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Comment by duiker101 | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather spend 20 hours in a weekend doing an homework like this than inverting a binary tree on a whiteboard. At least I can actually show that I know something other than just sweating and look really dumb.

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Last time I was hiring an iOS dev, we had a cool 2 hour pairing session (it was supposed to be 1 hour, but time flies when you're having fun), doing something really simple in the scope of the project. He shown how he works, and tackles problems, answered some questions, got hired. You really can hire in a humane way, you just need to want it.

Pair programming tests are fair because the company is investing the same time as candidate, just like any interview.

Asking candidates to do tests on their own time is rude and dumb.

If it's worth your time, its worth my time. I am happy to do any interview testing and activities as long it is on location.

Any "homework" longer than an hour or so is disproportionally a burden on the candidate. I feel it is unethical and a dealbreaker for me.

Except when you deliver the homework, working, with tests, and then you receive a rejection with incorrect bikesheddy feedback , or even worse, no feedback at all.

What's wrong with that? If they leave feedback people can argue and claim it's invalid. Interviewing at a company isn't a free mentoring resource.

Professional or even human decency?

Candidate just devoted significant portion of an entire day with no compensation in hopes to work for you, you basically say 'no' and give nothing back.. its using peoples labor for free and trashing them.

Interviewing candidates also isn't a free labor source (in event that 'homework' has some professional use, which it often could)

Everything.

Other than obviously or blatantly incompetent coding, I'd expect that as a minimum, a code review would be a part of the equation.

This is similar to you working on a project, your boss looking over it, not saying a word, dragging it to the Recycle Bin, and walking off.

Because it's classless. You inveigle a candidate to spend their time on a test you owe them the courtesy of feedback.

I once spent two hours on a test for a contract development company. I'm an accomplished senior developer and normally i would have told them to F off, but I was curious so i did it. I did pretty well on it, but never got a response. Zip, nada, nothing. I emailed them multiple times and even called HR. Still no response.

Anytime other devs ask me about that company, i say don't waste your time, they are super shitty.

See it as minimum payment for the time the applicant spent on it. (feel free to disregard if you pay them for the time they spend on the homework with actual money)

I get your point, but this still applies to the binary tree... That's the interview process. Yes, companies can make a better effort to give feedback, but I think that's secondary to give me the right opportunity to show what I can do.

Maybe you should learn how to invert a binary tree and save your time instead of doing unpaid work for others.

Even better: spend some time becoming comfortable with the most basic data structures, so you don't need to 'learn' anything. Because if someone struggles to combine swapping two values with basic tree recursion, they're probably much less skilled a programmer than they think. Even if they can google the shit out of a simple iOS app at home.

Who cares, I'd rather not know this and look elsewhere than work with someone who had this sort of attitude

The problem, from my perspective, is you think this is something that needs to be 'known', rather than a basic skill. I think it is basic.

I don't want somebody who 'knows' how to invert a tree, any more than I want someone who's learned the answer to Fizzbuzz.

The point is not that you know how to do it, but that you can naturally perform basic manipulation of very simple data structures. If you can't swap two values, or you can't write recursive code, you may think you're a competent programmer, but I don't agree. What is basic, if that kind of thing is advanced?

If you think an employer expecting that level of competence has 'a sort of attitude', then I don't know what to say. How would you react to someone who felt that way when asked if they could code a loop over a pair of lists, or return a function from a function, or any thing else you consider routine (do you consider anything routine)?

It worries me that programming has become 'copying and pasting from Google' and that people would find it offensive that anyone could possibly have a higher standard than that. If that's a horribly elitist, unacceptably arrogant attitude to you, then again, I don't know what to say.

ah did you edit this? I noticed you wrote "you may think you're God's gift to programming, but you're wrong." before removing it (it was gone once I had refreshed). Did you realise you know nothing about me so saying something like that is ridiculous?

I just think people starting out should be supported and being arrogant about it doesn't really help anyone.

I did edit, sorry for the original wording. I also get myself into trouble using 'you', which I mostly meant 'one' rather than you specifically. You're right to call me out on it. Sorry again.

So, do you feel like answering the questions in my edited and toned down version?

I confess I am really struggling with this at the moment, because this kind of thing seems to keep coming up. And I honestly cannot figure out where I'm going wrong to expect programmers to be able to do this kind of thing.

> And I honestly cannot figure out where I'm going wrong to expect programmers to be able to do this kind of thing.

Adjust your expectations.

Nah. Programmers who write everything by googling+copy-pasting will eventually be replaced by robots. Which will be created by programmers who can come up with an algorithm on their own.

Thanks for the laugh today, I needed it.

Why would AI that good only end up replacing the 'shitty' coders?

Methinks you left the last and obvious/inevitable step out.

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