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Matt Zerella
Oct 7, 2002

Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)
pay people for their labor.

expecting someone to take pto to do your stupid homework is even loving worse. you're literally paying to do free work for other people.

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Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

ADINSX posted:

Yeah normally I'm all about work is for work and respecting time off but if you're gonna throw a shitfit about a 3 hour take home interview question its probably not gonna work out. Hell, the places that did it had like a 2 hour in-person interview, so the total time interviewing was less than some of the all day ones. What do you do when a company wants to fly you out? Do you demand compensation for the time after the interview? What about the time you spent reviewing poo poo in preperation?

again, the reciprocity is key here

i agree to fly out and you agree to pay for my expenses. i agree to give you my time as a candidate, and you agree to have your team spend their own very valuable time to evaluate me.

ADINSX posted:

Interviewing takes a lot of time, 3 hours here and there for a take home is not much compared to the rest of the process.

it doesn't matter if it's 45 minutes or three days, the very conceit of homework is abusive behavior

if you want something extra from a candidate, the right and proper thing to do is pay for it

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
the candidate derives no value from the homework, it is only a burden

the interview itself is a mutual process of evaluation. everyone gives up time freely because there is a mutual benefit.

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

again, the reciprocity is key here

They review the homework; they also probably spend time inventing the problem. There is reciprocity its just not synchronous

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

ADINSX posted:

They review the homework; they also probably spend time inventing the problem. There is reciprocity its just not synchronous

it's not reciprocal because the candidate doesn't benefit directly from the process

homework done for a job doesn't do poo poo for the candidate

raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

it's not reciprocal because the candidate doesn't benefit directly from the process

homework done for a job doesn't do poo poo for the candidate

isn’t this equally true of literally every step of the interview process

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

it's not reciprocal because the candidate doesn't benefit directly from the process

homework done for a job doesn't do poo poo for the candidate

They benefit because it helps them get a job. I don't understand the miscommunication here. I am describing "what if whiteboard problem, but you do it at home and I'm not looking over your shoulder the whole time". The interviewer still has to review the answer, just like they would in person.

Is that really a foreign concept?

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

raminasi posted:

isn’t this equally true of literally every step of the interview process

ADINSX posted:

They benefit because it helps them get a job. I don't understand the miscommunication here. I am describing "what if whiteboard problem, but you do it at home and I'm not looking over your shoulder the whole time". The interviewer still has to review the answer, just like they would in person.

Is that really a foreign concept?

here's the thing: when you expect poo poo for free, it needs to be mutually beneficial. not just "it could get me a job"

the interview process is mutually beneficial because you and the candidate learn things about one another, even if no offer results from the process

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
the interview could inform the candidate about your company enough that no offer is desired

the homework might do the same thing, but only by accident -- unpaid homework indicates you're a loving rear end in a top hat

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

here's the thing: when you expect poo poo for free, it needs to be mutually beneficial. not just "it could get me a job"

the interview process is mutually beneficial because you and the candidate learn things about one another, even if no offer results from the process

I don't understand how writing on the whiteboard isn't "poo poo for free"... the interviewer is just watching. Do you bring one of those chess timers to interviews and write up a bill based on who did the most talking?

But whatever, we're not going to convince each other, which works out I guess. If a company tells you they do a take home you can tell them to gently caress off, and if you go on this spergy rant to the company, they'll probably decide that's for the best

Fiedler
Jun 29, 2002

I, for one, welcome our new mouse overlords.
if the interviewer hands you a sheet of paper with a problem on it and says nothing while you write a solution on the whiteboard then yes, they're equivalent.

also do not work for those people.

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde
If you don’t wanna do the exercise then walk away from the job opportunity. Glassdoor (iirc) gives each candidate (e: who passes the interview round) a two week paid on site project and I flipped when I heard that. I’d rather take an unpaid quick project any day

Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jun 9, 2018

prisoner of waffles
May 8, 2007

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.
I once wrote a very long answer for an ill-posed homework problem where there was no single right answer but e.g. "a regex like _this_ is the first thing you'd think of, but that's incomplete so to handle all cases you'd need an insane long regex like _this_ but the most important thing here is that if someone asked me to do this IRL I would first look at them as though they were crazy and ask Why?"

They really liked my answer. The question was, in the final analysis, real dumb as was the job.

kitten emergency
Jan 13, 2008

get meow this wack-ass crystal prison
why not offer people a take-home problem or a live coding exercise.

tbh I’d go for the take-home every time, spending a weekend on some code is vastly preferable than having a timed thing or a live thing. I can pseudocode and whiteboard some poo poo out no problem but poo poo like “reimplement string tokenization” with no ide or google and you’re graded on correctness strikes me as incredibly dumb and a great way to self-select for people that memorize the stdlib but not much else.

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

we give candidates either the option of a take home where they design a solution to an arbitrary coding problem that involves maybe 3-4 hours, or an hour on the phone where we do a problem or two with them in a shared text editor

also, during the in-person interview there's a two hour pair programming sesh on a different arbitrary project

in both of the coding cases its really just checking that they can actually design something and put some thought into the tradeoffs that they encounter. the in-person one is intentionally presented in vague terms to see whether the candidate asks follow up questions or if they immediately go off into the weeds

in all cases the exercises are producing throwaway code

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde
btw interviewers who constantly interrupt a candidate while they're actively working on a whiteboard problem are the worst and if that's reciprocity i want none of it

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Progressive JPEG posted:

also, during the in-person interview there's a two hour pair programming sesh on a different arbitrary project

barf, no thanks

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





here's the thing. google and fb and a handful of other companies can ask candidates to come out to california for three days of grueling interviews with in depth technical evaluation because for google and fb there's an endless well of qualified people willing to come out to california and go through that process. this is also how heroku and github can ask you to do a multiple day take home evaluation. there's enough people who want to work there that they don't need to worry about turning away people

your company that can't find or retain qualified devs can't get away with this because why would anyone qualified give you 12+ hours of their time when the reward for doing so is the same quality of job they can get via telling their friends they need a new job?

when you raise your bar for hiring you better be raising your compensation to match otherwise you're just wasting time with only those too clueless or too desperate to know to walk away

raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice

Gazpacho posted:

If you don’t wanna do the exercise then walk away from the job opportunity. Glassdoor (iirc) gives each candidate (e: who passes the interview round) a two week paid on site project and I flipped when I heard that. I’d rather take an unpaid quick project any day

these are unfortunate because they’re great for people currently unemployed in that city but completely untenable for everyone else

I did a shorter version of that somewhere and it worked pretty good (even though I didn’t get an offer because an unrelated part of their hiring process was a pile of farts)

TimWinter
Mar 30, 2015

https://timsthebomb.com

Gazpacho posted:

If you don’t wanna do the exercise then walk away from the job opportunity. Glassdoor (iirc) gives each candidate (e: who passes the interview round) a two week paid on site project and I flipped when I heard that. I’d rather take an unpaid quick project any day

I would love to go to a company for two weeks for a paid project but imagine blowing your PTO on that and deciding you don't want the job.

"How was your vacation? Go anywhere?"

ConanTheLibrarian
Aug 13, 2004


dis buch is late
Fallen Rib
it would be bizarre for someone who was employed to agree to take two weeks off to do a project for glassdoor of all places


for the unemployed it sounds ok until you consider the opportunity cost of all the other jobs you cant interview for during those two weeks

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

did they mention what the pay was during those two weeks?

I mean it sounds awful but it would be the difference between minimum wage awful and just awful

Feisty-Cadaver
Jun 1, 2000
The worms crawl in,
The worms crawl out.

inset posted:

Second part is basically setting innerHTML of an element to '', ... maybe the test is bad.

if you are asking an interview question where innerHTML is at all involved in 2018, you deserve a swift kick in the genitals.

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde

TimWinter posted:

I would love to go to a company for two weeks for a paid project but imagine blowing your PTO on that and deciding you don't want the job.

"How was your vacation? Go anywhere?"
Funny you should mention bc I heard about this Glassdoor thing when, out of desperation, I took a two week vacation from my current job and spent it all job searchin’

Which is why after my bonus is confirmed I’m blowing the joint and taking the awesomest road trip

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

Gazpacho posted:

If you don’t wanna do the exercise then walk away from the job opportunity. Glassdoor (iirc) gives each candidate (e: who passes the interview round) a two week paid on site project and I flipped when I heard that. I’d rather take an unpaid quick project any day
sounds like they're just finding new ways to filter out candidates who aren't already wealthy, now that it's unfashionable/risky to give out unpaid internships

Mao Zedong Thot
Oct 16, 2008


Notorious b.s.d. posted:

if the information is that valuable, pay your candidates

the reason interviews are unpaid is that it's reciprocal -- the candidate gives you unpaid time, and you give the candidate unpaid time.

homework is an abusive practice because you demand effort from the candidate without any reciprocity on your part

Homework is good

Paying for homework is great and something I bring to each of my jobs when I do hiring. Not by the hour tho lmao

Mao Zedong Thot
Oct 16, 2008


Matt Zerella posted:

pay people for their labor.

expecting someone to take pto to do your stupid homework is even loving worse. you're literally paying to do free work for other people.

Labor lol. gently caress offffffff

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE
current interviewing status: talked to the engineering company. sounded interesting, but I probably bombed it, welp

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


TheFluff posted:

current interviewing status: talked to the engineering company. sounded interesting, but I probably bombed it, welp

This is my permanent interviewing status

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE
it was going pretty good and i mentioned a clever solution i came up with to a particular problem a few years ago, and the interviewer asked "what kind of data structure would you have used to solve that problem today" and i was just like uuuuuuuuh data structures????? they specifically asked for good working knowledge of common data structures or some poo poo like that in the ad.

several hours later while thinking back on it i of course remembered all of the reasons why i solved it the way i did and that it was really more of a database consistency problem than a keep-state-in-a-datastructure problem and and and fffffffff

EVGA Longoria
Dec 25, 2005

Let's go exploring!

well, valley company with 6 hour interview passed, with specific feedback to come soon

good thing I had another safer offer that’s still a huge raise and improvement.

homercles
Feb 14, 2010

TheFluff posted:

it was going pretty good and i mentioned a clever solution i came up with to a particular problem a few years ago, and the interviewer asked "what kind of data structure would you have used to solve that problem today" and i was just like uuuuuuuuh data structures????? they specifically asked for good working knowledge of common data structures or some poo poo like that in the ad.

several hours later while thinking back on it i of course remembered all of the reasons why i solved it the way i did and that it was really more of a database consistency problem than a keep-state-in-a-datastructure problem and and and fffffffff

If the question was such a parity mismatch why not mention it to the interviewer? Why do you subject us to your worst moments?!?

It's like watching Wonder Years in VR. No.

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

homercles posted:

If the question was such a parity mismatch why not mention it to the interviewer? Why do you subject us to your worst moments?!?

It's like watching Wonder Years in VR. No.

:negative:

i did hear back from three other places i've been having short interviews (30-60 mins) with though and they were all positive :unsmith:

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Jun 12, 2018

TimWinter
Mar 30, 2015

https://timsthebomb.com
I yearn for the day where storing data in a well implemented dequeue is actually the bottleneck to the success of software I'm writing.

I'm beginning to see that technical interview questions are more about "do you know what I know" rather than "can you suceed at this job".

DELETE CASCADE
Oct 25, 2017

i haven't washed my penis since i jerked it to a phtotograph of george w. bush in 2003
Diversity is extremely important! We have employees from Stanford CS 2018, 2017, 2016, AND 2015! Hell, there’s even James from Caltech down in IT!!!

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


My CEO has been floating the idea today of me absorbing some other guy's team and taking over the entire cloud operation for the company. Seems like figures are incoming soon.

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

qhat posted:

My CEO has been floating the idea today of me absorbing some other guy's team and taking over the entire cloud operation for the company. Seems like figures are incoming soon.

who said anything about figs --[hopefully not] your boss

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

ADINSX posted:

who said anything about figs --[hopefully not] your boss

i assume he meant that this is a reorganization that he can leverage into a position that actually pays

Ellie Crabcakes
Feb 1, 2008

Stop emailing my boyfriend Gay Crungus

TimWinter posted:

I'm beginning to see that technical interview questions are more about "do you know what I know" rather than "can you suceed at this job".
Yep, it's a shibboleth.

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qhat
Jul 6, 2015


hobbesmaster posted:

i assume he meant that this is a reorganization that he can leverage into a position that actually pays

Pretty much. If I get officially asked to do it, my first question is going to be asking how much they are gonna pay me.

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