4 ms·

I think the real issue is the misapplication of take-homes. If after 3-4 rounds of systems interviewing, the company came back and said: "Hey we like you, and

by ilc 3y ago

I think the real issue is the misapplication of take-homes. If after 3-4 rounds of systems interviewing, the company came back and said: "Hey we like you, and we're interested in making an offer, but we want to check your skills..." Yeah, I'd do the assessment. Especially if I did 1 round of 45m coding. Without that, the company can't verify that I have "FizzBuzz" level skills, and that I didn't cheat on the assessment. When it is upfront, it is rarely worth it on either side. Companies lose a large fraction of the engineers applying into their funnel, and honestly as an engineer, it is rarely worth my time. I can spend that time interviewing at other companies that respect my time. As with many things in life: It is when, and how things are done. Not what things are done that often matters.

arp242 3y ago
Yeah, this is also my issue. You get a "take-home" after a short 15 minute intro call where some HR person basically just repeat what's on their homepage and job listing and where you repeat what's on your CV (I have a theory that HR people can't read, all observed evidence points in that direction anyway) and then you're given an 8 hour take-home. Sometimes you don't even get the intro call and just an email. Even just a "hey, we're genuinely interested and you made it to the shortlist" or something to that effect would just make a world of difference. Now I have no idea if I'm on any sort of shortlist or if they're just shotgunning this to everyone. I tried asking a few times, but I always got such vagueries in return that I might as well not have asked, so I stopped bothering. Would also help if people made the tests at least a little bit interesting. Now it's either "do this boring CRUD thing you've done 1000 times already" or "solve several NP-hard problems that have been subject of Turing awards within an hour". The last time I spent quite a bit of time on one of these things because it was interesting, and even put the result on GitHub (with no mention that it was for a take-home test, it "just" looks like any other project, also slightly modified to fit my needs). Then again, what's "interesting" for one person is "boring" for another.
- ilc 3y ago
  I've handed fully containerized code, with 100% code coverage. (Separate entry point from default to run the tests.) Then been told no. I suspect the people weren't used to having someone hand in a basically 100% guaranteed to work program ;). (I do know 100% code coverage doesn't mean working. But the docker container helps a good bit in making sure the code will run in the environment I wrote it for.)
  - arp242 3y ago
    Every time I've reviewed these sort of code tests I've never even run the code. I just looked if the approach looked alright, and to be honest I don't even care if it gives a slightly wrong answer because everyone can make an error; this is why we got code reviews and such. It's like physics and math classes at school; at least at my school an error in arithmetic was only a small minus if your general approach was okay (one reason I'm not in favour of computerized testing/ratings, because they can only look at the answer). I don't know what your specific code test was about so I can't really judge, but generally I've considered overcomplicated solutions to be a minus. "I asked you to write a simple CLI and I get some container environment" is not something I would consider positive anyway.
    - ilc 3y ago
      You think simple CLI. I think: I'm writing this in Python, most Python setups are a giant mess. By putting it in a container, I can guarantee it'll run right on their system. This is LESS complex. If my employer considers "docker run" when given full instructions complex. I guess I'm not a fit.

by ilc 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

Yeah, this is also my issue. You get a "take-home" after a short 15 minute intro call where some HR person basically just repeat what's on their homepage and job listing and where you repeat what's on your CV (I have a theory that HR people can't read, all observed evidence points in that direction anyway) and then you're given an 8 hour take-home. Sometimes you don't even get the intro call and just an email. Even just a "hey, we're genuinely interested and you made it to the shortlist" or something to that effect would just make a world of difference. Now I have no idea if I'm on any sort of shortlist or if they're just shotgunning this to everyone. I tried asking a few times, but I always got such vagueries in return that I might as well not have asked, so I stopped bothering. Would also help if people made the tests at least a little bit interesting. Now it's either "do this boring CRUD thing you've done 1000 times already" or "solve several NP-hard problems that have been subject of Turing awards within an hour". The last time I spent quite a bit of time on one of these things because it was interesting, and even put the result on GitHub (with no mention that it was for a take-home test, it "just" looks like any other project, also slightly modified to fit my needs). Then again, what's "interesting" for one person is "boring" for another.

ilc 3y ago
I've handed fully containerized code, with 100% code coverage. (Separate entry point from default to run the tests.) Then been told no. I suspect the people weren't used to having someone hand in a basically 100% guaranteed to work program ;). (I do know 100% code coverage doesn't mean working. But the docker container helps a good bit in making sure the code will run in the environment I wrote it for.)
- arp242 3y ago
  Every time I've reviewed these sort of code tests I've never even run the code. I just looked if the approach looked alright, and to be honest I don't even care if it gives a slightly wrong answer because everyone can make an error; this is why we got code reviews and such. It's like physics and math classes at school; at least at my school an error in arithmetic was only a small minus if your general approach was okay (one reason I'm not in favour of computerized testing/ratings, because they can only look at the answer). I don't know what your specific code test was about so I can't really judge, but generally I've considered overcomplicated solutions to be a minus. "I asked you to write a simple CLI and I get some container environment" is not something I would consider positive anyway.
  - ilc 3y ago
    You think simple CLI. I think: I'm writing this in Python, most Python setups are a giant mess. By putting it in a container, I can guarantee it'll run right on their system. This is LESS complex. If my employer considers "docker run" when given full instructions complex. I guess I'm not a fit.