Hacker News Reader

Comment by coffee | Hacker News Reader

> you have a very tangible chance of spending 12 hours doing it and hearing nothing back at all

...which is so very frustrating. It's painful to read things like this:

> That was all we asked; we intentionally left it open-ended. Some people tried to impress us with huge, elaborate apps that used different services and engines.

The people hiring viewed this as a trivial, small, meaningless ask. They are proud to have "intentionally left it open-ended."

Some potential candidates did not (through their own example) view this as trivial, they went ahead and poured a ton of time into it and most likely were "replied with well wishes" as the company moved on.

It's irresponsible.

View on HN

Yes, companies need to be up front about roughly how much time they expect candidates to spend.

That said, if a candidate spends 12 hours or 10,000 lines coding up tic-tac-toe, the company is not entirely to blame here...

> the company is not entirely to blame here...

I clearly hear what you're saying, and I understand your stance on it. But I can't agree with it.

The burden is on the folks hiring in my opinion.

This is not a "real life" scenario. It should be a SHORT assesment (for both parties). If you were employed within a company as an engineer and you received a nebulus spec (or no spec at all), the burden is then on you to identify, educate, and communicate.

Not during a pre-interview (for the chance and maybe being blessed enough to get a full interview with this world changing company).

Your line of argumentation seems to argue the opposite: since it's the candidate who's the prospective engineer, wouldn't that imply that it's their job to clarify the nebulous spec?

FWIW, many of the FAANGs are famous for asking intentionally underspecified questions, and the candidate preparing properly by figuring out what's in scope and what's not is part of the scoring. But at least in an interview you're timeboxed to 45 or 60 minutes!

> Your line of argumentation seems to argue the opposite

Hmmmmm... I'd say that "my point of view" differs from yours, and does not fall in line with common group think. Cognitive biases are typically pushed back on, even when they are in your favor.

> since it's the candidate who's the prospective engineer, wouldn't that imply that it's their job to clarify the nebulous spec

Gosh, no. You have it backwards my friend. It's a real opportunity cost on your part to think like that. It's a tactic for some to offload the work onto others so they don't have to spend the time doing it.

> FWIW, many of the FAANGs are famous for asking intentionally underspecified questions

99% (or more) of the startups/companies out there are not FAANG's. They are not the litmus test on how to effectively interview. They have candidates FIGHTING each other for a position at their company. Not the other way around.

> wouldn't that imply that it's their job to clarify the nebulous spec?

Maybe, except when you try to clarify and their answer is that it's open-ended -- and yet they want something super specific in the end. And the super specific things are just one of many tech opinions and not objectively good design.

> FWIW, many of the FAANGs are famous for asking intentionally underspecified questions, and the candidate preparing properly by figuring out what's in scope and what's not is part of the scoring.

Why is this a good thing though? Why is solving riddles in a professional interview somehow ok?

This is a lot harder to do when your contact person (often a recruiter or HR person) won't be the one evaluating the code.

Even moreso if you only have nights/weekends to work on it.

Ehh I get where you’re coming from but look at it this way. What if you had a child and they got an assignment from their teacher that simply said, “Write an essay on Clean Code. This will count for 90% of your final grade.” You have 2 weeks to submit.

That’s it. No further instructions.

How happy would you be with the instructions from that teacher? What advice would you give to your child?

While the company isn’t entirely to blame for how much time is spent, they are being irresponsible to a degree.

I would advise my child to follow up with the teacher regarding their expectations. "Assume and you make an ass of u and me".

Great advice which I’ve attempted with companies before. Twist - they don’t clarify expectations. Perhaps because it’s meant to be vague like in the linked article. What do you do then?

I reconsider if this is a company I really want to work for...

Eh, I dunno most candidates know this is criteria used to judge them against others going with a simple/quick solution just to demonstrate competence is an easy to way to miss out on a job

I personally hate it, where I work we do this to people and you can tell just how long they spent on these things, and god knows how many they have had to knock out as part of a job search

I tried to end the practice but got a lot of resistance

This, big time.

Leaving people to guess at their own evaluation criteria is disrespectful, and implicitly biases in favor of people who have lots of free time/energy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com