4 ms·

I got dinged on my Netflix take home 10 years ago because I used the DOM to store state instead of implementing a shadow DOM. Sure, let me just whip that right

I got dinged on my Netflix take home 10 years ago because I used the DOM to store state instead of implementing a shadow DOM. Sure, let me just whip that right up.

vaginaphobic 8mo ago
[dead]
bluefirebrand 8mo ago
Outstanding. I've done quite a few interviews and as long as the interviewee maybe said something like "it would be better to use a shadow DOM" and could explain what a shadow DOM is, I would be pretty happy with that Expecting someone to build a full shadow DOM as part of their interview take home is excessive
- nitwit005 8mo ago
  Often times people ding you for doing anything different than they're used to, or what they see as "the standard". The worst is when they basically ask how you'd build their product. Some people can't handle a different answer, even as they're busy hiring you to improve things.
  - tharkun__ 8mo ago
    I do think we have to distinguish two things though. It's not really bad to ask someone to do a design session with them and "build their product with them from scratch" isn't inherently bad. That's actually pretty neat if you ask me. What's bad is if there's only a single answer and that's whatever they actually built themselves, which might be a pile of thrown together startup poo that was never cleaned up. But you have the same problem with all sorts of "needless trivia" type questions. And then do you really want to work at a company, where you can't have a proper "pros and cons of different approaches" type of discussion? If you got hired, you'd have those kinds of discussions with them on an ongoing basis. Bad on the company for letting that person do the hiring but they got what they deserved so to speak. Just to make an analogy: If they simply ding you for using 4 spaces coz they use 8, that's bad. If they ask you why you use 4 spaces, they use 8, give them pros and cons and are there any other approaches and what are the pros and cons of those? That's a good interview so to speak. As an interviewer I would give bonus points if the candidate says something like "I used 4 spaces because I thought that's what you guys were probably using coz everyone's moved away from 8 spaces but secretly I love usings tabs and setting tabwidth to what I want but in reality it really really doesn't matter as long as it's consistent across the codebase as humans can get used to almost everything and this one isn't worth fighting over. Linters and formatters exist for a reason".
    - suzzer99 8mo ago
      2 spaces ftmfw. I want to see as much on the screen as possible. Horizontal scrolling is bad. Who still uses 8? Isn't that like a COBOL thing?
      - fwipsy 8mo ago
        Linux kernel still uses 8 I believe. IIRC wide indentation+narrow pages were chosen partly to encourage using functions and avoiding deep nested logic. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.h...
      - fragmede 8mo ago
        Let's compromise. What do you think of 3?
        dotancohen 8mo ago
        I just recently read about something that requires - hard requirement - 3 spaces for indentation. Most likely read it here on HN. Makes me sick to even think about.
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        If I ever NIH a YAML-alike I fully intend to require the mixing of tabs and spaces when indenting.
        mystraline 8mo ago
        Just add a few zero width spaces. It'll be FINEEEEE :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space Btw, at an old job, some joker developer added or copied 1, and broke the whole testbed. It was quite funny. I came over to the sourcecode hosted in Gitlab, ran my regexes that look for naughty characters. Found it after it ate the devs for half a day.
        suzzer99 8mo ago
  - operatingthetan 8mo ago
    Engineering interviews in tech are arbitrary and biased by design.
  - bitwize 8mo ago
    This. No hire if, when asked an open-ended question, the candidate does not namedrop unprompted the components of the company's actual production tech stack. Clearly they're not knowledgeable about the engineering aspects of the job and are just bluffing their way through the interview process.
- parpfish 8mo ago
  The inability to get feedback and course-correct is my biggest peeve with take homes. Is this one of the tests where I just need to throw together a five minute quickie to get over your “can you program” filter? or do you need me to put together something flashy and memorable to show off my ceiling? If o put together my flashy thing, would I get dinged for over-engineering something where a five minute hack solution was good enough?
- SchemaLoad 8mo ago
  Often you don't even get to the interview step. One time I had a take home that said you could either do frontend only, backend only, or full stack. I decided to pick the backend only one and complete all of the optional backend tasks to make something pretty well made. Then they email me back and said the other candidate did the whole thing and they aren't sure if I know how to style a page now because I only completed the backend part.

I got dinged on my Netflix take home 10 years ago because I used the DOM to store state instead of implementing a shadow DOM. Sure, let me just whip that right up.

vaginaphobic 8mo ago

[dead]

bluefirebrand 8mo ago

Outstanding. I've done quite a few interviews and as long as the interviewee maybe said something like "it would be better to use a shadow DOM" and could explain what a shadow DOM is, I would be pretty happy with that Expecting someone to build a full shadow DOM as part of their interview take home is excessive

nitwit005 8mo ago
Often times people ding you for doing anything different than they're used to, or what they see as "the standard". The worst is when they basically ask how you'd build their product. Some people can't handle a different answer, even as they're busy hiring you to improve things.
- tharkun__ 8mo ago
  I do think we have to distinguish two things though. It's not really bad to ask someone to do a design session with them and "build their product with them from scratch" isn't inherently bad. That's actually pretty neat if you ask me. What's bad is if there's only a single answer and that's whatever they actually built themselves, which might be a pile of thrown together startup poo that was never cleaned up. But you have the same problem with all sorts of "needless trivia" type questions. And then do you really want to work at a company, where you can't have a proper "pros and cons of different approaches" type of discussion? If you got hired, you'd have those kinds of discussions with them on an ongoing basis. Bad on the company for letting that person do the hiring but they got what they deserved so to speak. Just to make an analogy: If they simply ding you for using 4 spaces coz they use 8, that's bad. If they ask you why you use 4 spaces, they use 8, give them pros and cons and are there any other approaches and what are the pros and cons of those? That's a good interview so to speak. As an interviewer I would give bonus points if the candidate says something like "I used 4 spaces because I thought that's what you guys were probably using coz everyone's moved away from 8 spaces but secretly I love usings tabs and setting tabwidth to what I want but in reality it really really doesn't matter as long as it's consistent across the codebase as humans can get used to almost everything and this one isn't worth fighting over. Linters and formatters exist for a reason".
  - suzzer99 8mo ago
    2 spaces ftmfw. I want to see as much on the screen as possible. Horizontal scrolling is bad. Who still uses 8? Isn't that like a COBOL thing?
    - fwipsy 8mo ago
      Linux kernel still uses 8 I believe. IIRC wide indentation+narrow pages were chosen partly to encourage using functions and avoiding deep nested logic. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.h...
    - fragmede 8mo ago
      Let's compromise. What do you think of 3?
      - dotancohen 8mo ago
        I just recently read about something that requires - hard requirement - 3 spaces for indentation. Most likely read it here on HN. Makes me sick to even think about.
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        If I ever NIH a YAML-alike I fully intend to require the mixing of tabs and spaces when indenting.
      - mystraline 8mo ago
        Just add a few zero width spaces. It'll be FINEEEEE :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space Btw, at an old job, some joker developer added or copied 1, and broke the whole testbed. It was quite funny. I came over to the sourcecode hosted in Gitlab, ran my regexes that look for naughty characters. Found it after it ate the devs for half a day.
      - suzzer99 8mo ago
- operatingthetan 8mo ago
  Engineering interviews in tech are arbitrary and biased by design.
- bitwize 8mo ago
  This. No hire if, when asked an open-ended question, the candidate does not namedrop unprompted the components of the company's actual production tech stack. Clearly they're not knowledgeable about the engineering aspects of the job and are just bluffing their way through the interview process.
parpfish 8mo ago
The inability to get feedback and course-correct is my biggest peeve with take homes. Is this one of the tests where I just need to throw together a five minute quickie to get over your “can you program” filter? or do you need me to put together something flashy and memorable to show off my ceiling? If o put together my flashy thing, would I get dinged for over-engineering something where a five minute hack solution was good enough?
SchemaLoad 8mo ago
Often you don't even get to the interview step. One time I had a take home that said you could either do frontend only, backend only, or full stack. I decided to pick the backend only one and complete all of the optional backend tasks to make something pretty well made. Then they email me back and said the other candidate did the whole thing and they aren't sure if I know how to style a page now because I only completed the backend part.