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What are you trying to accomplish with these take home tests to begin with? If they can successfully solve it with ChatGPT that implies they understand how to u

by wryoak 2y ago

What are you trying to accomplish with these take home tests to begin with? If they can successfully solve it with ChatGPT that implies they understand how to use tools which are paramount to developer success. Do you want them to waste a bunch of their time solving a pointless problem? Is that how you treat your employees, too?

edf13 2y ago
Hold on with the accusations… There is nothing wrong with testing people on simple tasks as part of an interview. This isn’t a long task, likely 30 minutes work! It’s to ensure what they say they can do is correct. Using AI tools is fine but we need to see an understanding too.
- deleted 2y ago
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- wryoak 2y ago
  Sorry it wasn’t meant to come off as an accusation, more of a thought experiment: what would prove they would be successful in the job: proving they can solve a trivial problem in thirty minutes? I assume your team is not only solving the same trivial problems over and over again. I do have an idea I suppose. Present them with a problem and a solution and have them lead a discussion of the merits of the solution, what alternatives they might propose and so on. There’s some issues to avoid with this approach tho, like presenting a pair with a correct response in mind and then judging people against that standard rather than the standard of “how are they thinking through this problem, the drawbacks and benefits, are they presenting their ideas effectively and respectfully, etc” It also primes them to expect a certain sort of environment coming into the job, participating in meetings and collaborative solutions instead of just being a code cowboy. Adapt your specific discussion to how you expect them to conduct themselves, probably present your company collaboration guidelines and meeting CoC as a precursor to the meeting, idk I’m just spitballing here. I’ve struggled with this problem a lot hiring people.
philomath_mn 2y ago
> they understand how to use tools which are paramount to developer success No, it means they know how to use tools to solve certain small programming tasks.
_akhe 2y ago
I agree with this take. You can tell in an interview if they are focused on the interview or the job. If there is never any talk about the job, if it's all about some insanely drawn out interview process you know that's all they care about. I've seen startups (even some here on YC) who have been hiring the same roles for literally years, they don't know anything else.

by wryoak 2y ago

edf13 2y ago

Hold on with the accusations… There is nothing wrong with testing people on simple tasks as part of an interview. This isn’t a long task, likely 30 minutes work! It’s to ensure what they say they can do is correct. Using AI tools is fine but we need to see an understanding too.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wryoak 2y ago
Sorry it wasn’t meant to come off as an accusation, more of a thought experiment: what would prove they would be successful in the job: proving they can solve a trivial problem in thirty minutes? I assume your team is not only solving the same trivial problems over and over again. I do have an idea I suppose. Present them with a problem and a solution and have them lead a discussion of the merits of the solution, what alternatives they might propose and so on. There’s some issues to avoid with this approach tho, like presenting a pair with a correct response in mind and then judging people against that standard rather than the standard of “how are they thinking through this problem, the drawbacks and benefits, are they presenting their ideas effectively and respectfully, etc” It also primes them to expect a certain sort of environment coming into the job, participating in meetings and collaborative solutions instead of just being a code cowboy. Adapt your specific discussion to how you expect them to conduct themselves, probably present your company collaboration guidelines and meeting CoC as a precursor to the meeting, idk I’m just spitballing here. I’ve struggled with this problem a lot hiring people.

philomath_mn 2y ago

> they understand how to use tools which are paramount to developer success No, it means they know how to use tools to solve certain small programming tasks.

_akhe 2y ago

I agree with this take. You can tell in an interview if they are focused on the interview or the job. If there is never any talk about the job, if it's all about some insanely drawn out interview process you know that's all they care about. I've seen startups (even some here on YC) who have been hiring the same roles for literally years, they don't know anything else.