With respect, this seems like a rather naive generalization. You keep repeating that you fully understand that companies need to optimize their process, but what you preach says otherwise.
Coding challenges are not a red flag per se. Sometimes they are, when they are actual work. That's a red flag because you're being asked to work for free, but that's the minority of cases out there.
I work at a company with an excellent learning environment and amazingly skilled people. I'd wager their take-home exam is part of the reason they have these people.
It's unreasonable to assume that a company is better just because they don't want you to take a test.
Had you been talking about interviews that seem designed for competitive programmers instead of software engineers, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But you stated an unconditional rule about code challenges which can often be a way to evaluate programmers outside of how quickly they can reverse a binary tree.
If the coding challenge actually takes two hours to complete for most candidates, I'm fine with it. BUT that requires of course that the company test with multiple people. Instead of like just assuming it.
It's a fact of life that programmers tend to over-engineer stuff. That they want not just to do what is asked but learn the new stuff at the same time. That they worry about being judged poorly if they don't respect all 42 best practices.
That don't mean they are bad devs. In a company setting you will need to refocus then, but that's life and that's OK.
I'm not OK, and that's an ethical question, not a right/wrong one, with the top 2 candidates doing the test in two hours and the "bad ones" wasting 4 to 20 hours of their lives on it. I think that the candidates that end up not being hired should be treated with care too.
But you are OK with the company wasting 20 hours of research on each of the tens of candidates they have? How is it a fair trade that a company interested in a dev's services should waste hundreds of hours, but a dev interested in a company's benefits should not waste 20 hours over a few days?
Also, time done researching developers is wasted. Time done working on a project is often a learning experience.
But you are OK with the company wasting a 20 hours of research on each of the tens of candidates they have?
Besides the fact that companies are already currently wasting lots of time, indeed months to fill vacant positions, what you say would mean that the company is trying to play a numbers game instead of qualitative one, and that's very much her problem not mine.
Are you serious? Saying no to all code challenges without actually seeing what the test is about, because you don't want to put in some hours of work is not playing the numbers game?
Pick a standard and stick to it man. You're interested in numbers when they're on the side of the candidate, not on the side of the company.
This is where I sign off. It's hard to have a meaningful conversation when the standards keep changing to suit the argument.
I am not sure where you got the impression that I am not serious when I say that developers are entitled to set their own rules, but OK, have a nice day.
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With respect, this seems like a rather naive generalization. You keep repeating that you fully understand that companies need to optimize their process, but what you preach says otherwise.
Coding challenges are not a red flag per se. Sometimes they are, when they are actual work. That's a red flag because you're being asked to work for free, but that's the minority of cases out there.
I work at a company with an excellent learning environment and amazingly skilled people. I'd wager their take-home exam is part of the reason they have these people.
It's unreasonable to assume that a company is better just because they don't want you to take a test.
Had you been talking about interviews that seem designed for competitive programmers instead of software engineers, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But you stated an unconditional rule about code challenges which can often be a way to evaluate programmers outside of how quickly they can reverse a binary tree.
If the coding challenge actually takes two hours to complete for most candidates, I'm fine with it. BUT that requires of course that the company test with multiple people. Instead of like just assuming it.
It's a fact of life that programmers tend to over-engineer stuff. That they want not just to do what is asked but learn the new stuff at the same time. That they worry about being judged poorly if they don't respect all 42 best practices.
That don't mean they are bad devs. In a company setting you will need to refocus then, but that's life and that's OK.
I'm not OK, and that's an ethical question, not a right/wrong one, with the top 2 candidates doing the test in two hours and the "bad ones" wasting 4 to 20 hours of their lives on it. I think that the candidates that end up not being hired should be treated with care too.
But you are OK with the company wasting 20 hours of research on each of the tens of candidates they have? How is it a fair trade that a company interested in a dev's services should waste hundreds of hours, but a dev interested in a company's benefits should not waste 20 hours over a few days?
Also, time done researching developers is wasted. Time done working on a project is often a learning experience.
Besides the fact that companies are already currently wasting lots of time, indeed months to fill vacant positions, what you say would mean that the company is trying to play a numbers game instead of qualitative one, and that's very much her problem not mine.
Let's Put Some Dignity Back into Finding Software Work
Are you serious? Saying no to all code challenges without actually seeing what the test is about, because you don't want to put in some hours of work is not playing the numbers game?
Pick a standard and stick to it man. You're interested in numbers when they're on the side of the candidate, not on the side of the company.
This is where I sign off. It's hard to have a meaningful conversation when the standards keep changing to suit the argument.
I am not sure where you got the impression that I am not serious when I say that developers are entitled to set their own rules, but OK, have a nice day.