Do you resent wasting your time with coding challenges?
Keep calm and say that you have decided to stop doing them.
Companies have their processes...
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Approaches like this are another important step towards a more professional and proud stance taking ourselves seriously as skilled developers in times of skilled labour shortage. Craftspeople and construction workers have already realized their position, and you won't find a carpenter or thatcher doing free work to get a job. Well, you will, when some are obliged to do an internship / induction year, but can you imagine a senior carpenter getting an assignment to build a cupboard and send it to an potential employer for free within a few days?
Yeah, imagine hiring a lawyer and trying to evaluate how well he remembers all those latin expressions he learned at school.
Why are we assuming that people are both incompetent and lying until proved otherwise?
As far as I know, aspiring lawyers and doctors are thoroughly tested for their theoretical knowledge at least in Germany, instead of getting more practical experience, and while lawyers can expect to earn a lot of money, doctors face lousy working conditions for underpaid hospital jobs. That's why I chose the craftsperson analogy instead.
In Germany, you can start your developer career as an apprentice software developer, getting a lot of practice in a company and going to a vocational college once a week. So they're no academics remote from reality when writing their first application for a junior job. But even as experienced senior developers we seem to be suspects of imposture until proved otherwise, as you said!
Absolutely, I was 6 year in Berlin and got colleagues that went through this system. So young, so talented. Really like it.
As long as that stipulation comes with corresponding payment, both sides should be happy. If someone asks you to do something "for free", you can extract value from it. I think the true issue is that a lot of people say "yes daddy" and do the work without laying out expectation that if hired that they're to be paid accordingly. Sometimes that means you walk away from a lesser offer and sometimes that means you get a raise. You're in control here. If your code and skill set is lackluster, then sure, it's a losing proposition.
I've seen seasoned professional Account Managers asked to make and present a pitch deck as part of the interview process.
I've known accountants be asked to pass various knowledge and accounting tests as part of the interview process.
Hiring a developer takes time and costs money, why would a company not want some reassurance? Especially when the agencies tend to really, really suck at evaluating developers skills.
Having the developer prove themselves, means the hiring company doesn't need to invest as much time in researching the developer. It's easy for you, you're just one person. A company has to wade through a hundred CVs, interview dozens of people, and that takes hours and hours and hours of their time.
They get you to do a test because it's quick and it's easy.
I fully understand companies being like that
and wanting to "optimize" their time by making me waste mine.
The real question is what should I care as a candidate?
There is plenty of fish, I mean tech companies.
What I've done in the past is skip this kind of company,
and work with ones that were better for me.
I don't regret it one bit, one of the best decisions of my life.
You define "a better developer experience" as working for a company that has time to waste researching your history, rather than asking you to do what should, for you, be a simple test? Weird flex, but ok...
Personally, I care about whether or not the company that hires me is agile and efficient. Those companies make money and stay in business.
Bro it's pretty simple : The company has never as much incentive being good to you than during the interview process. That's when they need to convince you come and fill their position vacant since months. And that's when you have the power to leave. If they don't treat you well during that honey moon phase, how will it behave when things get tough?
So yes, that's absolutely a red flag for me.
I'm not trying to convince you, you do what you like, I don't really care.
I have done enough in career I have nothing to prove.
I would agree - EXCEPT - there was a position I interviewed for last week where there was a code challenge. It was basically a Leetcode thing, and the interviewer said that I could Google whatever I needed. I formulated a solution, then double-checked that I was on the right track, and I was - it was just a matter of typing speed. I managed to do everything except get the final console out of the answer(s), and I was denied the job because I didn't finish. Mind you, this all happened in 20 minutes.
I was pissed that I didn't get the job, but then I realized a place like that - valuing raw typing speed? - is a place I do NOT want to work.
But what do HR recruiters get paid for these days then? Do cold calls, match some LinkedIn keywords and forward candidates to the hiring process? Maye the "head hunters" (recruiters) should make an effort and research the candidates' history, GitHub etc.
I think this sums up things pretty well
You'd probably want to see that they know how to do the basics of their job. Code challenges shouldn't be work for clients. The test should be something that demonstrates understanding of the job they are applying for that can be objectively scored and compared to current (and past) applicants.
What I tell developers is to do that work publicly on GitHub as open source. If companies don't value that, there is plenty of fish in the ocean. That open source strategy worked like a charm for me and many others
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can do the code challenge using git* and send them the repo link.
Good recruiters take the time to analyze the projects you link on your website or your public contributions on GitHub.
This is why it's the very best for even beginners to have small (even tiny), but well crafted projects to show for the public!
Yep
Sometimes it's tough to choose a good project though. Like another Todo MVC?
I can recommend that article from @seattledataguy if you are out of ideas
10 Great Programming Projects to Improve Your Resume and Learn to Program
SeattleDataGuy γ» Aug 12 '19 γ» 8 min read
Agreed. I'm currently creating a mega repo that illustrates that I can do a simple CRUD app in multiple frameworks across multiple languages, both front end and back end. I also have a few repos for mobile development and I'm looking to do additional types of repos for data science, systems programming, and game development, if I ever tap into those fields. Plus adding docker configs and CI configs for devops and cloud computing.
Good post. True, developer positions stay vacant for many months at average companies. The coding challenge is a huge turn off.
Origin of Coding Challenges
There are another reasons why in the first place the coding challenges are.
Some candidates prefer coding challenges that reflect closer their daily work than Leetcode style interview. They are drawn to these type of companies.
However the big reason why coding challenge persist is to save time from the interviewer point of view.
Asymmetry of time
Top companies filter candidates with recruiters first, then a first technical round with a human interviewer. Then more technical, personality interview rounds on-site. Top companies spend a good portion of their resources on recruiting to grow. Here interviewers spend equal time as candidate ( symmetry of time ). Note: the interviewer spend even extra time to write an interview evaluation after.
Did you know why recruiters absolutely like to phone instead of email ?
Because for each minute spent on the phone, he/she is sure you are listening . Again symmetry of time.
While a 2h long well crafted email with background research by the recruiter can be read ( even worse ignored ) by the candidate in a few minutes. Again asymmetry of time.
Average or normal companies spend much less portion of their time on recruiting. You recognize them because the developer positions stay vacant for long.
Since recruiters send almost everyone to technical interviews. These interviewers are fed up, then someone got the idea to resolve a coding challenge that reflects a problem faced. Now recruiters has to give everyone a coding challenge. The author often didn't even code a solution to his/her challenge. That's where the time budget and scope go beyond.
These companies don't care about wasting candidates hours, days, weeks. On the other side, reviewers may spend a few minutes to evaluate. There is really an asymmetry here.
I don't believe the lie that reviewers spend hours to evaluate a coding project due to the lack of feedback. They should rather spend this time to talk with a human candidate.
Most recruiters are secretive about the conversion funnel "how many delivered the challenge" / "how many received". How to increase this ratio ?
What if
Let 's say you were paid a fixed amount to complete the coding challenge. Would you accept the coding challenge ?
Yes, candidates get paid to submit their project. After all, a few companies pay the candidate travel fee ( + hotel ) to interview on-site.
On the other hand, companies with unfilled long vacancies are suddenly more attractive to job candidates. Once the company paid for a challenge, the evaluators will feel the pressure to evaluate correctly.
So it is a win-win situation.
If you want to know more, I created this surveyΒ . Thanks for those answering. Or MP me.
Holy shit, thanks a lot for your comment.
Actually "comment" is an understatement,
you wrote almost an article that would stand on this own right.
I'm curious about this approach, will try your link
Yes you are right. Exactly I do the same.
I never hired with coding challenges or homework app.
if they ask me to learn another programming language or framework, I ask them for more money for additional learning and work at the same time. they are surprised and ask me if I shouldn't work for a lower salary since I don't know what they are looking for. the answer is simple. I don't want to learn something new and I'm not sure if I'll get a job, how long I'll work there and when I know I'll never need it again. you must be prepared to pay me separately for training and plus my work. because along with learning, I also finish reading for you. I add new value to the product.
I mostly apply for jobs through referrals
Exactly right. I will have to explain how to apply through referrals in another article.
I didn't read all the comments, so it might have been mentioned before:
Like you wrote in one of the other parts: programming is rarely an isolated activity anymore, but almost always done within a team.
With that perspective I'd rather hire someone great at collaboration and perhaps not as highly skilled than some 10x developer that people just can't collaborate with.
Having a small pair programming session would give you much more insights into that, than some technical coding challlenge.
No you got it exactly right on something nobody had mentionned yet.
Long gone is the time where programming was done alone in a cave,
yet that's what it feels to do a coding challenge.
Being good at contributing to Open Source is a better indication of how good the dev is.
The last time I looked for work, I was in a situation close to burnout with moral harassment from my boss... Finding a new job was, at that time, the only possible way out. I've been contacted by 4 companies, 2 of them made me do a coding test which took me a few hours (and when you're in overdrive, that's probably the worst thing to do ). Eventually, I was taken to a company that didn't have me take a coding test, but instead quizzed me on my general knowledge of different topics and my ability to stay humble and work in a team.
That's the spirit!
A company that treats you well during the hiring process is more likely to treat you well once you are hired.
To add to your point...once, before jumping into the "prove you're worthy" process, I asked the question you mentioned and to my surprise, it wasn't a normal coding challenge. I had to record my screen while going thru the challenge, explaining out loud my thought process (in no more than 2 hours) and send a link...I guess a pour soul had to go thru all that at x2 or worst case scenario, nobody will watch that...just for the record, I immediately walked away...
I was given a coding challenge about 10 years ago for a mid level job. They wanted me to write a scraper to scrape concert ticket information from a specific site. The site wasn't their own site.
They wanted a whole set of information scraped, and json files created. They said it should take 1 hour, but the recruiter leaked the exercise to me a day early.
They would have had a lot of applicants spending many hours writing the scraper, and sending them working scrapers, which they probably used for real.
In case anybody is wondering, yes, the site in question were ticket scalpers.
I will proof Im good at my job. I call it: doing my job... and not wasting everyones time solving code puzzles that are unrelated to the work I am actually doing.
Its funny that you mention other jobs, because coding is one of the few areas in which people have come up with subjective ways to test if someone can do their job, before hiring them. Thankfully, there are still a lot of dev companies that do not employ insecure people, who waste all their time trying to assert their dominance over others, instead of doing their job.
I've had so many bad experiences with developers who can't code. I won't hire an engineer without some demonstration of coding skill. That doesn't mean I'm asking a recruiter to give asymmetric coding homework, but I'll have a staff dev do a one-hour coding exercise with the candidate.
That's fine with me
I remember one interview I had. It wasn't a coding challenge per se. They took me into a meeting room with a whiteboard and asked me: if you were responsible for designing this company's platform/architecture, tell us how you would do it.
In hindsight, this seems like a way to get free experience/platform architecture suggestions.
I wondered about this too in the past. Interesting, I will investigate
I agree with youπππ
The employer say its needs, and the dev say its needs.
It's easy to understand if you don't have the mindset of a medieval landlord
A code puzzle doesnt tell an employer that though... There is only one reason you want code puzzles and that is because you want to assert your dominance over others. You have reached a position where you feel you are at the top of the hill and can toy with others that are beneath you. You want to distinguish between soy devs and your own superior being and for that, you absolutely need code puzzles.
Fine, we don't want to work with you either.
I bet you don't have a high opinion of people with a five figures job.
Well I don't want to force you to comment here
I don't need your dumb coding challenges to show that I'm good at my job, thanks but no thanks.
I'll agree that take away coding challenges do not work. However some form of coding/technical assessment is necessary in my opinion.
An approach that I think works better is an in-interview coding challenge. Difficult to pose the right problem that you can glean enough from in a short period of time, or that can differentiate great developers from ok ones. Works well if you have some ambiguities in the problem - you can see if they're comfortable asking questions and whether they ask the right ones.
It's good for filtering out people who just can't write code - which is surprisingly common unfortunately. I've done this exercise with people with 10+ years experience at big companies who can't write a line of code.
The carpenter analogy someone else made doesn't work here. You can't be a mediocre carpenter and hide in a big team - your output is much more tangible and measurable in a profession like that.
That can work but I would argue it depends on the personality.
Some people would feel very uncomfortable having someone watch them code over their shoulders and would program 5 times worse than in their preferred settings.
I think you need a variety of way to evaluate candidates, which will include in-interview coding challenge, looking at their GitHub project, refactoring a pull request, whatever, and pick one that is a fair assesment of the candidate depending on who she is.
Strongly agree that if there is a coding challenge then it shouldn't be during the interview. That kind of pressure will skew the result and won't be representative of their skill.
Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense!
I was at a competitive programming night at a company this week, and in this context, freely accepted, free of pressure for your financial survival, the challenge is totally OK.
yh it does require the interviewer to make the candidate feel at ease. It can work like pair programming and I will give more guidance to more junior candidates. I will also encourage them to use Google or whatever else they need - I'm looking at how they approach the problem not their ability to remember basic syntax.
Sadly very view CVs that I see have GitHub profiles linked. The candidates that do certainly stand out. Refactoring a pull request is a good idea.
Coding challenges don't work. They're either so easy an AI can do them, or so hard they eliminate all their candidates and most likely half of their currently employed devs for that matter. They're going to become even more ridiculous now, with over-achieving people trying to come up with coding challenges to fool AI. It's easy to validate whether a candidate can do what they say they can. Just look at their resume. If they worked somewhere for longer than a month, they probably weren't fired on the spot for pretending to be able to do something they couldn't do. Not to mention most devs will have public github profiles that yo can look at. You can literally see exactly what kind of code they committed.
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.
Candidates are free to decline coding challenges and companies are free to require them. Having been part of companies that do then and those that don't, from that perspective it can easy be more costly to the company to hire a bad candidate then take twice as long to hire a good one. Coding challenges are a good tool that can be used to help differentiate.
From friends' reactions to coding tests and the candidate reactions to ours, I gather that there's a feeling that coding challenges are like doing free work for a company before they hire you. While I'm sure that there exist unscrupulous places that do just that, more are probably presenting real life challenges because it better simulates actual work product.
At our company we present challenges that we as a team have spent months of man hours solving. It is simply not possible for a candidate to do work in a coding challenge that would be usable to us.
With regards to the imbalance of time and effort, I argue it can go the other way too. The challenge we give takes people and average of 8 hours (or so our candidates say) it takes us about 5 work hours to review these, then another 5 or so in the follow up interview about the challenge. Add in additional conversations, and it's likely we spend more hours on applications that get to a first round interview than the total number of hours spent by all candidates that reach that level.
Glad to hear that.
My preference in this case would be:
I'm not saying that's a panacea that will work universally, because good hiring practices are always local, but I would argue that it de-risks the hiring process for everyone involved and is a more natural and efficient simulation of real life work.
We do give an initial hour long first round interview with the candidate and 4 to 5 people from our dev team after we ranked and sorted the resumes. Then if we think it makes sense we move on to the coding challenge.
Yes, I'd love it if we could do a "test hire" for a few days but neither HR nor legal would remotely be ok with that.
I've seen companies that hire as freelancers first and that seems like it can be exploitative. They generally don't move people to full time roles until they threaten to quit.
There are definitely cases where a coding challenge is almost an insult to the interviewee but there are also cases where the candidate struggles tremendously. It's hard to tell those people apart before hand. I've found that resume and the initial interview are surprisingly uncorrelated with the coding challenges and that's the main reason we do them.
Sounds good to me
I disagree. Coding challenges that take a few hours are a great way to showcase your skill set in a number of areas. Asking for clarification, finding inconsistencies in the prompt if any exist, and commenting code to show that you are thinking beyond "making it work" separate you from others very quickly. Ask for feedback once you complete and you have very cheaply created yet another value proposition for yourself as a candidate. That said, if it's the very first step and not the very last step in an interviewing process, then that makes little sense on both sides. All of this is contextual, of course, but if you're complaining about something that takes you 4 hours, then consider that 4 hours in light of something like a 40% chance of increasing your salary by a dollar amount, say $4000 per year. If you're staying one year, the EV of that coding challenge is $1600 and your hourly is $400. I do not understand how that is something to avoid.
It's neither right or wrong, it's an ethical question. I believe that "candidate experience" should not be just a buzzword but a reality. I believe companies should strive to not waste the time of even the candidates that end up not hiring.
Just to clarify, here I'm talking about coding challenge like "create a mobile app that will do xxx respecting all kind of best practices".
The thing is that 4 hours is not the actual time it takes for most candidates to do the coding challenge but the very optimistic very wrong time estimate from the guy who created the challenge. That guy has all the insights in mind so of course it takes even less than 4 hours for him, because programming is all about insights.
I'm glad that you can complete all those kind of challenges finger in the nose in 2 hours, but I know talented developers that would over engineer the shit out of that, going in a deep rabbit hole, and that's why I refuse to do those projects.
I think we're on the same page. We have the parameters. It's a matter of performing the calculation to say if it's worth it, not to take an unwavering stance without context or quantifiable value, even if the value is conditional.
Why would proving you can do the job be so scary for you? There's an epidemic of people who fail upwards, across all industries but especially this one, and just because you did some work for Apple or Facebook doesn't mean that you did good work. Hell, they don't employ you anymore... Maybe there's a reason for that... lol
I'm no scared, I'm just not interested.
Please hire someone else at your toxic workplace,
that's completely fine with me.
Sounds like you don't want to work at a company that values quality. Your stance is like writing critical code and not putting any unit tests on it and skipping the code review too. Trust but verify is a good thing.
Instead of you saying what I value, I will tell it myself :
I prioritize my own needs over a random company's needs.
I prioritize my own time over "efficiency" for a random company.
I work with companies that understand that.
What do you do sir?
Totally agree with a good work life balance but it's a balance and not just ignoring company needs. If an applicant can't get through the code challenge then they certainly won't get through an actual work challenge. Like, why would the company give someone a 130k salary if they can't spend 2 hours on a skill check?
You are entitled to your opinion, but I don't think you are my audience and I don't want to force you to comment here π
IMO this is terrible advice.
My advice:
Filtering by whichever company requires the least effort to get into will lead to a bias towards companies with lower quality staff - because those will be less selective.
That's not why I'm saying but thanks.
But I was honestly surprised how much I could say about the candidate from a coding challenge. Tried skipping them, and it turned out to be a waste if time for the company, success rate of 0%.
And of course, when you see a junior candidate, then you evaluate it differently.
In what world are coding tests 8-55 hrs? You can build an entire application in that time.
On planet earth, I'm talking about real recent experience from people I've met, and yes that's infuriating
Preparation of 12h or more is riddicoluse.
I never had such tests. I agree if a test requires preparation. But if you can conduct the test without prep I think it is okay.
After all the test will tell you also a lot about the company, which you can then use as questions.
Just hire ChatGPT then, its good at solving code puzzles. π€·
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