7 ms·

I can't speak for every company out there, but for us, we've discovered that resumes and whiteboard challenges are bad predictors of great engineers. So, we sim

I can't speak for every company out there, but for us, we've discovered that resumes and whiteboard challenges are bad predictors of great engineers. So, we simply come up with a small project that's related to what we would have you work on if you were hired and give you around a week to finish it. You can use other people's code snippets online as well as any libraries you see fit. As long as the end result is good enough, we'd move you to the next step, which is to just test if you're a good culture fit. I know quite a few other startups are doing this as well, so maybe the method is becoming popular. I would recommend you research the companies a bit and see if it's even something they'd care about first. We wouldn't even ask you to explain a gap in the first place.

huebomont 7y ago
Yikes. Hopefully paid? What if the candidate is currently employed? Where do you expect them to find the time, knowing that they are not likely to be only applying to your company, but to others as well?
- ExtraServings 7y ago
  If they're sufficiently motivated to want the job, they will jump through the hoops. If the job's not worth it to the candidate, they won't complete the task. Easy.
  - rozap 7y ago
    Or they're selecting for people who don't have many options.
  - mellosouls 7y ago
    Good luck finding remotely decent candidates without an extraordinary offer at the end of significant unpaid work. Remember, it's a two way process; any candidate worth their salt is interviewing the company. If the candidate is worth it to the company, they won't expect them to jump through absurd hoops, and will treat them with at least a professional minimum of respect.
    - ExtraServings 7y ago
      That just exposes our different view of where the bottlenecks are - you believe there are a limited number of coders who are up to the task - I believe there are less opportunities than 'adequate to the task' coders. Which is true? Nobody really knows.
      - mellosouls 7y ago
        That's a fair point regarding balance wrt jobs/devs though the general market would seem to indicate good devs have no problems getting jobs. But I don't see how it carries over to companies expecting a huge investment from a developer up front (a week's work, unpaid!), without some major positive differentiator from the other companies requiring decent devs. That isn't going to appeal to any developer with options. What's the upside, why would they invest that time - just go to the non-presumptive company next door.
  - procombo 7y ago
    Thanks for doing that. Back when I hired a lot I'd always ask candidates how their job search was going and what other businesses they are excited about besides mine. Kind of tacky, but it always alleviated nerves on both sides of the table. Companies with attitides like yours would always come up. What some companies ask candidates to do during their job search is pretty ridiculous. Hoop jumping is probably required for their first couple jobs, but after that the employers are the ones competing for talent.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Isn’t this the same thing people who like whiteboard interviews say? “We know Leetcode is a hoop and the most motivated will grind 200 leetcode problems”
  - huebomont 7y ago
    Thinking like this loses you candidates who are applying to multiple places. It's so hubristic to think that your job couldn't possibly be equally desirable to others.
- Fauntleroy 7y ago
  The sad truth is that they likely have enough candidates to not need to consider this.
epicureanideal 7y ago
A week of work for each job applied to rapidly becomes unsustainable. I personally have never done more than 6-8 hours of coding as part of an application, and only did that once.
- Ankhers 7y ago
  Not OP, but I read the one week part to mean that it is a deadline. So the task may only take an evening to complete, but having some agreed upon deadline will prevent having to deal with continually stretching out the interview process longer than necessary.
- tetraca 7y ago
  After dealing with a few of these things, I've resolved every time I get one of these applications in the future, I'll just decline. If you want me to spend like 1-2 hours doing some small exercise that proves I can program, fine, but I'm not wasting my spare time coding the moon for you with your mind numbing full stack crud app project for some ultimately middling opportunity.
  - m_fayer 7y ago
    We do basically what OP said, but we ask the candidate to spend more or less 4 hours on the exercise, in one sitting or two. We also give them a fairly large project to do and say "We know you can't remotely complete this in 4 hours. Pick a nice subset that you find compelling and that demonstrates your strengths, and code that. Explain your choices." It's worked well for us - it demonstrates not just coding ability but also planning, communication, and time management.
    - hackinthebochs 7y ago
      Yes, offloading the burden and cost of the initial filter on to prospective candidates works well for the employer!
      - mcpeepants 7y ago
iso1631 7y ago
So if you have a years worth of work todo, and 50 people apply, you get the work done for free?
- viraptor 7y ago
  That would be the worst consulting experience for the company and I think you can easily tell a different between a test and outsourced work. Also that wouldn't likely save time. If the task will take someone 2h, I'd have to spend more than that: describing the task with all the relevant context, providing a mock of the environment it needs to be plugged into, reviewing the result, fixing any issues, changing it to match the internal style, and also waiting for the solution itself which may not even arrive any time soon. It's not like every (or even most) candidates will produce something you'd want to keep.
  - iso1631 7y ago
    2 hours sure. A week not-so-much. OP wasn't clear how big the task was.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      Even worse. A week long task without internal context or being able to chat with people who know it would be next to impossible to prepare. I've seen some projects which were thoroughly specced and handed over to a consulting agency. Half were not usable, the other half need heavy fixing. It was never a happy outcome.
- ken 7y ago
  Only if they've found a way to consistently defeat Brooks's Law -- and if they have, there are much more efficient ways to exploit it than counting on free labor of uncertain quality.
- wtracy 7y ago
  There's a certain startup I won't name that has a reputation for outsourcing it's engineering proof-of-concepts this way. You're certainly not going to get code you could actually put in production by doing that.
Beldin 7y ago
How much do you pay the candidates for this exercise? Or do you expect them to put in multiple hours without reimbursement?
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  How much should companies charge to review your resume when you send it in? Job interviewing is a time sink for everyone. Imo the ideal case is to read over the resume, have a phone call and be pretty sure that as long as they are what they say then they will be hired which the take home test can do. I have had companies send out a test as the first step and then reject me after completing it because my resume didn't meet their needs even though they had that info to start with.
TimPC 7y ago
Out of consideration for people applying for the job you should seriously consider doing the culture fit first. It's not right to have someone do a weeklong project well when you could have got to a no by a 20m phone call.
eeniac 7y ago
Here's my take on it. Given I'm in a situation similar to OP's — took 4 weeks just to catch up with sleep and dismantle anxiety. I was approached about a job. The process includes a home assessment with a 5 day deadline. Definitely it's doable, it's a filter yadda yadda. But I'm asking you if the scene is really swarmed with impostors and bullshitters that you have to enforce people working for free for you to handpick? I call home assessments a tool for locating tractable employees. You know, those who wouldn't mind the OT every 2nd week of the months. Hell, they already proved motivated working for free when they solved that home task you gave then. You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. You wouldn't do that to a driver either. To a gardener. Why the heck does the developer has to jump through those hoops then.
- wtracy 7y ago
  > You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. I'm under the impression that exactly this happens in the restaurant industry all the time. Employers are abusive in all industries.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. Yes, if you are hiring a cook for a restaurant (which, admittedly, most people don't do, because they don't run restaurants) or wedding or other event (which more people have experience with) you will, quite likely, do exactly that.

huebomont 7y ago

Yikes. Hopefully paid? What if the candidate is currently employed? Where do you expect them to find the time, knowing that they are not likely to be only applying to your company, but to others as well?

ExtraServings 7y ago
If they're sufficiently motivated to want the job, they will jump through the hoops. If the job's not worth it to the candidate, they won't complete the task. Easy.
- rozap 7y ago
  Or they're selecting for people who don't have many options.
- mellosouls 7y ago
  Good luck finding remotely decent candidates without an extraordinary offer at the end of significant unpaid work. Remember, it's a two way process; any candidate worth their salt is interviewing the company. If the candidate is worth it to the company, they won't expect them to jump through absurd hoops, and will treat them with at least a professional minimum of respect.
  - ExtraServings 7y ago
    That just exposes our different view of where the bottlenecks are - you believe there are a limited number of coders who are up to the task - I believe there are less opportunities than 'adequate to the task' coders. Which is true? Nobody really knows.
    - mellosouls 7y ago
      That's a fair point regarding balance wrt jobs/devs though the general market would seem to indicate good devs have no problems getting jobs. But I don't see how it carries over to companies expecting a huge investment from a developer up front (a week's work, unpaid!), without some major positive differentiator from the other companies requiring decent devs. That isn't going to appeal to any developer with options. What's the upside, why would they invest that time - just go to the non-presumptive company next door.
- procombo 7y ago
  Thanks for doing that. Back when I hired a lot I'd always ask candidates how their job search was going and what other businesses they are excited about besides mine. Kind of tacky, but it always alleviated nerves on both sides of the table. Companies with attitides like yours would always come up. What some companies ask candidates to do during their job search is pretty ridiculous. Hoop jumping is probably required for their first couple jobs, but after that the employers are the ones competing for talent.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Isn’t this the same thing people who like whiteboard interviews say? “We know Leetcode is a hoop and the most motivated will grind 200 leetcode problems”
- huebomont 7y ago
  Thinking like this loses you candidates who are applying to multiple places. It's so hubristic to think that your job couldn't possibly be equally desirable to others.
Fauntleroy 7y ago
The sad truth is that they likely have enough candidates to not need to consider this.

epicureanideal 7y ago

A week of work for each job applied to rapidly becomes unsustainable. I personally have never done more than 6-8 hours of coding as part of an application, and only did that once.

Ankhers 7y ago
Not OP, but I read the one week part to mean that it is a deadline. So the task may only take an evening to complete, but having some agreed upon deadline will prevent having to deal with continually stretching out the interview process longer than necessary.
tetraca 7y ago
After dealing with a few of these things, I've resolved every time I get one of these applications in the future, I'll just decline. If you want me to spend like 1-2 hours doing some small exercise that proves I can program, fine, but I'm not wasting my spare time coding the moon for you with your mind numbing full stack crud app project for some ultimately middling opportunity.
- m_fayer 7y ago
  We do basically what OP said, but we ask the candidate to spend more or less 4 hours on the exercise, in one sitting or two. We also give them a fairly large project to do and say "We know you can't remotely complete this in 4 hours. Pick a nice subset that you find compelling and that demonstrates your strengths, and code that. Explain your choices." It's worked well for us - it demonstrates not just coding ability but also planning, communication, and time management.
  - hackinthebochs 7y ago
    Yes, offloading the burden and cost of the initial filter on to prospective candidates works well for the employer!
    - mcpeepants 7y ago

iso1631 7y ago

So if you have a years worth of work todo, and 50 people apply, you get the work done for free?

viraptor 7y ago
That would be the worst consulting experience for the company and I think you can easily tell a different between a test and outsourced work. Also that wouldn't likely save time. If the task will take someone 2h, I'd have to spend more than that: describing the task with all the relevant context, providing a mock of the environment it needs to be plugged into, reviewing the result, fixing any issues, changing it to match the internal style, and also waiting for the solution itself which may not even arrive any time soon. It's not like every (or even most) candidates will produce something you'd want to keep.
- iso1631 7y ago
  2 hours sure. A week not-so-much. OP wasn't clear how big the task was.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    Even worse. A week long task without internal context or being able to chat with people who know it would be next to impossible to prepare. I've seen some projects which were thoroughly specced and handed over to a consulting agency. Half were not usable, the other half need heavy fixing. It was never a happy outcome.
ken 7y ago
Only if they've found a way to consistently defeat Brooks's Law -- and if they have, there are much more efficient ways to exploit it than counting on free labor of uncertain quality.
wtracy 7y ago
There's a certain startup I won't name that has a reputation for outsourcing it's engineering proof-of-concepts this way. You're certainly not going to get code you could actually put in production by doing that.

Beldin 7y ago

How much do you pay the candidates for this exercise? Or do you expect them to put in multiple hours without reimbursement?

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
How much should companies charge to review your resume when you send it in? Job interviewing is a time sink for everyone. Imo the ideal case is to read over the resume, have a phone call and be pretty sure that as long as they are what they say then they will be hired which the take home test can do. I have had companies send out a test as the first step and then reject me after completing it because my resume didn't meet their needs even though they had that info to start with.

TimPC 7y ago

Out of consideration for people applying for the job you should seriously consider doing the culture fit first. It's not right to have someone do a weeklong project well when you could have got to a no by a 20m phone call.

eeniac 7y ago

Here's my take on it. Given I'm in a situation similar to OP's — took 4 weeks just to catch up with sleep and dismantle anxiety. I was approached about a job. The process includes a home assessment with a 5 day deadline. Definitely it's doable, it's a filter yadda yadda. But I'm asking you if the scene is really swarmed with impostors and bullshitters that you have to enforce people working for free for you to handpick? I call home assessments a tool for locating tractable employees. You know, those who wouldn't mind the OT every 2nd week of the months. Hell, they already proved motivated working for free when they solved that home task you gave then. You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. You wouldn't do that to a driver either. To a gardener. Why the heck does the developer has to jump through those hoops then.

wtracy 7y ago
> You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. I'm under the impression that exactly this happens in the restaurant industry all the time. Employers are abusive in all industries.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> You wouldn't ask the cook to work for free just to taste his dish and then decline without paying him. Yes, if you are hiring a cook for a restaurant (which, admittedly, most people don't do, because they don't run restaurants) or wedding or other event (which more people have experience with) you will, quite likely, do exactly that.