Ask HN: Why do companies interview using Google Docs as a coding environment? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do companies interview using Google Docs as a coding environment?

Why do companies like Google and Asana push developers into writing "production quality" code in a non-IDE like Google Docs during tech screens?

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During coding interviews, I'm looking for the following evidence in a candidate:

1. how good is the candidate at problem solving?

2. is the candidate able to think in code?

3. are there any glaring syntax errors?

To assess the above three, a whiteboard, paper or Google Docs is sufficient. I'm not averse to using an IDE, just that the IDE's syntax checking hints will shift the candidate's focus to writing syntactically accurate code (#3) rather than on the problem (#1 and #2).

If all the interviewers were like that I'd be OK with using whatever they want. But one time I was doing a Python exercise on a google doc and I was missing a colon after an if statement. The guy had me for a couple of minutes trying to find my "error" without telling me it was syntax. The algorithm was correct.

The other problem I see is when you don't agree on something with the interviewer. One guy made me write some fictitious SQL queries on a doc and then asked me some questions. He was wrong about several things but we didn't have any way to test it. I was so shocked he didn't know that stuff that I had to tested after to see if I was actually wrong, but no.

I've never heard of this, and it's completely insane. It sounds like satire.

Stay away from companies that do this if you can. It indicates a deeply broken hiring culture.

lol it's literally the initial tech screen for Google

I think we're going a little bit crazy with the complaints about the tech interview process lately (I'm not a fan as well). Now it's the shared scratchpad to blame as well?

It's just a shared buffer that works pretty reliably and no interviewer cares about your typos or lack of indentation.

So, they're basically hiring humans to mimic the features of an IDE? Right, sounds like solid plan ...

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would do this. What this will achieve at best is optimising for rote learning and selecting for people who are capable of writing syntactically perfect code unassistedly. This however is an unrealistic scenario during daily development work because that's - among other things - what an IDE is for.

Problem analysis, mapping requirements to code, finding solutions in a deliberate rather than haphazard manner - these actually relevant aspects of software development aren't assessed at all by such a 'process'.

I'm part of my company's hiring guild. We are revamping the way we hire. Someone on the HR side proposed and almost got Google Docs as part of the tech screen and on site coding interviews. I successfully pushed back. The real goal is collaboration or collaborative editing, and that is just the first tool that jumps to mind. There are others. What I'm pushing for is just screen sharing (probably with zoom or hangouts) and the candidate uses their own computer or a loaner laptop.

It shows mastery of the language, one could argue. With the tools available today it makes development a lot faster and easier. Functions have tooltips on how to use it, you can scroll through the available functions, libraries imported, and more. While it is unpleasant, it is an exercise that demonstrates your independence from dev tools.

why do they care if you have memorized all of each languages specific apis when you can easily look them up on the fly with intellisense or similiar. My own pet peeve since being super dyslexic despite being a solid programmer I memorize very little just the general idea and capability of how different constructs generally work across languages.

My biggest issue is hitting spacebar 20 times in a row. I usually work in Python via Vim so Google Docs is a pure shitshow for me.

"Do you want tabs or spaces?"

> "Spaces please"

"Fuck... okay I guess..."

For what it's worth, when I do coding interviews, I really don't care if the candidate calls the function at() or get() or find(), whatever that particular library in that particular language actually has, as long as their usage of the supposed function is appropriate in the language.

I've transitioned away from spending too much on coding and mostly ask stylistic open ended questions although I still do some coding when interviewing a candidate. As a dyslexic though the current industry white board interviewing process is a poor indicator of how I actually perform in the real world.

I don't know if they are ok with you taking the liberty to make some changes to google docs.

There is an add on called Code Blocks that you can install on google docs for free. Huge language support - but don't expect it to be a fully functional ide.

Other than that, you'll want to turn off auto-capitalization, and spell checking from Tools->Preferences.

Worse is better. It's an easy place to do collaborative editing. For google specifically, I think they leverage some google docs automation for capturing artifacts for hiring committee in their interview workflow.

It's not though. They expect shit to run afterwards. As someone who primarily writes Python (whitespace matters) in Vim (it's universal), having to code in Google Docs is a horrifying experience

They expect shit to run afterwards.

No reasonable interviewer expects you to write perfect code on a whiteboard or in a non-IDE editor. I'm sure there are plenty of unreasonable interviewers, which is an indicator that you don't want to work for them.

That was my thought, but I got syntax complaints after my first tech screen with Google. Now Asana is asking me to do the same so I'm hesitant to even move forward.

Never heard of this, is this an actual thing?

Yes, happens very often.

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