Hacker News Reader

Comment by externalreality | Hacker News Reader

I wish everyone thought that way but they don't. In today's rapid paced world if you don't know Rails (not even Ruby) but Rails, for example, and we're using it - then you ain't in... and here write this 8 hour code test so we can subjectively judge it because grading code tests to see if you don't put logic in your controllers make our egos hum.

View on HN

Maybe nitpicking certain micro-design choices isn't always helpful, and maybe it doesn't need to be a task requiring 8 hours, but I believe a "work sample" of actual code is the only technique that has any research backing it as a good way to evaluate potential hires.

If you're recruiting with a specific company and specific team that you love, sure. But I can't imagine committing multiple hours of my time to each random company's take-homes. As a rule I don't really do any take-homes - the couple I've done haven't been very useful in terms of my own time investment into the problems themselves, and the companies have not been worth it to go above and beyond.

This is my exact issue with take-home tasks: I can get to an onsite or a rejection with most other companies after a 15 minute recruiter call and a 45-60 minute technical phone screen. So, why do I want to do a 2+ hour homework assignment? Most of the time, there simply is no compelling reason to do so.

I greatly prefer take-homes, because I feel they show off the quality of what I can do under actual coding conditions (rather than the stress of live coding or the BS of whiteboard coding) but it does get a bit tiresome. Especially because it is rarely a 2 hour assignment, they can be 8-16 easy.

Recently I've had three or four interviews that didn't quite get to the job offer stage, but they did both include over 30 hours of work + interview steps. I'm sorry, but a full week's of unpaid work that I have to fit around my actual day job is just not practical, I know you want to make a good decision, but really...????

The best I've seen recently is a company that paid an hourly wage for 2 days worth of take-homes. Not consulting wages, but a good wage. It gives them incentives not to invite everyone in the world to do their test, and gives the interviewee something for their time.

> Recently I've had three or four interviews that didn't quite get to the job offer stage, but they did both include over 30 hours of work + interview steps.

This lines up exactly with my experience. 3-4 interviews, each requiring ~30 hours of technical tests, and interviewing. Absolutely ridiculous.

I wish there was like one long interview process I could go through - I do a bunch of technical work, I answer some standard questions on video, a bunch of companies review it all, and the ones that are interested schedule a 1-2 hour personal conversation to make sure we are a good fit.

I suppose that is what triple-byte is trying to do.

But really, we're all at-will employment, let's just work together for 3 months or so, see if you like my skills and I like your culture and if not just part ways - I'd even be happy to work at a wage cut for the first 3 months. But having a full-time job interviewing while working a full-time job is exhausting, esp when after 30+ (!!!) hours of interviews and conversations, you can be cut at the final stage without a single word about what went wrong.

Regardless of what Triplebyte is trying to do, they don’t actually work the way you suggest. You take a short, multiple choice quiz, then do a coding challenge and an interview. I believe the time investment is around 4 hours.

What you get is actual, real feedback on your performance, and you skip straight to onsites with companies they match you with. The feedback is valuable, but I don’t know how their matching process works at all.

What it _doesn’t_ do is “turn an O(n) process into an O(1) process,” as their FAQ suggests. All it saves you is 1 phone screen per company they match you with. If a typical phone screen is 45-60 minutes, and the time you spend on their process is 4 hours, you need to interview with 4-6 of their clients to make it worthwhile in terms of time savings.

IMO, don’t try Triplebyte to save yourself time. Do it for the interview feedback, because that’s the best place I know where you can get real feedback for free.

Ture, but for some companies the "technical phone screen" is multiple interviews + a take home. Etc.

If I get to skip 10+ hours of interviews and coding work, that's a significant time savings

This has become more worrisome of late since the number of workable toolchains seems to be increasing. The fraction of jobs in this town I could be eligible for (without a lot of tapdancing) is much smaller than it used to be, despite the fact that we aren't really doing all that much that's different than ten years ago.

well then fuck those companies. The people you work with will be the people who made it through that kind of filter.

Their other processes are probably equally terrible and their codebase is likely a nightmare. Make your money somewhere else. Really.

8 hour code test - you are an optimist! :D Recent trend in Silicon Valley is 1 week to 1 month (MVP) coding test in a hot area (e.g. Deep Learning), preferably coming with unique world-class solutions during that time :DDD And you get a phone interview only when you went to a Top 10 school.

In this market? I'd laugh in the interviewer's face. Like hell I'm doing a month of unpaid work for your "prestigious" opportunity.

Yes, if you are competing for high-end salaries/share %.

It's another way for them to age discriminate.

I guess, I just call it demanding I work for free, and that ain't gonna happen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com