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They were polite and gave credits as well, but I really thought the programming challenge was ill defined and broad. From the interviews and challenges I've run

by jjice 4y ago

They were polite and gave credits as well, but I really thought the programming challenge was ill defined and broad. From the interviews and challenges I've run, it was much too broad and really required rereading and a lot of assumptions. Their response wasn't very clear either. Could have just been me, but I've never run into that situation anywhere else/ I will say though, they were very polite.

aosmith 4y ago
They have been very friendly with me as well but your feedback echos my experience thus far.
tptacek 4y ago
I have a lot to say about "ill defined and broad", starting with "I agree with you" and followed immediately by "c'est la vie". In a nutshell: we are extremely limited in how much time we can ask of candidates: our budget is the typical amount of time we believe those candidates would spend in more typical interview process (phone screens and an on-site interview loop). That means our programming work samples (WSTs) are small, which means we have to take every opportunity to extract signal from them, which in turn limits exactly how much we can document about our expectations. We try to be clear in our assessments (and to give some feedback about our decisions). I feel like we do a better-than-average job of being transparent, responsive, and fair, but I would feel that way: I'm the Retail Sales Manager.
- jjice 4y ago
  For sure, I know the struggle of interviewing and doing your best to make sure to save everyone's time during the process and there's a hard balance to achieve. I'd say Fly had an above average process overall from my personal experience.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    That's nice of you to say. Thank you! The other thing I'll say about our process: we don't have it exactly right yet. We learn some new big thing about once a month or so, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down; every time we learn something, by implication, it means we've been doing something pretty wrong previous to that point.

by jjice 4y ago

aosmith 4y ago

They have been very friendly with me as well but your feedback echos my experience thus far.

tptacek 4y ago

I have a lot to say about "ill defined and broad", starting with "I agree with you" and followed immediately by "c'est la vie". In a nutshell: we are extremely limited in how much time we can ask of candidates: our budget is the typical amount of time we believe those candidates would spend in more typical interview process (phone screens and an on-site interview loop). That means our programming work samples (WSTs) are small, which means we have to take every opportunity to extract signal from them, which in turn limits exactly how much we can document about our expectations. We try to be clear in our assessments (and to give some feedback about our decisions). I feel like we do a better-than-average job of being transparent, responsive, and fair, but I would feel that way: I'm the Retail Sales Manager.

jjice 4y ago
For sure, I know the struggle of interviewing and doing your best to make sure to save everyone's time during the process and there's a hard balance to achieve. I'd say Fly had an above average process overall from my personal experience.
- tptacek 4y ago
  That's nice of you to say. Thank you! The other thing I'll say about our process: we don't have it exactly right yet. We learn some new big thing about once a month or so, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down; every time we learn something, by implication, it means we've been doing something pretty wrong previous to that point.