Hacker News Reader

Comment by Psilidae | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it? That doesn't sound too bad. A brief interview with candidates, a short take home project, and then a final interview seems quite reasonable. There are tons of people applying for jobs, and companies want to make sure candidates care and are actually capable of programming; how else are they supposed to gauge someone's abilities? Just ask how merge sort works, then hand that Rock Star Software Engineer their 100k job?

I like this statement from the replies there: "People here really think a $90k job is owed to them for getting a piece of paper and meeting a few times and answering a few questions right."

I don't know how people are getting hung up on 4-6 hours for a task. I won't even rate any of my software tasks less than 2-4 hours in scrum, because I know that with planning and/or testing no non-trivial task takes just an hour.

View on HN

4-6 hours for one interview is fine. For 10-30 positions?

When you already have a 60+ hour role and may also have travel+++ ?

When other firms are moving faster to the real meat of the process?

If you assume a freshly graduated engineer with the summer off who is only applying to your firm, then a 10 hour assignment is reasonable. Heck an unpaid internship for the summer is fine for both sides.

If you're in a competitive market hiring for reasonably normal positions, you'll have a bad time.

Firms that are offering unique, incredibly highly compensated, strategic positions can require substantial effort and investment by candidates. Or firms where there is so much competition for a few roles that they can be exceptionally demanding despite low pay and poor conditions.

You need to make an honest assessment of where you really fit to see if your demands are reasonable.

> 4-6 hours for one interview is fine. For 10-30 positions?

Exactly! When time commitment is symmetrical, the companies would only move forward with candidates they are seriously considering to hire. Because for a 4 hour interview session with a candidate, they have to invest at least 4 hours of their engineers' time. Probably more, as there is typically more than one interviewer present at a time.

The company may spend only 10 minutes on average to review an assignment. Most of the submissions are dismissed in the first 5 minutes for something trivial or subjective. The more interesting ones get more attention, maybe 30 minutes of the company's time. Suddenly, "interviewing candidates" get cheaper. And as is the case with supply and demand, decreased price increases consumption.

Before, the company would have invited only 10 candidates for an in-depth interview for each position. Taking 4 hours of the time of each candidate, 40 hours in total, and spending 40 hours themselves. Now, they can give assignments to 240 candidates. That would waste about 1000 hours of candidates' time, while taking the same 40 hours from company time.

If it catches on, for every job, instead of sending 100 resumes, having 20 phone interviews and 5 in-person interviews (arbitrary numbers), you would have to send the same 100 resumes, get 20 phone interviews and 20 assignments, plus a couple of in-person interviews. Suddenly the cost of getting jobs increases multiple times for the candidate, while staying the same for the company.

This is not good.

My partner is an accountant, shortly to be a CPA. She's capable of making $90K a year. If she, or anyone she knows in the field was told "Hey, here's a set of books. Bring them back, balanced." was a part of her interview experience?

There wouldn't be an interview.

> I don't get it? That doesn't sound too bad. A brief interview with candidates, a short take home project, and then a final interview seems quite reasonable.

Maybe because once you have finished there's a fair chance they won't even tell you what they think?

This thing is often deeply asymmetrical and smart people realize this and try to avoid it.

In other words: if it is well known that doing the assignment will lead to a real on site interview, meeting the team etc you'll probably see more experienced people take the test.

Hey, even just being known for giving real feedback would put you in the upper tiers.

(Is it this bad? Yes! I've crossed the mountains to be told they couldn't interview me that day. I've been held waiting for months, been told under no unclear terms that my results where almost perfect, - then radio silence.)

"I like this statement from the replies there: "People here really think a $90k job is owed to them for getting a piece of paper and meeting a few times and answering a few questions right.""

At the same time, these companies are complaining about there being a "developer shortage".

Because that's how it was 10-5 years ago. One on-site interview for couple of hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com