All I am ever interested in is a code sample. That will answer all coding questions. It can not even be compared to forcing a nervous candidate to code by writing on a white board. It also can not be compared to a quiz on topics in programming. Get a code sample, read it, ask a few questions about it, that is all.
As to if a person would "fit' on a team, it takes roughly 3 seconds to figure that out. So have each team member meet with the candidate for 1 minute, that's plenty of time.
Then do a background check, call references and that's all there is to.
Everything else is just smoke and mirrors BS. It selects for people good at interviewing, not good hackers.
And lastly you can always fire people, if they lied about their code sample or whatever. So lets stop acting as if hiring someone is irreversible. In America at least, firing people is still easy.
There's one thing to note about large companies. Large companies can't trust one good developer to evaluate a code sample. So that's bad, and they then fall back on a day long dog and pony show. And then they usually have huge, ugly, crufty code bases, that means that they can't even tell if someone is good or bad until AFTER they grok the code base. And groking the code base often takes a LONG time. So to pay someone for months only to then fire them and start again is expensive.
And the moral of the story is: Stay away from big companies.
I mean, an asshole company's incentives to enforcing "You shouldn't interview at competitors" are extremely strong. I'd expect that the reason that they don't enforce "You can't write code at interviews" is not that the company doesn't care to enforce it, but that either they can't legally prevent people from interviewing with industry-standard practices (nb, I am guessing this with zero knowledge/training in employment law) or that they know that this will end poorly for them PR-wise, because people won't interview for them.
So those incentives, I think, also apply to take-home projects. Those are also about as industry-standard these days as in-person coding interviews, and so any legal or social pressures against saying that you can't write code in person should also apply to saying that you can't write code for a few hours on an evening as part of an interview.
Meanwhile, the legal situation for "you can't get paid" is very different because so many legal things are different when money is involved, and the social pressures for "you can interview via whatever means they want you to interview, you just have to refuse payment" are going to also be very different.
I'm actively interviewing for new positions, and the amount of stuff that startups (most out of Silicon Valley) are doing is absolute batshit. From 2-hour tech screens to 19-hour unpaid interviews WORKING ON THEIR OWN CODE BASE, I will not be surprised when the DoL does a crackdown on the interview process. I have been in the software development industry for decades. If you can't tell if a candidate qualifies after 45-90 (tops!) minutes of interviews, you may want to look internally for problems. All they are really doing is rejecting a ton of super smart developers, many who may have disabilities.
Oh, and then there was that one company who told me I had no knowledge of a language and framework I am actively contributing to, and have built robust, scalable enterprise apps out of. "We are looking for experts of <language x> and also <framework y> and <framework z>." That was literally the message they sent me. They did NOT know about my contributions because my dumb ass tries not to show off stuff like that when looking for employment as I want to be weighed on my ability to write awesome code and not weighed on a popularity contest.
We are clearly in a different industry. Even asking for code samples in my industry opens me up to potential legal liabilities.
I've stopped interviewees during an interview when I felt like they were treading on what we would consider protected work product.
It is entirely possible I can't pass your technical interview, but I'd be surprised if everyone in my industry couldn't, and they are all as restricted as I am.
Finally, I hope that is a typo. Asking for 10k lines of code is beyond the pale for anything I've ever heard of. If you want 10K lines of my code you better be prepared to pay for it.
Work at older, non-tech companies that have tech departments. Almost every single one of my jobs has matched this pattern, and none of them included a coding exercise as part of the interview process.
Silicon Valley and its satellites seem to disproportionately favor code interviews compared to the rest of the US market, for some ungodly reason.
I'm pretty much at the same point of refusing to do any actual coding on an interview and for pretty much the same reasons. Really like the option of an offline code test followed by discussion of the solutions or a small contract. But it's pretty rare for companies to actually do this, since nearly everyone now follows Google's model.
I would think about it IF this was a current problem the company was having, and they want to see what potential solutions are out there. So it can't be an imaginary problem (ie typical interview questions)
But then you'll get into all sorts of legal issues (like can you actually use code candidates wrote, etc). So that makes it impractical. So it now enters the realm of boredom since it's an imaginary problem :)
Or the software company can spend a few hours actually building a real interview process instead of making ridiculous interview projects. I have no problem proving that I can code (whiteboarding, pairing, etc), but I refuse to do stupid college-esque programming assignments on my own time unless they're paying me for it.
I (thankfully) just got hired and it took 7 interviews. 6 of which included live coding. And I got lucky, as they could've said no after all that time investment.
I understand that hiring is hard and I've had bad hires before, so I know it's definitely costly. I've had candidates with years of experience that couldn't code, so I get some of it.
But at the same time it's almost insulting to have to prove that I know how to code 6 times over, with 15+ years of experience.
I don't know what the solution is, but it's definitely not to steal even more free time from interviewees.
Personally, whichever startup did this is a douchebag and I wouldn't want to work for them regardless.
I have never heard of an interview done this way. I am familiar with and okay with a coding test, ok with a proof of your abilities, not ok with implementing code for the company sans payment.
My 2 cents, is they agreed to a price and code so they should pay. Frankly, I'd ask an attorney to send them a letter stating as much on your behalf. Might cost you a few bucks but seems reasonable. If they still refuse, I'd seriously consider a public shaming, although I know this isn't likely a good idea, it just seems so appropriate. lol
I agree. Hiring has both a non-trivial time and money cost. The very same companies that would benefit from finding diamonds in the rough usually don't have the resources to find these devs in the first place. The modern coding interview is designed for the processes and needs of larger tech cos with large amounts of resources. Cargo cult at your own discretion.
Coding as part of the interview process is a reasonable request to ask from the applicant and I'm having hard time to understand your objection to this step.
Sure if they don't know how to interview, they're going to waste their own time and still not get good candidates (or if they don't have much to offer as most companies don't). Our interviews were an initial phone screen of I think half an hour followed by an interview with the team for one hour followed by the take home test followed by another half hour to an hour interview to discuss the code and allow for further candidate questions. All interviews are conducted over a conference call with screen sharing for the code review.
You're right. I don't like it because what you're describing is generally how shitty companies operate. Often they won't even look at the coding test. Those companies deserve to get the worst of the worst candidates that they're optimizing for. They fit into the category above: nothing of value to offer the candidate.
If you're thinking of interviewing your candidates with such methods, it's worth noting that their current employment agreement might prohibit them from participating due to IP clauses (more exactly, that they require permission to release any code that they've written, even in their spare time).
This can restrict your pool of candidates quite dramatically, as most US companies seem to have their engineers sign such agreements.
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