really is no good reason why not (provided I still get to talk through the results of the offline exercise with the candidate during the live bit!)
sodapopcan 4y ago
Making direct comparisons of software to trades generally needs to stop. I understand that it's merely an analogy, but it's not a good one. Nails are extremely well understood with little room for improvement while the smallest piece of software is not so well understood and has infinite room for improvement. There are a handful of traits about an engineer that can make them incredibly valuable to an org that you'll never measure by putting the most weight on their ability to balance a binary tree (to use the cliched example).
- sverhagen 4y ago
  This sub-thread was talking about "that specific coding task", not about binary tasks [edit: trees] in general. You might be very valuable building, say, a database application, while not being able to balance a binary tree, but if you can't do whatever we can all come up with as a small coding assessment ("little deck of cards"). It sounds to me like a good first filter, plus then a good talking piece to have a conversation about in an in-person.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    Ya, my bad (and also to your sibling comment), I have trouble with HN comment depth sometimes. Although I experienced recently what you said exactly! I was asked to build a deck of cards for the screening interview. It was a fun back-and-forth and I felt really good about things. Then in the next steps, I was asked to implement Conway's Game of Life. So like, I've been programming professionally for 13 years, I'm well aware of GoL and maybe should know how to do it, but I've never bothered since there are just a mountain of other projects, programming and not, that interest me over that. It's all good if you want your engineers to be able to solve that type of problem as it's your company and you do what you like with it. But like, they were an e-comm company and I have a ton of e-comm experience and was actually pretty into what they were doing, so why were they using something like GoL to assess me? On the flip side of things to get a little tangential, I often feel companies reject me because they just don't like me, and I wish they would just say as much since that hurts way less than being told I'm a not a great engineer, lol. Anyway, maybe a bit too much TMI... interviewing right now is a bit of a shitshow with all the recent layoffs and I'm maybe a little bitter, but also realllllly enjoying unemployment while it lasts.

theamk 4y ago

And it does not have to, that's what the later stages are for. This task is just a pre-filter, something to weed out surpirsingly high number of people who claim to be able to code but actually can't.

Moru 4y ago
Now if we could just standardise this so you didn't have to do several coding assignments for every position you apply for. I'm sure most people needs to apply to more than one company to actually get hired, especially with all the layoffs now.