Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

I did a coding test with ChatGPT and supplied the prompt plus a screencast of me doing the coding test with ChatGPT.

Didn’t even get a phone interview.

I really don’t care though because coding tests are usually a silly waste of time and I’ve had my time completely burned by employers wanting coding tests to which they reply either nothing at all, or some one liner like “we didn’t like it”.

If you DO are coding test, agree to it only on condition they supply your their assessment methodology first …. a request to which very few employers would respond.

Coding tests are mostly arbitrary, meaningless, unscientific and evaluate nothing real world.

I say refuse coding tests and go to another employer.

View on HN

I’ve had my time wasted too

“We just want to see how you think”

really meaning they wanted unit tests, client side caching, and a particular design pattern

or really meaning they didn't want you to go outside the scope

or really meaning that they didn't even know that budget for their whole department could be revoked, so you wasted your time even if the single gatekeeper didn’t arbitrarily move the goal posts on you

in my experience, nobody can even tell you the details of what the “technical assessment“ will be, I’ve expected coderpads and instead gotten surprise screen sharing requests for using my own IDE, requiring an environment that isn’t even currently set up on that computer if I normally use a work laptop for the last who knows how long. I’ve NEVER seen a takehome project have some clear prewritten unit tests that the outcome had to conform to, I don't think this is a realistic request in this day and age.

I've definitely had bad experiences with take home tests, but well-run take home setups can be a lot nicer than phone-screens with live coding.

When I interviewed at my current employer they made it very clear that the take home was meant as a conversation starter, and everyone who gets a take-home made it to the on-site (virtual in this case since its a remote role). This removed the guess work into whether the test will be a waste of time, as there was a guaranteed on-site interview. The test itself was also a more accurate representation of a simpler version of problems that the team was working on, as opposed to a generic algorithm problem.

Overall this was the most positive interview loop I've ever bene through, and was a big factor in making a decision to say yes to the job offer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com