I believe it. Even with the take home assignment people lie and cheat.
We had one person who literally hired a team in India to do it for him. Presumably planning to give his work to them later if he was hired.
432 karma · joined September 18, 2013
We had one person who literally hired a team in India to do it for him. Presumably planning to give his work to them later if he was hired.
I had someone try to implement a whole relational database when the interview task was just to read from a CSV file and provide a REST API to the contents of said file using any tech stack. Impressive for sure, but unnecessary time wasted.
> The "probationary employment" would be more like, I don't know, a gift card, or something, vs. something formal.
We discussed something like that in the company. Mainly because someone asked to be paid for the time spent on the "homework" assignment. We came to the conclusion that there is no real legal way for us to do so. We probably spent more money on discussing the possibility of paying the candidate then what 1 day of work would have cost us, but the cost wasn't even the issue.
With an in person interview there was maybe a chance. Inviting the candidate out to the exchange, giving a tour of the trading floor and then paying for transportation, lunch, dinner and hotel would be no problem.
Though interviews are online now as we are a "remote first" company anyways.
We just can't pay for work without a contract, insurance, tax and background checks in place. We can however ask them to complete a test. Which is what the "homework" assignment is.
> More often than not, a non-interested company will often not even tell why they didn't pass the assessment, and it generally feels like a waste of time.
It sucks. It just is that nothing positive can come from providing feedback and you open yourself up for a lawsuit.
We can't hire everybody. I can't hire 20 people (then fire 19 of them) for the 1 position in the 8 Person team I want to fill. That can't work.
Just hiring someone and then firing them 2 weeks later is expensive as fuck. We can't just do that until we find someone actually competent.
Your "easy solution" is only easy if you don't think about it at all.
I do not know how it works with CEO positions, but I am not hiring CEOs. I do hire software engineers and would like to work with competent people.
If you know of a better way then I would like to hear it.
> interactive session, you get instant feedback (either verbally or via emotional cues) into what they are expecting.
For some people, like myself, that is a nightmare scenario. I do not do well in these type of sessions. Which are also not even close to reflecting the real work we do. There are absolutely no meetings I go into that I can't prepare for [1] and there are absolutely no meetings where I have to solve a problem on the spot.
Being on the autism spectrum also means "emotional cues" are pretty lost on me.
There is also the fact that interviews have to be during normal working hours. Some people prefer to do a "homework" assignment which they can do in an evening or weekend.
This is again why we provide the choice. Not everyone is the same and prefers different interview and assessment routes. Both types are useful for different people.
> If a homework assignment is necessary, it would be better if that were more of a "probationary employment" type scenario, perhaps at a very reduced amount of pay, to only imply that both parties actually have skin in the game.
Really? You would refuse a "homework" assignment, but would agree to "probationary employment"? The later just sounds like WAY more work on both sides.
We have discussed something like this in the company I work for, but came to the conclusion that it just is way too much work. Getting the contracts in place and working out the insurance and tax implications and all that. It just is way too much work to do legally, because it would be the same amount of work to just hire them. However: we can't just hire everyone.
Maybe if you are already a freelancer beforehand then we could work something out that way, but in the jurisdiction I am in not every software engineer is ready to accept freelance contracts. It is a simpleish process to do, but not everyone does and those that do don't apply for full time positions.
[1] You can "prepare" for interviews, but more in a scatter shot approach studying all the interview questions that could possibly be asked. That is not what I mean. There is no meeting I am going into where I do not know the precise topic that the meeting is about.
That seems to be the wrong question though. It seems to be jeopardy style "question". You are not asking which data structure is appropriate for a problem.
Here is the answer, but what is the problem it solves.
Never in my live have I sat down and said: I don't know what problem is I need to solve, but I know the solution is a binary tree.
No, it is because some people have worked at very impressive jobs and probably just clack on keyboards all day and actually did nothing while there, so when you hire them you learn that they actually can't do the job you hired them for. You just can not rely on the CV alone.
In the hiring process there has to be some kind of skill test. If it is not a "homework" then it has to be a whiteboard/live coding/system design type of interview and there are a ton of problems with this type of skill test as well.
We usually give people the choice which route the candidate would like to do. Take a 1 hour interview or a "homework" assignment which took me about 1 hour to solve. Which is probably best because some people really prefer the homework because they get nervous in interviews.
> Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you?
I do not know how attorneys or surgeons are hired, but my guess is that the education side of these jobs lines up much closer what is actually needed to do the job (which isn't really the case with Computer Science) and that when they claim to have done X or Y then it was actually them in court or at the operation table and not someone else from their team.
Clients select their attorney based on reputation of the attorney or the law firm they work for. For Surgeons it is probably similar. If you have the choice you want to go to the hospital with the best reputation. If the company you apply to already knew your name and reputation beforehand then the skill test is probably also not necessary, but that is not usual in my experience.
It also probably helps that both of those jobs require a Professional License to practice these jobs. Maybe if the software industry introduced a Bar Exam then these "homework" assignments would not be needed anymore.
> Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy?
Usually you can. At least in my experience. Not fo 5-8 hours of course, but long enough to know.
If you know of a better way to hire people: I would be happy to listen.
Twitter Verification is only verifying that the account is "authentic, notable, and active".
Nothing about the Verification Process changed. At least I have not heard about any changes other then the price change from free to $8.
Why this restriction on public-facing code? Are you OK with Copilot being used for "private"/closed source code? I get that it would be less likely to be noticed if the code is not published, but (if I understand right) is even worse for license reasons.
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Wowhead is owned by the same company and this is their reasoning: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/a-good-tip-for-peopl...
That is a Swedish site and as a foreign organisation, they are exempt from the Imprint requirement in Germany.
Imprint is generally something that should be present on a german website, though it isn't really enforced. You could get sued though if you don't have it.
Even if I had introduced a standup meeting or status meeting, I don't think I could have gotten my manager to participate in that. What exactly would that have done? If you work under a shit manager none of what you suggest would have helped.
When I was doing IT Support for employees of this one company I certainly got questioned why they pay me and what I do all day when everything worked. They would certainly notice very quickly when I wasn't doing it and they did notice quickly that things where not working anymore when I left and wasn't keeping these things running anymore. This was when I was going into the office every day and I think this would be even worse if I was doing this from Home.
No one had a clue about what I do all day. The same way that I have no clue who does payroll at my current employer or what they do all day, but I would very quickly notice if they decided to slack off.
The problem is that there wasn't really any way to track my performance or any way for me to show that I did actually work. The systems for that just where not there. So the only way my manager evaluated me was by me clocking in and clocking out every day at the front desk.
I am not sure if that is what you mean, but to me it sounds like they might have purposefully put there so that it works like a thermal fuse.
Known? It seems like many people are disagreeing with you. Who knows that it is offensive? Who decided? Can you tell me or did you just write it in this way to avoid saying directly that it is just your personal opinion that this word is offensive?
You apparently have never been sued for your managers decisions.
Here is how that was for me:
My manager released something I worked on, despite me saying that it would need a few more months of work. Apparently that would have made this unprofitable, so he disregarded my advice and they released it anyways. I joined the company when this project was already a Year late. So it was not surprising that this project was close to costing more than the customer would pay.
Except for a few interns, I was the newest dev in the company, so I didn't push super hard for more work on this project. However I was the most experienced dev on the team, so I should have pushed more.
Or should have at least got it in writing that they decided against my recommendation.
When it eventually crashed and caused a 30 minutes outage I was fired.
Why? Because it was my code that was the problem of course. Never mind the fact that I told them it is not ready and that the error wasn't even code that I WROTE. Some intern wrote that part. I wasn't a lead or manager and had nothing to do with it.
They then tried to sue me for more money then they ever paid me. 30 minutes of factory outage can be very expensive which they of course tried to recuperate out of my bank account.
I was very lucky that I had a good lawyer. Actually I could only afford a very junior lawyer, but he was sick on the day of trial and asked his professor to go instead. I was probably super lucky with that one.
I have never in my live used a check or seen one outside of movies.
Food stalls I agree are more hit or miss.
How is this fact not seen as a complete failure of hiring practices or company/team leadership?
I would bet he doesn't or at least thinks the minimum requirements are overkill, otherwise why would he make a remark like he did?
The point is that when a legend like Carmack doesn't make the MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS maybe there is something wrong with the requirements.
In other words: Industry legend ALMOST makes minimum requirements.
I know what you are saying, but it is absolutely crazy to me that they would post a job ad with Minimum Requirements even someone like Carmack doesn't have. Not to mention the "Preferred Requirements".
Maybe they should make their Minimum Requirements more realistic or stop calling them minimum if they are not actually minimum requirements.
Not to mention that Air to Air missiles have a range in the tens of kilometers and the MIG-29 has sensors to observe the aircraft up to 100 km away.
I don't think any of the passengers would have been aware in the slightest if the MIGs where flying 5 km behind the passenger aircraft.
I just forget what the status of each application was or is. When did I apply, when was the last communication and what was discussed. I just don't want to worry about any of it, so I write it down.
I wouldn't use an app like this because I would simply create another spreadsheet when I need it again, but I can see how it would be useful even for a small number of companies to track.
I grant you that they are different forms of federal republic, but the point that California is not a country stays the same.
I don't care what kind of power the federal government of the United States has or doesn't have. That is a problem for the US to figure out for themselves.
I don't think that when people compare European nations to the US that they are speaking about the US federal government specifically or imply anything about the power of the US federal government. What is more likely is that they are asking why the people of the USA have not archived what people of other countries take for granted. The fact that this would have to be archived via state or federal government is a detail at best.
That statement is not true at all.
I give you that California has about half of Germanys population, but it is not a country. California is a State. Germany is a country and the membership in a political union like the EU does not make it a state.