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I agree with you. This trend in our field is really making me uncomfortable. Judge me on what I know and what I did before, no more, no less. Or, to make this e

by why-el 14y ago

I agree with you. This trend in our field is really making me uncomfortable. Judge me on what I know and what I did before, no more, no less. Or, to make this even more futile, how about I ask the company to build a small app for me? Since I also want to know if I should work for them. If they think their main business is enough to judge them, then my past experience is equally enough. This is bordering ridiculing in my opinion.

Isofarro 14y ago
"This trend in our field is really making me uncomfortable. Judge me on what I know and what I did before, no more, no less." You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way? I don't understand. You are looking for a role doing web development, which requires up-to-date knowledge not just of techniques, but of understanding. These code exercises make an excellent starting ground for a technical interview, and has the advantage of being built in your preferred choice of environment, entirely in your style. It's a time where you can show off your real skills. Which is what hiring companies want to know about. There's very little room to hide in these coding challenges / exercise. I've been on both sides of web developer tests / challenges, and the one I enjoyed the most was interviewing for Global Radio in London. I had a weekend to build a web app. So I built something I wanted to build anyway, gave it to them. The next step was to go in with their web development team who then code reviewed it. Still use that web app today.
- spamizbad 14y ago
  > You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way? The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers. The small project strategy is hardly fool-proof either. If it becomes widespread, we'll just see phony developer put their assignments up on rent-a-coder and ask for a crib sheet to study so they can withstand a technical interview on what they've created. Anecdotally, the 2 developers I know who were hired via the "do a small project for us first" method both ended up in companies with high dev turn-over, shitty tools (slow, single monitor computers), and were surrounded by lots of "green" co-workers who required significant hand-holding despite the fact that they too completed their small projects to get hired.
  - aaronblohowiak 14y ago
    >The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers. This is why the "assignment" that I request takes less than two hours and is a greenfield project that is not going to be used by the company -- and I tell candidates this up-front. Think something like a blog, recipe manager or to-do list app. It is trivial, but you may be surprised at the range of outputs that you get. What is interesting to me is how the resume isn't the best indicator for how well they will do on the coding project. Also, to avoid wasting people's time, I give the coding project as late in the interview process as possible, assuming the other filters have been passed.
  - Isofarro 14y ago
    "The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers." If the coding exercise looks like something that is of this sort, then I guess consider whether you want to work with that employer. From an employer perspective, this is the worst source of getting something built. A candidate should be researching the companies submits his resume/CV too anyway. "If it becomes widespread, we'll just see phony developer put their assignments up on rent-a-coder and ask for a crib sheet to study so they can withstand a technical interview on what they've created." If that were feasible, I'd suggest the employer would much rather hire the rent-a-coder instead of the one paying him. That's a win for the employer there too, since they'll be able to offer the rent-a-coder guy far more than the scratchings he gets as a rent-a-coder. The ability to predict in advance a sufficient range of questions as to forearm a candidate will border on the mystic. Coding exercises aren't a mouse in a maze puzzle, they are a starting point for gauging web development ability. The companies that use coding challenges as a way of creating production ready material are going to be amply supplied by the rent-a-coder approach you outline. And the technical interview part of the test is probably geared with a formulaic approach that can be guessed. In that case, this candidate and that employer are well matched. But not every candidate needs a rent-a-coder to pass a technical test, and not every company uses those tests to create production ready websites and applications. A good candidate can sniff a bad employer just as well as vice versa. If a company seems to be asking for production ready material, then walk away. If the test seems on the up, you'd better have a very good reason for refusing.
  - 14y ago
- trentmb 14y ago
  "You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way?" Isn't that what his past projects and employment demonstrate?
  - Isofarro 14y ago
    No. Past projects are typically not solo projects, so it's hard to establish who did what. We're hiring a developer for what he can do, not for what other people in his team did.
    - trentmb 14y ago
      "Past projects are typically not solo projects, so it's hard to establish who did what." That's why I give references, they can comment/confirm what I did. If they're bad (but professional) references, they'll just confirm that I worked with them. Also, I wasn't clear, but I meant personal projects (with commit records) as a separate consideration from employment.

by why-el 14y ago

Isofarro 14y ago

"This trend in our field is really making me uncomfortable. Judge me on what I know and what I did before, no more, no less." You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way? I don't understand. You are looking for a role doing web development, which requires up-to-date knowledge not just of techniques, but of understanding. These code exercises make an excellent starting ground for a technical interview, and has the advantage of being built in your preferred choice of environment, entirely in your style. It's a time where you can show off your real skills. Which is what hiring companies want to know about. There's very little room to hide in these coding challenges / exercise. I've been on both sides of web developer tests / challenges, and the one I enjoyed the most was interviewing for Global Radio in London. I had a weekend to build a web app. So I built something I wanted to build anyway, gave it to them. The next step was to go in with their web development team who then code reviewed it. Still use that web app today.

spamizbad 14y ago
> You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way? The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers. The small project strategy is hardly fool-proof either. If it becomes widespread, we'll just see phony developer put their assignments up on rent-a-coder and ask for a crib sheet to study so they can withstand a technical interview on what they've created. Anecdotally, the 2 developers I know who were hired via the "do a small project for us first" method both ended up in companies with high dev turn-over, shitty tools (slow, single monitor computers), and were surrounded by lots of "green" co-workers who required significant hand-holding despite the fact that they too completed their small projects to get hired.
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  >The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers. This is why the "assignment" that I request takes less than two hours and is a greenfield project that is not going to be used by the company -- and I tell candidates this up-front. Think something like a blog, recipe manager or to-do list app. It is trivial, but you may be surprised at the range of outputs that you get. What is interesting to me is how the resume isn't the best indicator for how well they will do on the coding project. Also, to avoid wasting people's time, I give the coding project as late in the interview process as possible, assuming the other filters have been passed.
- Isofarro 14y ago
  "The concern is potential employers trying to bilk free work out of developers." If the coding exercise looks like something that is of this sort, then I guess consider whether you want to work with that employer. From an employer perspective, this is the worst source of getting something built. A candidate should be researching the companies submits his resume/CV too anyway. "If it becomes widespread, we'll just see phony developer put their assignments up on rent-a-coder and ask for a crib sheet to study so they can withstand a technical interview on what they've created." If that were feasible, I'd suggest the employer would much rather hire the rent-a-coder instead of the one paying him. That's a win for the employer there too, since they'll be able to offer the rent-a-coder guy far more than the scratchings he gets as a rent-a-coder. The ability to predict in advance a sufficient range of questions as to forearm a candidate will border on the mystic. Coding exercises aren't a mouse in a maze puzzle, they are a starting point for gauging web development ability. The companies that use coding challenges as a way of creating production ready material are going to be amply supplied by the rent-a-coder approach you outline. And the technical interview part of the test is probably geared with a formulaic approach that can be guessed. In that case, this candidate and that employer are well matched. But not every candidate needs a rent-a-coder to pass a technical test, and not every company uses those tests to create production ready websites and applications. A good candidate can sniff a bad employer just as well as vice versa. If a company seems to be asking for production ready material, then walk away. If the test seems on the up, you'd better have a very good reason for refusing.
- 14y ago
trentmb 14y ago
"You are uncomfortable in demonstrating your knowledge in a practical way?" Isn't that what his past projects and employment demonstrate?
- Isofarro 14y ago
  No. Past projects are typically not solo projects, so it's hard to establish who did what. We're hiring a developer for what he can do, not for what other people in his team did.
  - trentmb 14y ago
    "Past projects are typically not solo projects, so it's hard to establish who did what." That's why I give references, they can comment/confirm what I did. If they're bad (but professional) references, they'll just confirm that I worked with them. Also, I wasn't clear, but I meant personal projects (with commit records) as a separate consideration from employment.