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Good Will Hrunting posted:"Is there anything we can do?" I suspect this next one will be exactly that. It doesn't help that I always seem to get this irrational sense of guilt whenever I resign from somewhere.
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Jun 8, 2018 16:04
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Blotto Skorzany posted:Takehomes are a great way to screen out potential employees who have families (which I guess is great if you're Catbert and want to cut insurance costs). If I'm looking for a new job, I'm going to try to interview at about three or four places in a short time span - this is feasible if each company expects me to have a quick chat with a recruiter, an hour remote interview with an engineer, and a half-day onsite interview loop. If they all want me to do a weekend project for them, no bueno. Evenings and the weekend are reserved for my wife and kids, gently caress you very much. Even if I were single I don't think I'd want to sink that much time into interviewing. The flaws of the "data structures and algorithms class redux" approach that has been in vogue for a few years are way less onerous than this. A take home doesn’t need to take a weekend. Ours is expected to take, like, an hour. And there’s still enough to talk about.
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Jun 8, 2018 16:04
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Good Will Hrunting posted:"Is there anything we can do?" Other than "no" or "sigh *unzips*", what kind of answer would anyone expect to this question? Honestly curious why they even would bother asking.
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Jun 8, 2018 16:18
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Blotto Skorzany posted:Other than "no" or "sigh *unzips*", what kind of answer would anyone expect to this question? Honestly curious why they even would bother asking. At my last job, they asked me how a $30k raise would be. I told them "no" and didn't mention I got a $40k raise from my current company because I just said "culture".
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Jun 8, 2018 16:20
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Blotto Skorzany posted:Other than "no" or "sigh *unzips*", what kind of answer would anyone expect to this question? Honestly curious why they even would bother asking. They're hoping you'd say "oh actually I don't mind that I've been paid below market wages for years, I'll accept a raise to what I should have been making all along."
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Jun 8, 2018 16:22
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:They're hoping you'd say "oh actually I don't mind that I've been paid below market wages for years, I'll accept a raise to what I should have been making all along." I had a company offer to pay for grad school after I told them that one of the reasons I was leaving was the new place had great education benefits. I was just being polite and using the benefits as an excuse, but I don't think I've ever gotten angrier at management than after that bullshit.
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Jun 8, 2018 16:28
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BurntCornMuffin posted:But...this whole industry is bad at task estimates. Extremely true. That's why the communication piece is so crucial. If I send a candidate a take-home (which we don't actually do) imo the worst thing is radio silence.
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Jun 8, 2018 17:24
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Blinkz0rz posted:Extremely true. That's why the communication piece is so crucial. If I send a candidate a take-home (which we don't actually do) imo the worst thing is radio silence. BurntCornMuffin posted:But...this whole industry is bad at task estimates.
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Jun 8, 2018 17:38
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JawnV6 posted:Because the new place is just so awesome! There's nothing wrong with your current place and it's a shame you have this great opportunity that you just can't turn down. Absolutely nothing wrong. This. You can also tell them you were contacted directly by a recruiter, you weren't looking to leave.
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Jun 8, 2018 17:42
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OTOH at job-2 I told them straight out that their incredibly high turnover meant there was absolutely 0 institutional knowledge kept and there weren't really any opportunities to properly grow. It hasn't caused me any pain yet 
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Jun 8, 2018 17:46
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I'm just going to say "I don't feel like the issues we discussed are being addressed" if they ask me (I've spoken to HR and CTO multiple times about Big Boss's toxicity).
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Jun 8, 2018 17:48
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Blinkz0rz posted:Tbh that's a pretty good data point, isn't it? If I'm hiring and use a takehome, someone who feels like it's not worth their time without communicating that the task is more complex than the time allocated is a useful indication to me that we probably don't want to hire this person as they're either a primadonna or, more likely, aren't great at task estimation or communicating issues. You sure make a lot of assumptions. I told them very specifically why I wasn't going to do their take-home assignment and was open to a reasonable one. I don't see any reason to cater to unreasonable demands from a company when the best paying companies don't require it.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:09
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Xarn posted:OTOH at job-2 I told them straight out that their incredibly high turnover meant there was absolutely 0 institutional knowledge kept and there weren't really any opportunities to properly grow. You got lucky, then. There's always the chance (larger than you might think) for your statements to reflect badly on a superior who then takes steps to sabotage your career because they're an insane petty bureaucrat. If the company can't figure out that their high turnover is a problem without someone explicitly telling them, then they deserve to fail. Odds are that they already know that and have decided for whatever reason that they'd rather have the high turnover than take steps to fix it.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:12
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If your take home assignment can’t be completed in the time allotted that’s on the people who came up with it. If I’m doing an assignment like that I would be afraid of saying “this is too big for X time” cause the response is at best “that’s ok, try anyway” and at worst radio silence and then a form rejection.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:15
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Why not sit someone at a laptop in an interview room and have them do like, an interview where they write code, then an interview where they run some tests or write tests for that code and the like? Turn the internet off, take their phone away, whatever. This seems like a decent solution to me and my ideal interview was probably this last go-around.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:20
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Why would you turn the internet off/take phone away if your goal is to evaluate how they would behave as a productive employee? Give them access to the internet, turn on a screen recorder, and if their coding style is "copy and paste from stack overflow with no critical thought" then you know.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:25
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The Fool posted:Why would you turn the internet off/take phone away if your goal is to evaluate how they would behave as a productive employee? That's a bit big brother to me, but sure, fine, whatever, semantics.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:28
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Would you feel better if the interviewer stayed in the room?
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Jun 8, 2018 18:41
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:You got lucky, then. There's always the chance (larger than you might think) for your statements to reflect badly on a superior who then takes steps to sabotage your career because they're an insane petty bureaucrat. I feel like this is only a realistic fear if the industry you're in is incredibly small and niche. Like if there's two companies in the country that make encabulators and the owners of each company golf together or something. I vented all over my awful boss during my exit interview at a previous company, as he was the complete and sole reason I left when I did. There are maybe a handful of companies that I may have burned a bridge with by doing that. But I don't even consider that career sabotage, because if I were to apply to those companies and get rejected because someone there was friends with and believed statements made by that vile, contemptable, piece of human garbage I used to work for, then they're doing me an enormous loving favor by not hiring me. I don't want to be in the same county as someone who would cross the street to piss on that prick if he were on fire.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:45
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The Fool posted:Would you feel better if the interviewer stayed in the room? Personally? I don't give a poo poo. But I'd want a candidate to feel as comfortable as humanly possible. If you can come up with a problem that nicely lends itself to allowing the use of internet and cell phone, by all means that's an excellent problem and go for it. My suggestion of no internet was merely because I was thinking a series of interviews on different problem sets related to algos/structures that you mind find on LeetCode that can be easily Googleable.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:48
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Good Will Hrunting posted:"Is there anything we can do?" No
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Jun 8, 2018 19:10
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Che Delilas posted:I feel like this is only a realistic fear if the industry you're in is incredibly small and niche. Like if there's two companies in the country that make encabulators and the owners of each company golf together or something. The problem with badmouthing former bosses isn't that you might be talking to friends of theirs', because you're right - the probability of the interviewer knowing them is low. The problem is, it's difficult to tell who is actually to blame when you only hear one side of a story. Yes, you might be telling the truth about your terrible boss, but someone else might just be an unreliable person who plays the victim instead of admitting their own wrongdoing in any situation. Unfortunately, the worse your boss, the worse you sound describing them. Being able to be diplomatic when describing horrible people is a useful skill and demonstrates that you will use the same good judgement when conflict inevitably arises in your new position.
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Jun 8, 2018 20:17
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My problem with take-home work before is they tend to assume it will take 30 minutes based on somebody that already knew the answer and just had to rattle it off. Maybe a "30 minute" thing would take that long if I happened to be sitting at my computer, environment up, everything quiet, and I'm ready to go. Maybe. But if you start the clock at that moment, then you're being really unrealistic. Then you factor in they're reading the thing for the first time right there, the who the hell knows.
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Jun 8, 2018 20:36
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JawnV6 posted:Cool, love to see you opining on stuff you readily admit to having zero experience with. Got any more blatantly uninformed hot takes for us? I've done them and given them before but we don't use them currently. Nothing hot about my takes. asur posted:You sure make a lot of assumptions. I told them very specifically why I wasn't going to do their take-home assignment and was open to a reasonable one. I don't see any reason to cater to unreasonable demands from a company when the best paying companies don't require it. You're being really salty friend. I'm sure your interaction with the company was totally fine and you probably don't want to work with folks who won't be reasonable about a take-home if you communicated that clearly to them. All I was saying is that someone who goes radio silent or complains about a take-home taking too long without explaining why the complexity of the task was underestimated is probably not someone I'd want to work with. Communication skills are as crucial as any programming skill. Separately, I'm curious how many people in this thread actively interview others. It seems like most folks here are interviewees.
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Jun 8, 2018 21:28
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quote:Separately, I'm curious how many people in this thread actively interview others. It seems like most folks here are interviewees. I do regular interviews. They're usually depressing. The rare candidate that's actually competent is a real breath of fresh air.
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Jun 8, 2018 21:33
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:You got lucky, then. There's always the chance (larger than you might think) for your statements to reflect badly on a superior who then takes steps to sabotage your career because they're an insane petty bureaucrat. I, uh, have a real problem imagining just how they would sabotage my career. I mean it's not like I would like to work in the same company again, and outside... good loving luck, there are so many absurdly thirsty companies that I don't see what they could really do. ----edit---- I might be an outlier in that I know enough people and have made good enough impression in places that getting a new job isn't a matter of if, but rather of "do I want an ok paying chill job, or do I want to spend a month looking around for more interesting one?" Xarn fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jun 8, 2018 |
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Jun 8, 2018 22:15
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vonnegutt posted:The problem with badmouthing former bosses isn't that you might be talking to friends of theirs', because you're right - the probability of the interviewer knowing them is low. My story was specifically about comments made during an exit interview, though, and the likelihood that those would sabotage my career in any way. I wouldn't be nearly so specific or negative or anything but perfectly neutral when talking to another company about it. The better argument is that it almost never changes anything at the old company. I did it because I liked the non-managers there and wanted to add my voice to what I knew was the growing list of people screaming at the board, "This rear end in a top hat is single-handedly costing you your best employees," which has an outside chance of making a difference. I weighed that against the odds of the manager being able to sabotage my career at all, which were precisely zero, because he was completely impotent outside of his little fiefdom.
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Jun 8, 2018 22:49
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The big avenue that I've heard of is your new company calling for references and getting a lovely one from the snubbed former employer. But in general, crazy people can make your life a living hell if they feel like it. I'm not saying this is likely, I'm just saying that there's no upside and plenty of potential downside, so why take the risk? Be diplomatic and don't burn bridges or even wave a torch around.
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Jun 8, 2018 22:51
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Write a negative Glassdoor review
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Jun 8, 2018 22:55
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Blinkz0rz posted:You're being really salty friend. I'm sure your interaction with the company was totally fine and you probably don't want to work with folks who won't be reasonable about a take-home if you communicated that clearly to them. consider that applicants don't owe you poo poo and the second they decide they don't want to work with you all further interaction is just a liability that can only mean bad things for them; either further annoyance with the clueless company who can't take no for an answer or revenge from someone offended you no longer want to continue in the hiring process. the best case for them explaining that your take home is wildly inappropriate is an apology they probably don't need or want you regularly give horrific advice to people that all seems to flow from this idea that people should be grateful you give them an opportunity to work with you. that's not how the industry works right now. you should be bending over backwards for any halfway competent candidate because you need them way more than they need you. any discomfort or offense on their part and they'll probably go talk to someone else i bet you complain regularly about the quality of candidates you see
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Jun 8, 2018 23:57
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the talent deficit posted:consider that applicants don't owe you poo poo and the second they decide they don't want to work with you all further interaction is just a liability that can only mean bad things for them; either further annoyance with the clueless company who can't take no for an answer or revenge from someone offended you no longer want to continue in the hiring process. the best case for them explaining that your take home is wildly inappropriate is an apology they probably don't need or want You're reading a lot of weird stuff in my two posts about how remote work isn't always appropriate for every team and that take-home interview tests can be effective in identifying candidates that have trouble communicating.
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Jun 9, 2018 00:55
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I'm on job 4 now and all but my first have been take home assignments. Two have been tailored specifically to the kind of work and have an existing piece of code to bugfix and enhance and clear instructions on goals and things that would be great to see. The most recent one was just a big 'make it like a copy of this thing' from scratch. And I only pushed through that one because the opportunity got me back out of the US. A well made take home is a good thing for some junior to mid level positions.
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Jun 9, 2018 02:51
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Take homes are good because they actually approximate work in the best case, and serve as a perfect discussion piece for actual discussion interviews. If you can't be assed to find a few hours to get a new job, well, sucks for you hope you like your current job. Like okay maybe that's not ideal, but 
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Jun 9, 2018 03:01
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Mao Zedong Thot posted:Take homes are good because they actually approximate work in the best case, and serve as a perfect discussion piece for actual discussion interviews. If you can't be assed to find a few hours to get a new job, well, sucks for you hope you like your current job. I had a take-home that took me, no joke, 18 hours to finish over a weekend. I'll admit I was a bit perfectionist but drat that seemed unreasonable. The fact that the company thought it wasn't at least a little bit pushing it led me to not pursue the gig.
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Jun 9, 2018 04:58
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By the time I'm two hours into a problem I can generally make a reasonably accurate guess as to how much longer it's gonna take, and if it's gonna take longer than the time I would invest in the more usual interview process, that's a hard pass. If the company won't respect my time then I see no reason to work for them.
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Jun 9, 2018 05:02
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18 hour take home is absolutely unreasonable. 2-4 hours is fine though.
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Jun 9, 2018 05:03
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I had an enlightening "why are you leaving" chat with our CTO, where I found out I was denied a promotion arbitrarily by my own manager (I needed 4 subordinates, not 3 to be a lead) and as the CTO put it: "I disagreed with this, but I can't meddle in their decisions, and was probably the thing that would have kept you. But [MANAGER] was stubborn about it". Which kinda stomps over the message my manager sent me recently: "we're sorry we couldn't have given you the progression you wanted". 1 week to go!
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Jun 9, 2018 12:23
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Careful Drums posted:I had a take-home that took me, no joke, 18 hours to finish over a weekend. I'll admit I was a bit perfectionist but drat that seemed unreasonable. The fact that the company thought it wasn't at least a little bit pushing it led me to not pursue the gig. Just out of curiosity, did you email the recruiter and tell them that the task was unreasonably long?
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Jun 9, 2018 12:37
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Blinkz0rz posted:Just out of curiosity, did you email the recruiter and tell them that the task was unreasonably long? I didn't explicitly do so. I had to petition for a second weekend to complete the project because I had limited free time due to childcare responsibilities. They gave me the time but I realized that this company already didn't respect my time. They asked for references after the assignment and I just stopped emailing them.
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Jun 9, 2018 13:13
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Cancelbot posted:I had an enlightening "why are you leaving" chat with our CTO, where I found out I was denied a promotion arbitrarily by my own manager (I needed 4 subordinates, not 3 to be a lead) and as the CTO put it: "I disagreed with this, but I can't meddle in their decisions, and was probably the thing that would have kept you. But [MANAGER] was stubborn about it". Which kinda stomps over the message my manager sent me recently: "we're sorry we couldn't have given you the progression you wanted". Out of curiosity, why do you believe the CTO over your manager?
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Jun 9, 2018 15:04
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