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Since the author himself seems to have posted this, I figure I might as well try to help contextualize the response he got. I worked at Kagi (though not on thei

Since the author himself seems to have posted this, I figure I might as well try to help contextualize the response he got. I worked at Kagi (though not on their search product) and went through a similar take-home test. Obviously, a lot of disclaimers: this was a while ago, I am obviously biased, I am not at Kagi anymore and this is my perspective. I'm not even sure how they would feel about this but they're more than welcome to say hi if not reply to the actual content of this comment. When I went through the process the company was very small and Vlad personally reviewed applicants, and he used take home projects like this one. It seems like the company has grown larger so now he isn't looking at them himself anymore, but the essence seems the same. If you ever talk to him you'll find that he's basically the Hacker News commenter stereotype and his interview is really a vibe check to see if you seem cool. To him, submitting a long design doc where you go "I am going to use Galactor. I will make sure the project is florp-ready. I will fleem." is the exact opposite of cool. When the assignment says "I want a terminal-inspired email client" the project that passes with flying colors has keyboard shortcuts for everything and comes with a paragraph explaining how it never takes more than 2ms to draw a frame. I suspect the interviewer thinks you are too "enterprise-brained" to work at Kagi. Now, is this actually a good way to screen people? A bunch of other people here have opinions on it, so I won't rehash it too much. There are obvious problems with it. Vlad basically wants people who think like him. This kind of interview has a lot of problems that have been discussed and studied at length. But if you understand that and are privileged enough to go through that process, the task will actually make sense to you. I think Kagi could do a better job at communicating this. It's unfortunate that you had to waste a bunch of your time to get to this point but I hope you can find something else that matches your working style better.

seancorfield 1y ago
A lot of companies seem to want to hire folks who "think like me". IMO, that's a mistake: you need diversity of thought to provide new insights into problems. If you all think the same way, and one of you gets stuck, then it's likely you'll all get stuck. This seems to be a common problem in startups, IME, and perhaps an indicator of why 9 out of 10 startups fail.
- jjcob 1y ago
  Hiring someone who wants detailed requirements is not a good idea when you don't have a structure in place that can provide these detailed requirements. If you rely on people to work independently, you just can't hire someone who wants feedback everyday to see if they are still on the right track.
  - t-writescode 1y ago
    Depending on the level of detail, "detailed requirements" can be the bare minimum for any level of cohesive, cross-functional collaboration. You need to have discussions to talk about things like: * common UX language * common API expectations * programming language choice (because you will not be the only person to work on it) * in-app / domain language choice (because your users need to know what a word means.) * library choice (because you will not be the only person to work on it) * storage strategy (because there may be legal requirements here) Ignoring all that and letting all the engineers just run wild is a great way to make a very painful company to work with and cross-collaborate on.
    - saagarjha 1y ago
      My impression is that Kagi aims to hire people who are already aligned on most of these. Not all of them, of course, but I read the interview as an attempt to be able to go "do this" and have candidates understand what it means.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I don't disagree, but again: Kagi is Vlad's pet project; he's already rich. I think he would rather it fail than it become something that he doesn't feel aligned with.
jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
What seems objectionable to me, is that in order for Vlad to find people that are "cool" he's wasting everyone else's time. This isn't exactly the same as if I give people a test on their ability. It's different. In here you pass if you did something that scores well in a metric that you're not told about. It's not very different than if I gave you a take home assignment which is just literally "code something - you have to be good at ambiguity!" Joking, you just have to guess the thing I had in mind. It's very inconsiderate to people, and doesn't tell me anything good about this Vlad person.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I think it's very reasonable to expect that there should be better communication here about this actually being a combination culture-fit-and-coding assessment. But I don't actually think it's fair to say that nobody is told about the metric. It's pretty clear to me. I think a lot of other people here also understood it (which makes sense, because they're all Hacker News brained). I agree that this sucks if you don't "get" it but I'm not entirely sure if there is a good way to convey this. Maybe they shouldn't be looking for this at all but that's a separate discussion.
josecodea 1y ago
hi :) > To him, submitting a long design doc where you go "I am going to use Galactor. I will make sure the project is florp-ready. I will fleem." is the exact opposite of cool. Am I supposed to guess this much? Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Finally, I made it abundantly clear that I am uncool, so giving me the "go ahead", simply to satisfy their curiosity... I hope they are treated the same as they treat other people. No ill will against you, if anything you are giving me a plausible explanation where I have none. I just wish I had come across a post like mine earlier, and I hope that we, as a collective, start categorizing any job with a "take-home" as a job for the "cool kids". That way, all of us boring and experienced engineers may force companies to adapt if they actually want our labor. And those that do not adapt, we can infer the type of company that "offers" the role.
- sceptic123 1y ago
  I'm curious what you would have done differently if you had come across a post like yours?
- saagarjha 1y ago
  > Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Quite frankly: yes, I am pretty sure they did. You said you "had heard about Kagi Search as a reputable company" but the point is that they make a specific product for a specific group of people and if you don't "get" that they are not going to hire you. There are a lot of startups like this, mind you, and many of them are weird cults so I understand the hesitation to spend the time learning what everyone's gimmick is. But Kagi is not one of those companies where you get in without knowing what they want. It's not Google where you can get in by knowing some algorithms or your local medical startup that just wants anyone who can write React. Notably I say this without making a value judgement of whether it is "better" or "worse" than those companies. That's just…how it is. Smaller companies, and ones that are more founder driven, tend to have more unusual and specific things they are looking for. Re: the rest of your post; I think you deserve to be upset that you wasted your time here, and that they didn't communicate clearly with you. That much is pretty obvious. Regardless, I feel like you're still missing something here, and that makes me a little sad. Kagi is definitely not the right place for you, and they should have done better here. You are not "uncool" and take-homes are not for "cool kids". You just have a different working style or stack or whatever than what Kagi was looking for. I am sure your work is fine and that there is someone out there that thinks your project is cool and what Kagi was looking for was boring. Kagi thought my work was interesting but I assure you that a lot of people would find it incredibly tedious and uninteresting. My goal here was to give you my view of what I think their view was. I'm not really here to condemn or praise it as there are plenty of other people doing that. I just want you to understand it, rather than it leaving you confused and upset.

seancorfield 1y ago

A lot of companies seem to want to hire folks who "think like me". IMO, that's a mistake: you need diversity of thought to provide new insights into problems. If you all think the same way, and one of you gets stuck, then it's likely you'll all get stuck. This seems to be a common problem in startups, IME, and perhaps an indicator of why 9 out of 10 startups fail.

jjcob 1y ago
Hiring someone who wants detailed requirements is not a good idea when you don't have a structure in place that can provide these detailed requirements. If you rely on people to work independently, you just can't hire someone who wants feedback everyday to see if they are still on the right track.
- t-writescode 1y ago
  Depending on the level of detail, "detailed requirements" can be the bare minimum for any level of cohesive, cross-functional collaboration. You need to have discussions to talk about things like: * common UX language * common API expectations * programming language choice (because you will not be the only person to work on it) * in-app / domain language choice (because your users need to know what a word means.) * library choice (because you will not be the only person to work on it) * storage strategy (because there may be legal requirements here) Ignoring all that and letting all the engineers just run wild is a great way to make a very painful company to work with and cross-collaborate on.
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    My impression is that Kagi aims to hire people who are already aligned on most of these. Not all of them, of course, but I read the interview as an attempt to be able to go "do this" and have candidates understand what it means.
saagarjha 1y ago
I don't disagree, but again: Kagi is Vlad's pet project; he's already rich. I think he would rather it fail than it become something that he doesn't feel aligned with.

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago

What seems objectionable to me, is that in order for Vlad to find people that are "cool" he's wasting everyone else's time. This isn't exactly the same as if I give people a test on their ability. It's different. In here you pass if you did something that scores well in a metric that you're not told about. It's not very different than if I gave you a take home assignment which is just literally "code something - you have to be good at ambiguity!" Joking, you just have to guess the thing I had in mind. It's very inconsiderate to people, and doesn't tell me anything good about this Vlad person.

saagarjha 1y ago
I think it's very reasonable to expect that there should be better communication here about this actually being a combination culture-fit-and-coding assessment. But I don't actually think it's fair to say that nobody is told about the metric. It's pretty clear to me. I think a lot of other people here also understood it (which makes sense, because they're all Hacker News brained). I agree that this sucks if you don't "get" it but I'm not entirely sure if there is a good way to convey this. Maybe they shouldn't be looking for this at all but that's a separate discussion.

josecodea 1y ago

hi :) > To him, submitting a long design doc where you go "I am going to use Galactor. I will make sure the project is florp-ready. I will fleem." is the exact opposite of cool. Am I supposed to guess this much? Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Finally, I made it abundantly clear that I am uncool, so giving me the "go ahead", simply to satisfy their curiosity... I hope they are treated the same as they treat other people. No ill will against you, if anything you are giving me a plausible explanation where I have none. I just wish I had come across a post like mine earlier, and I hope that we, as a collective, start categorizing any job with a "take-home" as a job for the "cool kids". That way, all of us boring and experienced engineers may force companies to adapt if they actually want our labor. And those that do not adapt, we can infer the type of company that "offers" the role.

sceptic123 1y ago
I'm curious what you would have done differently if you had come across a post like yours?
saagarjha 1y ago
> Do they expect me to creep on their social media to figure this out or something? Quite frankly: yes, I am pretty sure they did. You said you "had heard about Kagi Search as a reputable company" but the point is that they make a specific product for a specific group of people and if you don't "get" that they are not going to hire you. There are a lot of startups like this, mind you, and many of them are weird cults so I understand the hesitation to spend the time learning what everyone's gimmick is. But Kagi is not one of those companies where you get in without knowing what they want. It's not Google where you can get in by knowing some algorithms or your local medical startup that just wants anyone who can write React. Notably I say this without making a value judgement of whether it is "better" or "worse" than those companies. That's just…how it is. Smaller companies, and ones that are more founder driven, tend to have more unusual and specific things they are looking for. Re: the rest of your post; I think you deserve to be upset that you wasted your time here, and that they didn't communicate clearly with you. That much is pretty obvious. Regardless, I feel like you're still missing something here, and that makes me a little sad. Kagi is definitely not the right place for you, and they should have done better here. You are not "uncool" and take-homes are not for "cool kids". You just have a different working style or stack or whatever than what Kagi was looking for. I am sure your work is fine and that there is someone out there that thinks your project is cool and what Kagi was looking for was boring. Kagi thought my work was interesting but I assure you that a lot of people would find it incredibly tedious and uninteresting. My goal here was to give you my view of what I think their view was. I'm not really here to condemn or praise it as there are plenty of other people doing that. I just want you to understand it, rather than it leaving you confused and upset.