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What about candidates who don't have several hours to spend on a programming assignment? Everyone seems to want one nowadays, and I don't have time to do one f

by fsk 13y ago

What about candidates who don't have several hours to spend on a programming assignment? Everyone seems to want one nowadays, and I don't have time to do one for everyone who asks. I've done a bunch of programming tests, without progressing to the interview stage after doing them, and now I usually refuse.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Agreed. While I do think that there is plenty wrong with traditional programmer interviews and that new approaches are needed, it isn't really a scalable solution on the candidate's side to spend hours to days on challenges for individual companies if everyone is asking for one. It becomes sort of like everyone wanting their own app store, or their own always-running polling service running on a desktop or mobile or whatever. If there are just a couple of people doing that, no big deal, but once more than a couple of entities start doing it, the system falls apart. If you're Google, Apple, Github, or some other prestige employer you can probably get away with this system even despite the scalability issue; otherwise good luck with it. As a practical compromise, companies should be willing to waive the specific challenge if the candidate already has their own existing shareable source code they can point to, thus allowing a candidate to reuse the same example as a portfolio piece with multiple companies. However, few companies are likely to do this since the same basic ego problem that breaks traditional programmer interviews comes into play ("Well we do things very different here, we're very special, so we must make the candidate jump through hoops X, Y and Z").
- fsk 13y ago
  What makes it even more insulting is that, I do the assignment, and still no interview. If you give a programming assignment, then you should at least have the decency to give an on-site interview to everyone who gives a solution that compiles and runs and gives the correct answer. That's why I usually refuse to do them now. Not only am I spending a couple hours on someone I never met, the conversion rate is so low that I'm convinced it's a waste of time. Also it's insulting. You're asking me to waste a couple hours of time for the privilege of maybe getting a chance to talk to you? When "maybe" turns out to be "almost never", I've really soured on the pre-interview programming test.

by fsk 13y ago

georgemcbay 13y ago

Agreed. While I do think that there is plenty wrong with traditional programmer interviews and that new approaches are needed, it isn't really a scalable solution on the candidate's side to spend hours to days on challenges for individual companies if everyone is asking for one. It becomes sort of like everyone wanting their own app store, or their own always-running polling service running on a desktop or mobile or whatever. If there are just a couple of people doing that, no big deal, but once more than a couple of entities start doing it, the system falls apart. If you're Google, Apple, Github, or some other prestige employer you can probably get away with this system even despite the scalability issue; otherwise good luck with it. As a practical compromise, companies should be willing to waive the specific challenge if the candidate already has their own existing shareable source code they can point to, thus allowing a candidate to reuse the same example as a portfolio piece with multiple companies. However, few companies are likely to do this since the same basic ego problem that breaks traditional programmer interviews comes into play ("Well we do things very different here, we're very special, so we must make the candidate jump through hoops X, Y and Z").

fsk 13y ago
What makes it even more insulting is that, I do the assignment, and still no interview. If you give a programming assignment, then you should at least have the decency to give an on-site interview to everyone who gives a solution that compiles and runs and gives the correct answer. That's why I usually refuse to do them now. Not only am I spending a couple hours on someone I never met, the conversion rate is so low that I'm convinced it's a waste of time. Also it's insulting. You're asking me to waste a couple hours of time for the privilege of maybe getting a chance to talk to you? When "maybe" turns out to be "almost never", I've really soured on the pre-interview programming test.