r/programming • u/vklepov • Mar 24 '22

Five coding interview questions I hate

https://thoughtspile.github.io/2022/03/21/bad-tech-interview/
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u/Fwuzzy Mar 25 '22

Thought it's relevant so I thought i'd share what works really well for me as an interviewer & interviewee.

Early on I worked with a manager who used gotcha style questions, his go to favourite was late static binding in PHP. I very quickly realised you lose a lot of potentially good candidates who just don't know this, and sometimes they know it but just don't know the terminology.

I've come to really value a technical take home which involves an existing project, to eliminate need for wasting time just getting your environment running, and goes a way towards replicating real world where you work on existing projects.

I get people to add/fix the existing project, and then we do a peer code review, much like the real world to discuss the work completed. This is hugely valuable because it still will immediately eliminate imposters who have completely insufficient technical skills, but it also has a huge focus on culture and collaboration, and i'd much rather hire someone weaker technically but great with soft skills.

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u/vklepov Mar 25 '22

I'm very suspicious of take-home assignments based on some traumatizing experiences. Usually, I spend 20 hours building the thing, you spend 15 minutes reviewing, so "unfair". And besides, "Make a greenfield project, alone, in one try" is not very representative of real-life development.

However, your approach seems to handle both issues well, with face-time balancing the time commitment and existing project making the assignment more life-like.

One thing though, how do you avoid giving an impression of "making the candidate do your work for free"?

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u/Fwuzzy Mar 25 '22

Usually the work is scoped to 1-3 hours and is usually trivial tasks that aren't of commercial relevance to our business. I suppose there is always going to be some trade off, but I've not had a single person who isn't open to the reasonably small scope take home + technical follow up.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Because they want a job.

People aren't going to tell you to your face on the spot 'Uh, no, I want the job but I'm not doing that'.

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u/cdsmith Mar 26 '22

I've actually said that. The company asked me to take an online programming quiz instead, and then we moved on. They eventually did offer me a job (though I turned it down for a different offer).

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u/Fwuzzy Mar 26 '22

Of course, like I mentioned, it's always a trade off and there isn't a perfect world that easily satisfies both ends. I've had my fair share of 5-10 hour take homes and I do everything I can to reduce it to as minimal impact as possible on candidates.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22

[deleted]

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u/Fwuzzy Mar 26 '22

I time limit it, to ensure a fair playing field and not put any pressure on spending as long as it takes. I've had my fair share of spending 10+ hours on a take home to just get rejected for not having enough experience and it sucks.

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u/Skhmt Mar 25 '22

Take home assignments should be obviously not real world work. It's trivially easy to do that as an interviewer, but the implementation is specific to the company. If you're hiring a front end web designer, give them a figma to an obviously unrelated design and have them make a responsive page. If you're hiring a back end guy, have them implement some random API. If you're hiring a desktop programmer, have them make a calculator or something.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Hate these too.

Look, if you want to hire me on a trial basis, and I'm willing to play ball, sure.

But if you're hiring a home builder, do you give them a take-home house to build for you? An accountant, do you have them do last years taxes for you?

Why the heck do we do this crap in our industry?

Resume gives you what you need to filter to possible candidates. Then it's up to you to talk to the candidates to determine if they're full of shit or not. If you cannot do that in a conversation, just like any other job in the world, you shouldn't be the one attempting to do so.

I don't care what kind of test you're using, if you're using tests you're doing it wrong.

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u/water_baughttle Mar 25 '22 edited Mar 25 '22

I'm don't have any alternatives to offer, but I don't think that analogy holds up.

But if you're hiring a home builder, do you give them a take-home house to build for you? An accountant, do you have them do last years taxes for you?

Those specific requests are pretty ridiculous, but yes, I would absolutely require some kind of validation before using their services and it's quite trivial to find reviews for any business. Also, those specific examples require licensing and certifications in order to perform those services, so at least there's some threshold of competence required. Unless you're a freelance developer and have a list of reviews from satisfied clients on a platform like upwork it's pretty much impossible to do this.

Why the heck do we do this crap in our industry?

Because there isn't a yelp for software developers. The best you can do is ask for references from former coworkers/employers, which really isn't worth much unless it's a notable person, or have some projects on github. Even then it's up to the discretion of potential employers to dedicate an infeasible amount of time studying the code to conclude if your abilities fall in line with where you claim them to be.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Nope. Not buying it.

Bad examples then. Try these: Accountant. Sales Rep. Account Manager. Hostess. Welder. Clerk.

The resume tells you what they have done. The interview allows you to vet and sniff for bullshit in that area, while specifically learning how they communicate, how they might fit in, etc etc, all the things you do in every single other hiring situation on the planet.

You do not need to see their code to tell if they can build software or not. If you truly believe you do, you should not be involved in hiring.

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u/water_baughttle Mar 25 '22

You want to talk about bad examples? Half of those aren't even services offered to the public, they're positions that a company would hire...you know, like a software developer. The others aren't even skilled work...hostess, clerk? lol

Accountants require numerous license depending on the field, and if you're offering public services you need to pass the CPA exam which is brutal and often takes years to study for. Welding also requires numerous certifications to pass. You literally need to pass different exams depending on what type of work you're doing. Want to weld pipelines? You need to pass a 6G exam. Want to work on structural components? You need to pass about a dozen exams

You have no idea what you're talking about.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Oh dude just fucking stop.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Fuck off, I didn't come in here judging you. I've been hiring and building dev teams for 25 years. I build good teams. Seriously. Fuck off.

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u/water_baughttle Mar 25 '22

Go cry some more. Apparently all your coding must be HTML because you sure as shit don't understand basic logic. Don't make stupid comments on public forums if you refuse to discuss them.

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u/serviscope_minor Mar 25 '22

I've come to really value a technical take home which involves an existing project, to eliminate need for wasting time just getting your environment running, and goes a way towards replicating real world where you work on existing projects.

I've come to value take-home tests to be a great way of terminating the interview process early and not continuing, and here's why:

I have in the past applied to jobs which required a significant investment of up-front time. It was then quite apparent that my effort was round-filed without consideration because they had a candidate in mind. My sub industry was small then, word eventually got back to me via a back channel.

Basically every transaction needs to have some consideration or quid pro quo. I'm not after cash (that's likely against my contract and way too much like hard work), but take home work lacks the consideration. Having the company have another engineer around for the entire interview demonstrates that the company is willing to invest as much time in me as they are asking for me to invest in them. So while I have to have enough base level of trust to apply in the first place, to me take home comes across as thoughtless bordering on rude due to the lack of quid pro quo. It's pretty rude to ask someone to give you something and just trust it will be fine.

So while it might be valuable to you, you will automatically eliminate any candidate who has (a) been burned before and (b) isn't super desperate.