Hacker News Reader

Comment by msimpson | Hacker News Reader

We use a similar system which involves:

1. A phone interview to validate the applicants resume.

2. An in-person interview where the applicant is given an hour to complete level 10 of Blockly Maze (https://blockly-games.appspot.com/maze?level=10) after being briefed on the wall follower rule (if they are unaware).

3. Completion of an outside example project in the applicants strongest language, for which they are not paid to avoid non-compete clauses.

This usually is enough to evaluate whether the applicant is embellishing on their resume, capable of analytical thought in a completely alien language, and their ability to deliver a deployable project given specific requirements.

View on HN

That sounds like a great way to do it; if I were an applicant, I would have liked process. (I am currently looking for jobs, and do have a recent experience of an on the spot test which I just hated).

I thought I'd try your step #2: I have no idea of the wall follower rule, and no prior experience in maze solving, but did bring it home in 18 minutes.

That included figuring out this particular Blockly UI (have admittedly seen similar UI with Dash and Dot, only at a much simpler level of doing non-branching, sample tutorials with my 6 year old boy), trying to design a simple program, reaching some dead ends / observing effects, and then realising what needed to be fixed.

I did use all the blocks for 17 lines of JS though, so perhaps better ways to do it, but thanks for that interesting little challenge at any rate. :-)

I'm guessing really smart people would have it done in just a few minutes.. Also monitoring son's cough (night time in Australia) to make sure it didn't get worse, for a bit of distraction.

(Edit: Brought it down to 1 spare block / 16 lines having a 2nd look after writing this comment.)

Hey!

You might be interested in a solution that uses less blocks (i would be). I might have been lucky, took me 2-3 minutes to find this.

https://blockly-games.appspot.com/maze?level=10#taj4p4

Does anyone know of a better one?

Edit: just as i posted this i saw that you dont even need the first "Move Forward", so it is 10 lines total with 4 blocks left

Had another look before I saw your comment, down to 3 blocks left now (12 lines). Thought my previous one was a bit messy, much better now, not sure if it can be optimised any further. Will check your link next. :)

EDIT: Nice. I was doing it slightly different to yours, https://blockly-games.appspot.com/maze?level=10#foif9x , two if statements instead would have fixed that, and the pattern becomes perfectly clear. Cheers. :)

5 blocks left (using 8 lines): https://blockly-games.appspot.com/maze?level=10#9zdu9f

But that's code bingo - fewer lines, but less efficient for the mouse.

The Blockly maze thing is interesting, but you should realize that you're implicitly biasing against people with poor spatial skills.

My ex-wife is a concert-level pianist who can remember texts (words) after only hearing them once. She's also, astonishingly bad at spatial tasks (gender stereotypes aside).

So unless you're hiring for computer graphics, or visualization or some-such, which has a clear spatial component, you're implicitly biasing against less-spatial people.

We are aware of this bias as our positions and projects often require such skills. I simply cannot hire someone who is unable to comprehend array sorting, vector math, etc.

I tried the blocky level. Got it in 17 lines of JS in about 10 minutes. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com