Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

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I've written code in a few job interviews (and been in the opposite position, asking someone to write code in an interview). In all cases they were more interested (rightly so) about the conversation around the interpretation of the question, discussion over the analysis of the problem and logic required to satisfy the problem. The act of writing the code was very much secondary. Like "now prove you could implement what you just described". Decontextualised appraisal of the resultant code written seems somewhat to be missing the point. Perhaps other places do things differently but this seems to be based on a shallow analysis of the interview process as I have experienced it.

I can see that there are facilities for discussion in the app, but when the examples say "this guy's fast" and show up and down-voting based on scores, and then arriving at a hiring recommendation based on those scores... that seems to point squarely at a mechanical hiring process. Then again it says "top coder" rather than "best software engineer" or "most competent developer". Maybe it's a cultural thing.

I agree with you that "This guy is fast" is not the right way to judge but we just meant to demonstrate rating feature. Every interviewer can rate and judge in a subjective way.

Disclaimer: I am part of remoteinterview.io team.

I once worked with some very, very successful direct marketing people, and along the way gathered some stellar advice on common advertising tropes. One of these is, "don't talk down to your audience."

Few people challenge this axiom of marketing, but the real insight lies in identifying what's "talking down". It's easy to assume that you must intend to talk down to your audience in order to fall in to this trap, but it's just as easy for down-talking elements to enter your marketing organically.

"This guy is fast" talks down to your audience because it assumes that there is no more subtle way to illustrate the rating feature, which can also be understood by your audience.

You should change this ASAP. The people conducting coding interviews are often programmers, and this overly simplistic means of evaluation will make them feel objectified in a big way. They will associate that objectification with this tool, and they will avoid it at all cost.

Speed of response is surely a valid metric.

The "upvote" I noticed was something along the lines of "very good string manipulation".

The audience of course is people who want to hire "coders" and not simply anyone that might fall under that description. Wouldn't they be doing themselves a disservice by assuming that none of their target market are interested in how fast a candidate can arrive at and implement a solution?

Perhaps you're being a bit too touchy? It is of course a normal human response to being put under the spotlight in such a way as to reduce your worth to basic metrics.

I for one, do take speed as a measure too when interviewing a candidate. This and how quick he came up with a solution, very much show how good the candidate is.

But like any test-taking situation speed depends upon your frame of mind. Candidate can clutch because they're hyper-aware of the time pressure. Not how they'd normally behave. SO there's a lot of noise in that measure.

I agree, also, as a programmer I don't usually like someone looking at my code over my shoulder.

Of course it's a nuanced process, and how a marketing person imagined using the facility. But if a marketing person interprets the facility that way, people hiring position may too. People adapt to tools.

None of the above is to say that I don't think this tool has a place.

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