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Take-homes suck on both sides nowadays - if you're the interviewer, how do you know they didn't just plug it into chatGPT and spend the rest of the afternoon st

Take-homes suck on both sides nowadays - if you're the interviewer, how do you know they didn't just plug it into chatGPT and spend the rest of the afternoon studying the solution? I just don't know what a better proxy of coding ability even is, when we exclude options that can't be gamed/cheated.

sintezcs 1y ago
What’s wrong with it if they studied the codeGPT solution well enough to explain it, answer the questions about corner cases and suggest improvements? Won’t it be a good indicator of the candidates skills? ChatGPT is one of the daily tools nowadays, we should not ban it, but the one using it should be able to understand and explain the code, and his logic, and explain how he architected the solution and how the LlM assisted him, and where it worked well and where not so good.
- ixsploit 1y ago
  Probably becasue you are looking for people who can actually perform a certain job and not just come back with the ChatGPT answer.
  - Paul-Craft 1y ago
    If they can produce working code that solves the problem, and explain how it works, that is more than “just com[ing] back with the ChatGPT answer.” I'm not saying ChatGPT doesn't have its own issues, but this is not one of them.
    - Daishiman 1y ago
      I've had candidates who successfully did this to explain how a SQL JOIN works. But I'm not looking for candidates who can read a GPT prompt; I'm looking for people who deeply understand how a join works.
ghaff 1y ago
Well, and as a candidate, while you're going to do some homework on the company in any case--any real take-home you know you're competing against people who are going to take a weekend or more with it whatever the instructions are.
jghn 1y ago
> how do you know they didn't just plug it into chatGPT If someone can present a good solution and talk about the reasoning behind it with enough detail & savvy to convince you that they actually wrote it, does it matter if they didn't?
- StableAlkyne 1y ago
  The logical conclusion of this line of thought is to just outsource to the cheapest foreign firm who can operate a chatbot.
  - jghn 1y ago
    That presumes that someone using a chatbot would necessarily generate a high quality solution and be able to explain the underlying reasoning. And that is my point: there's a difference between someone pushing forth slop, and someone who is simply not doing the actual labor but could if they wanted to do so.
crystal_revenge 1y ago
I used to be a fan of take-homes, but they have gotten ridiculous. Most importantly, many companies don't even follow up on them! It used to be fairly common etiquette that if you asked somebody to spend a day writing code for you, you at least had the decency to give them feed back.

sintezcs 1y ago

What’s wrong with it if they studied the codeGPT solution well enough to explain it, answer the questions about corner cases and suggest improvements? Won’t it be a good indicator of the candidates skills? ChatGPT is one of the daily tools nowadays, we should not ban it, but the one using it should be able to understand and explain the code, and his logic, and explain how he architected the solution and how the LlM assisted him, and where it worked well and where not so good.

ixsploit 1y ago
Probably becasue you are looking for people who can actually perform a certain job and not just come back with the ChatGPT answer.
- Paul-Craft 1y ago
  If they can produce working code that solves the problem, and explain how it works, that is more than “just com[ing] back with the ChatGPT answer.” I'm not saying ChatGPT doesn't have its own issues, but this is not one of them.
  - Daishiman 1y ago
    I've had candidates who successfully did this to explain how a SQL JOIN works. But I'm not looking for candidates who can read a GPT prompt; I'm looking for people who deeply understand how a join works.

ghaff 1y ago

Well, and as a candidate, while you're going to do some homework on the company in any case--any real take-home you know you're competing against people who are going to take a weekend or more with it whatever the instructions are.

jghn 1y ago

> how do you know they didn't just plug it into chatGPT If someone can present a good solution and talk about the reasoning behind it with enough detail & savvy to convince you that they actually wrote it, does it matter if they didn't?

StableAlkyne 1y ago
The logical conclusion of this line of thought is to just outsource to the cheapest foreign firm who can operate a chatbot.
- jghn 1y ago
  That presumes that someone using a chatbot would necessarily generate a high quality solution and be able to explain the underlying reasoning. And that is my point: there's a difference between someone pushing forth slop, and someone who is simply not doing the actual labor but could if they wanted to do so.

crystal_revenge 1y ago

I used to be a fan of take-homes, but they have gotten ridiculous. Most importantly, many companies don't even follow up on them! It used to be fairly common etiquette that if you asked somebody to spend a day writing code for you, you at least had the decency to give them feed back.