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Hiring people who code at all is discrimination against people who played video games instead of learning to code.

bobthepanda 2y ago
“Codes on their spare time” is not part of the job description, but “codes at all” is. There are plenty of reasons not to code on spare time. If anything the people who are most likely to do that are often also the people who coding interviews are supposed to be privileging, fresh single college grads. I don’t know how people would square the statements “take-home assignments are unpaid labor and unfair to people with time commitments” and then do a 180 and say “people should have an up-to-date fresh github that they work on in their spare time.”
- willcipriano 2y ago
  If it would take the candidate "spending every waking moment of their lives coding" to have one or two small coding projects after a half decade plus in the field, that's a signal. If you went to college but never made anything, that's a signal. If you didn't go to college, and never made anything, just shut up and make something.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    In a half decade plus some people pick up other commitments that are not side projects, like a pet, a child, sports, hiking, etc. At the end of the day, it isn’t really relevant to the employer what is done in spare time off the job when they get hired, so it’s not like I should privilege their spare time projects over people who don’t do that, particularly if people don’t want to code off the clock. There are plenty of good engineers who do not code off the clock, and there are plenty of bad engineers who do. Also, more often than not, coding off the clock for the sake of having a portfolio is not really indicative of anything. There aren’t, for example, review processes or anything like that in a one person side project, and unless I spend significantly more hours background checking who’s to say the side project is not plagiarized? People already lie on their resumes today.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      In the time you took writing this comment you could've gotten the repo created and the title and description filled out. Writing text in a public readme.md would serve you better than sending it to me.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        I have side projects, but I don't expect every candidate to, nor do I expect every candidate to be a religious reader of every HN comment thread.
        willcipriano 2y ago
        I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but they would have to show mastery some other way. Whiteboard? Live coding? Project? I think a side project opens up the opportunity to skip that for a project presentation. This is a lot more in line with real life as you would typically code and later present that work to others. You would defend it to some degree, why you made choice A vs choice B. If you created it, you'll be able to do that. Doesn't need to be a huge thing. Just show you can do anything at all really at the junior level. Intermediates can show mastery in a framework with something with slightly more complexity than a "hello world".
        pseudalopex 2y ago
        > I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but they would have to show mastery some other way. Whiteboard? Live coding? Project? godelski said your resume should really be GitHub. You could have said this instead of sarcasm.
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Typically the people without side projects also make excuses to not do those either. If I had a company I'd offer looking over an existing project or a project where you create a side project of your choice without any further direction. So not mandatory but the easiest way to go probably. Once you apply to my company you'll have one to show for next time at least. (If you want to write the project out on the whiteboard instead I guess feel free, that seems hard though.)
  - P_I_Staker 2y ago
    It's so clear that people on this site have no friends, family, or hobbies. I also don't think you realize how ableist your comment is. Some people have more trouble completing tasks for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or intelligence.

“Codes on their spare time” is not part of the job description, but “codes at all” is. There are plenty of reasons not to code on spare time. If anything the people who are most likely to do that are often also the people who coding interviews are supposed to be privileging, fresh single college grads. I don’t know how people would square the statements “take-home assignments are unpaid labor and unfair to people with time commitments” and then do a 180 and say “people should have an up-to-date fresh github that they work on in their spare time.”

willcipriano 2y ago
If it would take the candidate "spending every waking moment of their lives coding" to have one or two small coding projects after a half decade plus in the field, that's a signal. If you went to college but never made anything, that's a signal. If you didn't go to college, and never made anything, just shut up and make something.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  In a half decade plus some people pick up other commitments that are not side projects, like a pet, a child, sports, hiking, etc. At the end of the day, it isn’t really relevant to the employer what is done in spare time off the job when they get hired, so it’s not like I should privilege their spare time projects over people who don’t do that, particularly if people don’t want to code off the clock. There are plenty of good engineers who do not code off the clock, and there are plenty of bad engineers who do. Also, more often than not, coding off the clock for the sake of having a portfolio is not really indicative of anything. There aren’t, for example, review processes or anything like that in a one person side project, and unless I spend significantly more hours background checking who’s to say the side project is not plagiarized? People already lie on their resumes today.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    In the time you took writing this comment you could've gotten the repo created and the title and description filled out. Writing text in a public readme.md would serve you better than sending it to me.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      I have side projects, but I don't expect every candidate to, nor do I expect every candidate to be a religious reader of every HN comment thread.
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but they would have to show mastery some other way. Whiteboard? Live coding? Project? I think a side project opens up the opportunity to skip that for a project presentation. This is a lot more in line with real life as you would typically code and later present that work to others. You would defend it to some degree, why you made choice A vs choice B. If you created it, you'll be able to do that. Doesn't need to be a huge thing. Just show you can do anything at all really at the junior level. Intermediates can show mastery in a framework with something with slightly more complexity than a "hello world".
        pseudalopex 2y ago
        > I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but they would have to show mastery some other way. Whiteboard? Live coding? Project? godelski said your resume should really be GitHub. You could have said this instead of sarcasm.
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Typically the people without side projects also make excuses to not do those either. If I had a company I'd offer looking over an existing project or a project where you create a side project of your choice without any further direction. So not mandatory but the easiest way to go probably. Once you apply to my company you'll have one to show for next time at least. (If you want to write the project out on the whiteboard instead I guess feel free, that seems hard though.)
- P_I_Staker 2y ago
  It's so clear that people on this site have no friends, family, or hobbies. I also don't think you realize how ableist your comment is. Some people have more trouble completing tasks for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or intelligence.