4 ms·

Do you do this on-site? If not how are you sure they did the work?

PhasmaFelis 2y ago
The one place I interviewed that did this had me email my program for them to run, then come in and answer questions about it and describe which parts I was proud of, which could use improvement, etc.
- wetpaws 2y ago
  [dead]
throwaway42668 2y ago
Just have people pair with people doing actual work. It's better signal for the candidate, for the existing team, and for the organization.
- nertzy 2y ago
  This is the only correct answer. I interviewed dozens of people this way over more than a decade. Hiring was never difficult to get right. Bonus: we self-selected for people who don’t like to pair. We paired 100% of the time.
ido 2y ago
You’re not but it already reduces the sample size by a lot. There is no 100% effective way to detect liars. I’ve been a hiring manager in multiple companies (including currently) and fortunately for me they were so far rare (maybe because Germany isn’t attractive enough as a job market for programmers to get the bulk of people putting a lot of effort into fraudulently getting a job). Either way it is customary to start new hires with a 6 month probation, and their long term contract only kicks in after that. That’s long enough to detect if someone is incompetent (I’ve had to fire people during their probation when finding out they weren’t actually capable altho I don’t think they outright lied).
Liquix 2y ago
maybe a balance can be struck? audition/take-home to select potential candidates, a follow up interview with each to confirm they wrote the code and are a good team fit.
tptacek 2y ago
Are we doing more spicy takes? I'll give you one: this is just not a thing. Unless you're operating at a very large scale, I think you can simply ignore this problem. If your team is at all well run, and your work-sample testing mirrors the team's work, it's not a very good scam to run: it'll be immediately obvious on the job. We thought we'd put some energy into this back in 2021, and we have yet to reach a point where thinking about this makes any sense (except for tech writers, where spotting GPT is maybe somewhat useful).
- busterarm 2y ago
  Maybe I am unlucky, but I've been working fulltime for almost 30 years and I can count the number of well-run teams that I've worked on or known people working on with exactly zero hands. And the management of 100% of them acted like they were the best company on Earth to work for. I have _heard of_ great teams, but even the one person I knew who worked at Pivotal ended up there long after things went downhill culturally.

The one place I interviewed that did this had me email my program for them to run, then come in and answer questions about it and describe which parts I was proud of, which could use improvement, etc.

wetpaws 2y ago
[dead]

throwaway42668 2y ago

Just have people pair with people doing actual work. It's better signal for the candidate, for the existing team, and for the organization.

nertzy 2y ago
This is the only correct answer. I interviewed dozens of people this way over more than a decade. Hiring was never difficult to get right. Bonus: we self-selected for people who don’t like to pair. We paired 100% of the time.

ido 2y ago

You’re not but it already reduces the sample size by a lot. There is no 100% effective way to detect liars. I’ve been a hiring manager in multiple companies (including currently) and fortunately for me they were so far rare (maybe because Germany isn’t attractive enough as a job market for programmers to get the bulk of people putting a lot of effort into fraudulently getting a job). Either way it is customary to start new hires with a 6 month probation, and their long term contract only kicks in after that. That’s long enough to detect if someone is incompetent (I’ve had to fire people during their probation when finding out they weren’t actually capable altho I don’t think they outright lied).

Liquix 2y ago

maybe a balance can be struck? audition/take-home to select potential candidates, a follow up interview with each to confirm they wrote the code and are a good team fit.

tptacek 2y ago

Are we doing more spicy takes? I'll give you one: this is just not a thing. Unless you're operating at a very large scale, I think you can simply ignore this problem. If your team is at all well run, and your work-sample testing mirrors the team's work, it's not a very good scam to run: it'll be immediately obvious on the job. We thought we'd put some energy into this back in 2021, and we have yet to reach a point where thinking about this makes any sense (except for tech writers, where spotting GPT is maybe somewhat useful).

busterarm 2y ago
Maybe I am unlucky, but I've been working fulltime for almost 30 years and I can count the number of well-run teams that I've worked on or known people working on with exactly zero hands. And the management of 100% of them acted like they were the best company on Earth to work for. I have _heard of_ great teams, but even the one person I knew who worked at Pivotal ended up there long after things went downhill culturally.