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"If you didn't clear the platform code challenge, leveling didn't come into it." How does that make sense? I was told that you got a ton of applications and th

"If you didn't clear the platform code challenge, leveling didn't come into it." How does that make sense? I was told that you got a ton of applications and that I didn't meet the cutoff for the pool. Surely you can't just keep the top X (open positions + margin) and try to place them into appropriate levels if they make it through the remaining rounds? You very likely won't have an appropriate mapping of skills to your open roles and candidates will be left dissatisfied, right? Isn't a hiring challenge supposed to be a more objective assessment of engineering skill? If there's less "there's less surface area for us to derive signal from" then maybe it's not better than the traditional model. To be told that I didn't do well enough to be considered for a junior position sucks because I'm a mid level engineer. I'm certain that my proxy worked well. I was able to push ~7 GB/s through it spread across 1000 connections on my local machine. It can do that with reasonable resource utilization, good latency, no race conditions, and no errors. I also wouldn't say my notes were skimpy. I could have written more but I wanted to be respectful of the reviewers time. In fact I would rather you openly shame my submission here because at least then I would have the oppourtinity to reflect and improve. I hope this level of criticism isn't too much. I just wish that software engineering interviews could be more rational.

tptacek 4y ago
That coding challenge just isn't where we make leveling decisions. The difference between an L1 and an L3 at Fly.io is mostly not about how you write proxy code, but rather how you manage scope, how you think about what customers need, and how you design systems. We didn't tell you you weren't good enough for a junior position. That's not what our actual email response was to you, and it's not what I said in my previous comment. The single exercise you did with us doesn't currently have a leveling component, so there's nothing I can tell you about what level you'd have wound up at had you passed it. I understand that you're giving me permission to relate more about how we scored your submission, but, again, I'm unwilling to do that, for all the reasons I gave upthread.
- sosodev 4y ago
  "We didn't tell you you weren't good enough for a junior position." Not explicitly but isn't that the implication if I applied to a position open to levels 1-3?
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Our whole hiring process does level people, but the one challenge you did does not. It's pass/fail. So: no, there is no such implication in being rejected at that point. I'm saying that explicitly right now, so there needn't be any uncertainty going forward. I think it's also pretty important to understand that different companies have different leveling functions. Not being L3 at Fly.io in 2023 doesn't say much about what level you'd be anywhere else.

tptacek 4y ago

That coding challenge just isn't where we make leveling decisions. The difference between an L1 and an L3 at Fly.io is mostly not about how you write proxy code, but rather how you manage scope, how you think about what customers need, and how you design systems. We didn't tell you you weren't good enough for a junior position. That's not what our actual email response was to you, and it's not what I said in my previous comment. The single exercise you did with us doesn't currently have a leveling component, so there's nothing I can tell you about what level you'd have wound up at had you passed it. I understand that you're giving me permission to relate more about how we scored your submission, but, again, I'm unwilling to do that, for all the reasons I gave upthread.

sosodev 4y ago
"We didn't tell you you weren't good enough for a junior position." Not explicitly but isn't that the implication if I applied to a position open to levels 1-3?
- tptacek 4y ago
  Our whole hiring process does level people, but the one challenge you did does not. It's pass/fail. So: no, there is no such implication in being rejected at that point. I'm saying that explicitly right now, so there needn't be any uncertainty going forward. I think it's also pretty important to understand that different companies have different leveling functions. Not being L3 at Fly.io in 2023 doesn't say much about what level you'd be anywhere else.