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Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

I would like to see a compilation of companies that aren't requiring a "coding project" as part of their interview process. I much prefer to write on a whiteboard as part of an onsite interview than to do a "coding project" for every single company that "might" be interested in me.

My experience lately has been an immediate request to complete a coding project right after speaking to a recruiter but before speaking to anyone technical. And perhaps the height of absurdity I have even had automated emails saying "thank you for you interest we invite you to complete this coding challenge/project."

Are you really expected to do one of these now for every single company you send your CV?

The whiteboards seems far more respectful of people's time at least.

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> The whiteboards seems far more respectful of people's time at least.

Some companies will happily bring you on site for a full round even though they have no idea whether there is an open position for you (infamous example, you can pass Google's hiring committee and then be told there's no headcount). And you've just wasted one day off.

On the other hand, take-home projects can be used in a way that saves everyone a lot of time. I don't disagree with you, they shouldn't be used for screening though.

>"Some companies will happily bring you on site for a full round even though they have no idea whether there is an open position for you (infamous example, you can pass Google's hiring committee and then be told there's no headcount)."

In practice though this is kind of rare especially for the larger SV companies. I'm not saying it's never happened but that Google incident sounds like an anomaly.

How do take home projects save time if they take between 4 - 8 hours? That's the same time as an onsite takes. The difference being that before a company brings you onsite there has probably been at least a technical phone screen or two so the candidate has ben "qualified" to some extent no?

Not everyone lives in the SV. If you interview at a satellite branch of a company that has a big and generic interviewing pipeline, it can definitely happen.

I can do a 4 hour[1] assignment on my own time, assuming I'm not given an unreasonable deadline. For a full round of interviews on site, I need to take a day off. That's a huge difference to me.

[1] I've rarely been given any assignment taking more than 2-3 hours, I would flat out refuse anything that can take more than 4.

Edit: oh and I can give you a very long list of companies that thought I was "qualified" after 1/2/3 phone screens, wasted a lot of my time afterwards, and ended up deciding I wasn't :)

I am interested in this too. I recently failed netflix code review because I used java 7 instead of java 8 which apparently showed them I don't keep up with new technology (even tough the question asked me to pick any language on jvm.) Other reasons given to me were that i used maven instead of gradle.

https://medium.com/@meowlicious99/my-software-engineer-inter...

I guess you can consider yourself lucky, I would not want to work for such company.

> all my open source code is written in java 8 for him to look

That completely defeats the purpose of a small, self-contained assignment like the one you were given. And your code isn't even in Java 7 (no diamonds), I think it was a legitimate remark.

You think it would be helpful to let the candidates know what they would be evaluated for in the coding assignment.

I would have dazzled them with java 8 if I knew I was going to be rejected a based on that :D

I was under the impression that this was the usual algorithm/data structure/complexity rigamarole, not show us latest language features.

Yes this patently absurd. I am guessing you weren't allowed to discuss your code or choices with anyone either correct?

Yikes! They'd probably bury me if I used COBOL!

Presumably a lot fewer people send in completed coding projects, so you are competing against fewer other candidates.

If you are good at selling yourself, whiteboard interviews are awesome.

If you are nervous in interview situations, starting with a project could be an advantage.

Edited to add: coming in for a whiteboard interview will also take few hours of your time (or longer if you need to travel). A sample project can be done whenever you want.

I don't think that this is a proper justification for sending coding projects to everyone who submitted a CV. This is a big imbalance in time investment from both sides and quite disrespectful from the applications point of view.

It's not disrespectful for a company to ask you to write a little code for them. They're just as invested on the time front as you are since they have to read and analyze what you send them.

Now, if you were to tell me that nobody ever looked at the test after you sent it in, then it becomes disrespectful. I had several companies do that to me a few months ago.

Not that it matters much. I don't think code tests will stick around. It's too time consuming for the hiring managers.

A little time is fine but last time I was applying for developer jobs almost all of these tasks would take at least an hour to complete, probably more like two or three to do it in a way I'm willing to show to someone screening me on that basis.

By requiring these tasks you're implicitly screening not only people who can't code but also people who don't have three hours to spend on applying to your company. If all you want is 20-somethings with no other responsibilities then continue as you are, but if you'd like to see a bit of diversity then you're going to have to compromise.

But this is an endless cycle. At some point, the company has to apply some test to see if the candidate is appropriate, IE, can code to the required standard. That will require a time investment from the candidate.

You could simply get rid of the take home test; that will shift the burden to the resume and cover letter, to the advantage of humanities graduates like me.

You could mandate a full day on-site, which will bias against people from out of town who want to relocate and people in delicate situations at their current employer.

For the time poor candidate, there is always the whiteboard exercise... Whose biases we are gathered here to moan about in the first place.

I always feel in these threads that people think hiring is 'broken' and it can be 'fixed' with the proper application of 'one weird trick'. But then all the comments actually have contradictory complaints. So obviously it can't.

I'm not really advocating for getting rid of take home tests entirely. There's a lot of value in seeing how someone approaches a known problem and being able to compare that to other solutions.

What I am asking is that companies don't ask me to invest hours of time before they decide if they're even interested in talking to me. At the very least I want to have had a phone interview and the chance to assess whether I'm even interested in working for you. That's particularly relevant when looking for remote friendly employers, I've had several calls in recent days from recruiters responding to me saying I'm looking for remote work which I stopped on finding out what they meant was "at least three months fulltime on site, and then maybe we'll talk about some remote work".

This is exactly what I meant. Home tests are totally fine, given there is some reasonable interest from the company already.

Home test is totally fine after a phone call or a two. However, they are not fine at all just after submitting an application and no real contact.

>"What I am asking is that companies don't ask me to invest hours of time before they decide if they're even interested in talking to me."

I feel like this is the crux of it as well. I am not against projects or tests to show I am technically qualified. But this should be after talking to some potential team mates to see if there is even a fit, personally, work culture-wise, technical interest or any number of factors that you could glean by speaking to potential colleagues for 20 or 30 minutes.

An hour of time for a homework is completely fine. A whiteboard interview would consume much more of both party's time. Just travelling there and back can easily take an hour of applicant's time.

I used to invite people for an interview without any prior testing, but it was generally such a big waste of time for both me and applicant. What's more, quite often I can see from CV that someone is underqualified, but I do not want to reject them immediately without giving them a chance, so I send them a homework. Finally, you would be surprise how often even people with good CVs turn out to be quite bad.

Hmm. One of the best exercises I ever had to solve took me almost a day. [1] I have actually rewritten it twice, once in the manner they said they would have wanted it (same repo) and once in Python. (I didn't get the job, they didn't like the style I was using.)

I don't mind long coding exercises, it's what I do all day anyway. Better than watching yet another episode of NCIS or what have you :)

[1] https://github.com/mdpopescu/public/tree/master/SocialNetwor...

To the people who say spending "4 hours is more like 6-8 hours and it is unreasonable":

- How is this any different than spending an unreasonable amount of time studying balancing binary trees and similar trivial whiteboarding problems?

I'm of the opinion that studying all these variations of the algorithm problems is a bigger time-sink and waste of time than getting into the habit of problem solving a take-home project.

>"It's not disrespectful for a company to ask you to write a little code for them. "

Except in practice it seems that its not a "little code" its a 4 hour project that is usually closer to a 6 or 8 hour project in reality.

If you're hiring backend engineers, code tests can be easily automated away on the correctness and efficiency aspects. Add lint on top and and an engineer eyeballing the style for a few minutes. Voilà, 4 reports per employee hour.

If it's automated, or direct from a recruiter - chances are the company hasn't even read my CV. Or looked at any of the previous work I've included. Of course it's disrespectful.

Would you prefer them looking at your CV and immediately reject you without giving you a chance == test?

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>"Why would a company look at your CV? At best, it's full of exaggeration. At worst, outright lies."

So by your reasoning CVs are not meaningful at all. Should we get rid of them? Why stop there though, should we not even discuss past projects we have worked on in interviews since those are also likely exaggerations and possibly outright lies?

Yea but the process is never just coding project... It's either just whiteboard interviews or a coding project and then whiteboard interviews. There's never a reduction in time here

> sample project can be done whenever you want.

And also take a few hours of time, and possibly more.

I would not do a project before a basic phone or email interview. They should be screening candidates before sending projects.

You might be interested in this: http://they.whiteboarded.me/companies-that-whiteboard.html

Do you have any examples of companies that have asked this of you? I'd actually really like to apply; that seems like a fantastic way to gain some experience outside of my daily job.

Zalando, Bloomberg(you won't get to speak to anyone, immediately asked for code), Soundcloud(speak to a recruiter but nobody technical and then asked for a code project before)

These are just off the top of my head, however theres no shortage.

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