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“Not over saturated” is not the same thing as “there is no hiring bar.” In a market that is over saturated, a company would get their pick of well- or over-qualified candidates. That’s not actually the case. Tons of candidates are full of crap, socially stunted, or otherwise bad at things important to our profession. Of the ones that are decent, many have competing offers, decide they don’t want to move or whatever, etc. If you want to see what actual oversaturation looks like, have a look at professorships in the humanities, where you’ll have multiple people with amazing publishing records from top-10 universities fighting tooth and nail to teach heavy course loads at a random SLAC or even CC. That is oversaturation. I’m not trying to be insulting, but it sounds like you are having troubles with the “can work on a team and/or communicate effectively” parts. Those are base job requirements, not nice-to-haves. Not being able to do them absolutely makes a candidate unfit for senior (or in many cases mid-level) positions. Luckily those skills can be practiced and learned just like any other skills, but they’re very important.
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Aug 7, 2019 06:17
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Achmed Jones posted:
I have experienced real oversaturation almost my entire post-college life. I've also experienced the opposite of oversaturation. When I first graduated college in late 2006, my first job was at a flight school as a flight instructor. During those days the entire aviation industry was aggressively growing and there was a huge pilot shortage. Anyone with a Flight Instructor certificate was guaranteed a job at any flight school they applied to. There was none of that "a bad instructor is worse than no instructor" bullshit at all. I applied to only a single flight school and was given the job after only a 10 minute conversational phone interview. Then in late 2008 the aviation industry began to fall apart. Airlines started laying off people, and the cargo airline I was working at at the time laid off half it's staff (including me). At the time it was impossible for someone with my experience to get a job in the aviation industry because the market had been flooded with laid off airline pilots. If you're a flight school, why would you hire the instructor with only 2 years experience, when you can have one of the many many ex-airline guys with 15 years of experience on the market? During this time I decided to quit aviation and become a professional software developer. The weird thing is that the aviation industry is never in denial of oversaturation when it occurs. If you posted about the market being oversaturated back in those days, it wouldn't trigger anyone. Everyone would agree with you because oversaturation was common knowledge. For some reason programmers don't have the same economic awareness of pilots, and I don't know why... I think it may have something to do with the aviation industry being much smaller, and therefore easier to get a grasp of the industry trends. Also, aviation is more cyclical with boom and bust cycles every few years. Tech on the other hand is not usually affected much by recessions, and it's not cyclical. quote:Tons of candidates are full of crap, socially stunted, or otherwise bad at things important to our profession. Of the ones that are decent, many have competing offers, decide they don’t want to move or whatever, etc. I don't believe this. I think most candidates are perfectly capable of being a programmer at most jobs. Maybe 1% are incompetent. America is the largest economy in the world. It didn't get that way by 99% of it's workforce being completely incompetent. This is a lie perpetuated by the HR industry. If the reality that 99% of programmers are perfectly capable of doing the job becomes well known, then it means that HR is a worthless department. HR people don't want you to think their department is worthless, so they spread this lie that almost everyone on the market is incompetent to justify their department's existence. quote:I’m not trying to be insulting, but it sounds like you are having troubles with the “can work on a team and/or communicate effectively” parts. Dude, I worked as a professional developer from 2010 to 2017 and have never once had a problem "working on a team". That's just something this thread made up to try to marginalize me because they don't want to accept the reality that the market is oversaturated, so they desperate cling to any explanation that denies the obvious reality.
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Aug 7, 2019 07:31
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School of How posted:Dude, I worked as a professional developer from 2010 to 2017 and have never once had a problem "working on a team". That's just something this thread made up to try to marginalize me because they don't want to accept the reality that the market is oversaturated, so they desperate cling to any explanation that denies the obvious reality. Uhhh 1) You're having a hard time finding a job, the other devs in this thread aren't 2) You think you're a good at "working on a team" (did you put it in quotation marks because you were quoting somebody or because you think it's a not even a serious issue?), other devs in this thread disagree Do you think maybe you could be wrong, or is this one of those cases where you know the one correct way of doing things and everybody else is wrong?
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Aug 7, 2019 07:55
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School of How posted:I have experienced real oversaturation almost my entire post-college life. I've also experienced the opposite of oversaturation.... The entirety of your evidence for oversaturation is the fact that you can't get a development job. Pretty bold to make inferences about the state of the entire market based on one person's experience, don't you think? I'm not saying the supply of competent developers won't affect the outcome of your job search, but that effect is going to be tiny compared to the effect of your personal strengths and weaknesses a candidate. As a counter-anecdote, I know plenty of people who have gotten jobs in the last twelve months and in fact have entertained multiple offers - unlikely if the market is as saturated as you claim. School of How posted:Anyone with a Flight Instructor certificate was guaranteed a job at any flight school they applied to. The flight schools relied on the flight instructor certification program to judge your competence as a flight instructor; you effectively went through that part of the interview once, when you got certified. There's not a widely recognized good-developer certification, so each tech company you apply to has to evaluate your skills. Also, flying a plane is a poor analogy for programming because there is essentially one correct way to fly a plane (i.e. safely). Many of the problems we encounter as developers are design problems, and most design problems admit a variety of solutions, each with their own tradeoffs. There are plenty of ways to approach something as simple as FizzBuzz. In the context of a team of developers, programming is also collaborative, akin to writing prose: Your code needs to be understood by others if you're working on part of a larger system, and your coworkers can act as editors, helping you refine your ideas. This means you're being evaluated by a more nuanced rubric than "did How produce the single, objectively correct answer to the given problem". The questions are closer to "did How produce something reasonable in light of the given constraints? Does he have enough people skills that we're not going to hate working with him?" Nobody is going to promise to hire you if your solution is "correct" because there is no standing definition of "correct" for some interview questions, and your definition may differ considerably from everybody else's. Frankly, the fact that you don't understand this speaks volumes about why you aren't getting hired. School of How posted:Dude, I worked as a professional developer from 2010 to 2017 Again, landing a particular job probably has more to do with the job in question than the overall market for developers. Earlier in the thread you were talking about working twelve-hour weeks and rarely encountering problems taking more than fifteen minutes to solve... sounds like some serious development work. I bet the hiring bar was really high. Please post a GitHub link so we can take a look at your code. School of How posted:My current gig is the best, I basically come in every Monday through Thursday at 2PM, and leave by 5PM. Basically a 12 hour work week. --snip-- Most programmers can't close a single ticket unless you give them one week or more to do it. My boss can come to me with a problem, and I can usually get it done within 10 or 15 minutes, and that includes testing and deployment.
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Aug 7, 2019 09:33
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The funny thing about all this is that when we were looking for new people, we would actually bring up their github (if they listed it), took a look and prepared some questions about the projects they had there. We also do not do take homes unless you are a borderline candidate (and we are up front about that). And yet, I would be screaming REJECT REJECT REJECT the second How!! made it out the doors, because holy gently caress, screw dealing with someone like that.
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Aug 7, 2019 09:34
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sunaurus posted:Uhhh It's not just me. Lots of experienced developers have trouble finding work. I wouldn't have trouble either if I was willing to do take home projects and whiteboards, but when I'm asked to do those, I refuse to do them unless the company can promise me by finishing the problem I'll be offered a job. I'm not quite desperate enough to do them today without that guarantee, but some in the future I might become desperate enough to do them without the guarantee. Anybody who has had to do multiple rounds of take home projects only to be ghosted has experienced oversaturation. The terrible interview process id something that only really started in recent times. Back in 2010 interviews wasn't this terrible. Also, look at how people are treating me in this thread for speaking out about difficulty finding work. It's not surprising that no one else is willing to put themselves in that position. Each person reading this knows their own personal experiences, even if they don't post about it honestly in public. quote:2) You think you're a good at "working on a team" (did you put it in quotation marks because you were quoting somebody or because you think it's a not even a serious issue?), other devs in this thread disagree None of those devs in this thread has ever worked with me. What the hell gives them the authority to make that determination? Not once have I ever had an actual coworker tell me I'm "terrible to work with", or even imply it. quote:Do you think maybe you could be wrong, or is this one of those cases where you know the one correct way of doing things and everybody else is wrong? If someone wants to convince me the market is not oversaturated, I welcome them to do so. No one yet has been able to successfully change my mind. School of How fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 7, 2019 13:28
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Hiring pickiness (especially when there are so many factors involved) has no relationship with the job market being advantaged towards employees right now.
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Aug 7, 2019 13:43
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Blinkz0rz posted:Hiring pickiness (especially when there are so many factors involved) has no relationship with the job market being advantaged towards employees right now. Especially in a role where an incompetent worker can do more harm than good.
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Aug 7, 2019 13:52
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Hands over ears. "LALALA, I can't hear you!"
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Aug 7, 2019 13:53
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205b posted:but that effect is going to be tiny compared to the effect of your personal strengths and weaknesses a candidate. quote:As a counter-anecdote, I know plenty of people who have gotten jobs in the last twelve months and in fact have entertained multiple offers - unlikely if the market is as saturated as you claim. quote:The flight schools relied on the flight instructor certification program to judge your competence as a flight instructor; you effectively went through that part of the interview once, when you got certified. There's not a widely recognized good-developer certification, so each tech company you apply to has to evaluate your skills. 7 years experience, a github account with repos with many stars, and being able to competently talk about them during a screening is just as good as formal certification. quote:There are plenty of ways to approach something as simple as FizzBuzz. quote:Does he have enough people skills that we're not going to hate working with him?" quote:Nobody is going to promise to hire you if your solution is "correct" because there is no standing definition of "correct"
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Aug 7, 2019 13:54
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Xarn posted:And yet, I would be screaming REJECT REJECT REJECT the second How!! made it out the doors The fact that you have the luxury to reject anyone at all proves my point that the industry is oversaturated. Imagine a market with 10,000 open jobs, and only 5,000 programmers. The best companies like Google and Amazon will get lots of applications and will be able to reject some candidates, but the remaining 99% of companies will likely either get a single application, or no applications at all. Those companies either hire the one person who applied, or do without a developer. They don't get to reject anyone even if they desperately wanted to.
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Aug 7, 2019 13:58
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i know you're how!! and incapable of the slightest bit of introspection but jesus christ man, dig up.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:00
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School of How posted:The fact that you have the luxury to reject anyone at all proves my point that the industry is oversaturated. Even if you're desperately in need of fertilizer, you won't pick up a toxic pile of poo poo.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:07
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Have you thought of going back to piloting? My cousin's a pilot and she's having a good career.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:18
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School of How posted:The fact that you have the luxury to reject anyone at all proves my point that the industry is oversaturated. Imagine a market with 10,000 open jobs, and only 5,000 programmers. The best companies like Google and Amazon will get lots of applications and will be able to reject some candidates, but the remaining 99% of companies will likely either get a single application, or no applications at all. Those companies either hire the one person who applied, or do without a developer. They don't get to reject anyone even if they desperately wanted to. I agree with your point, the problem is though that there's 30,000 people who call themselves Senior Software Engineers, and are not. So 5 out of 6 are rejected until the 5000 are actually found. Your assumption is that everyone who is able to say i = 1 in python is a Senior Software Engineer and the fact that they're not getting 100% of the jobs the apply for is proof of over saturation. Part of the problem is that you believe because of your github repos that you are one of those 5000 and that the interview process is working as intended and putting you in the other 25000. From a company perspective it is indeed better to do without the developer than hire the wrong one. No developer adds zero velocity to the team. The Wrong developer can be a massive net negative velocity to the team.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:19
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School of How posted:The fact that you have the luxury to reject anyone at all proves my point that the industry is oversaturated. Imagine a market with 10,000 open jobs, and only 5,000 programmers. The best companies like Google and Amazon will get lots of applications and will be able to reject some candidates, but the remaining 99% of companies will likely either get a single application, or no applications at all. Those companies either hire the one person who applied, or do without a developer. They don't get to reject anyone even if they desperately wanted to. That's not the only possibility. If you try I'm sure you can imagine some cases where hiring one person would lead to the loss of other people thus resulting in a net loss in total capacity.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:35
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Hughlander posted:From a company perspective it is indeed better to do without the developer than hire the wrong one. No developer adds zero velocity to the team. The Wrong developer can be a massive net negative velocity to the team. Several of us have said this now and he's avoiding the question. There's a significant cost to onboarding people and it can be hard to fire them if they turn out to be toxic. School of How posted:I like working with people who get poo poo done. Everything else is just meaningless details. It's not either/or; I want to hire people that are competent _and_ pleasant to work with. I've passed on candidates during interviews for comments like this. Little statements like this say a lot about you.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:35
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wins32767 posted:That's not the only possibility. If you try I'm sure you can imagine some cases where hiring one person would lead to the loss of other people thus resulting in a net loss in total capacity. yeah let's take a random example, who we'll call !!!!Woh. !!!!Woh is not a very good developer, he's probably worth maybe half of an average developer. !!!!Woh is interviewing at Sensible Development, which has ten average developers. the market for developers is so thin that !!!!Woh is the only candidate Sensible Development can hire: it's !!!!Woh or nothing. this is, one assumes, the paradigm of the "reverse oversaturated market" how keeps discussing (though he appears to be completely unable to consider cases where there's a slight imbalance, e.g. 10k jobs and 9.5k candidates, he can only conceive of situations where there's a massive imbalance) how believes that under this situation it's obvious: Sensible Development must hire !!!!Woh, because that increases their capacity to 10.5 average developers. however, !!!!!Woh is a tremendously unpleasant person. astoundingly unpleasant. hiring !!!!Woh gives about a 75% chance that one of the existing developers will quit and go to a different firm rather than deal with !!!!Woh (remember, the job market is so tight that that person will immediately get a new job, so why stay at Sensible Development with their tremendously unpleasant co-worker) - and remember, Sensible Development can't hire anyone but !!!!!Woh, because the market is that tight. they're not going to be able to replace whoever leaves. in this situation - a tremendously employee-friendly job market - it is in the company's best interest to hire nobody because hiring nobody keeps their productivity at 10x that of an average; while hiring !!!!Woh will, on average, bring them down to 9.75x that of an average developer.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:45
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evilweasel posted:yeah let's take a random example, who we'll call !!!!Woh. !!!!Woh is not a very good developer, he's probably worth maybe half of an average developer. !!!!Woh is interviewing at Sensible Development, which has ten average developers. the market for developers is so thin that !!!!Woh is the only candidate Sensible Development can hire: it's !!!!Woh or nothing. Even if !!!!Woh is very pleasant, some developers only want to work with people of a certain skill level. Others may want to get a certain amount of coaching and adding someone who needs a lot of help will reduce the attention that they get.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:57
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I wonder if the guy who attributes his problems to only a single* cause that no one else agrees with and refuses to consider any alternatives or feedback has motivations other than engaging in a constructive sharing of views *technically how!! has blamed "oversaturation" but also a conspiracy of HR departments who want to pretend that not every programming job can be done by 99% of programmers? how!! is here to be "validated" by having everyone disagree with him. Weird payoff, but okay
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Aug 7, 2019 15:06
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prisoner of waffles posted:I wonder if the guy who attributes his problems to only a single* cause that no one else agrees with and refuses to consider any alternatives or feedback has motivations other than engaging in a constructive sharing of views It's really just ironic to me that I spend 2 - 2.5 hours a day every day on a combination of: - Manager Phone Screens - Tech test review - Tech Screen where we follow-up on choices made during tech test - In person interview for leadership qualities - Post interview round-tables discussing the candidate. I know first hand the expense it is on a per candidate basis, and also the number of mindbogglingly unfit candidates that go through some portion of the funnel before being knocked out. At least it's optimized that the lesser man hours is at the top of the funnel. I just wish there was a way to follow-up on the tech screen before the review since follow-up is only 3 man hours (3 engineers 60 minutes.) while the original review is 6-8 man hours. (4 engineers 90 mins to 2 hours.) But of course we're just being super picky right and it's a fine and good thing that we spend so many man hours when we should just take the first resume off the top and hire them! /s.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:14
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School of How posted:None of those devs in this thread has ever worked with me. What the hell gives them the authority to make that determination? Not once have I ever had an actual coworker tell me I'm "terrible to work with", or even imply it. If all of us can read your posts and decide, "Wow, this person must be a nightmare to work with," what do you think is going through interviewers' heads when they're interviewing you?
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Aug 7, 2019 15:14
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there's little point in arguing logically, point-by-point, with someone who's sure they already know the answer and are smart despite their inability to listen to or take seriously literally anything said by anyone else. personally I hope that the oldie thread goes back to its usual mode of existence: low total post volume, usually small bursts of high quality. Having only spent the tiniest amount of time on the other side of the interviewing equation, it's fascinating to hear about how these things work, for serious and at scale. prisoner of waffles fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 7, 2019 15:32
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School of How posted:If someone wants to convince me the market is not oversaturated, I welcome them to do so. No one yet has been able to successfully change my mind. What would convince you?
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Aug 7, 2019 15:35
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I am 100% ready to believe that 99.9% of all developers are incompetent and the remaining 0.1% are incel weirdos.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:41
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Pollyanna posted:I am 100% ready to believe that 99.9% of all developers are incompetent and the remaining 0.1% are incel weirdos. You are in a bad organization, I feel super blessed that I work at a consulting company and all of my coworkers are competent and fun to work with. But we only hire experienced devs (+3 years) and make sure they aren't weirdos.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:50
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School of How posted:If I'm such a terrible candidate, then why was I offered 8 job from 2010 to 2012. Why was I able to work as a developer from 2010 to 2017? Why did the difficulty only begin for me after 2012? I think I can definitively answer that by citing School of How posted:I wouldn't have trouble either if I was willing to do take home projects and whiteboards, but when I'm asked to do those, I refuse to do them unless the company can promise me by finishing the problem I'll be offered a job. "I refuse to participate in the interview process and nobody will hire me therefore the job market is bad not me I am good as I will herein refuse to demonstrate!"
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Aug 7, 2019 15:57
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Yeah it’s getting lost in the hash of unrelated text, but “I got job offers when I whiteboarded, now I refuse to and don’t” is about as clear a line as any. Saturation is just a funny little narrative on the side that’s getting center stage to protect someone’s ego. What point makes someone too good to whiteboard? 1 or 2 years? Should I be ashamed that I proved my skills in that way for this job despite having a decade of digital systems design experience?
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Aug 7, 2019 16:09
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I don't want to discount the fact that how!! is probably struggling but man, ya picked the wrong way to engage if you wanted support. it'd be real easy to go over to https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3845966&pagenumber=1 and be like, "man, I've got 7 years experience and think I'm pretty good; it sucks that no one will even look at my github / sucks being ghosted after I thought I did a homework problem perfectly" and you know? i think people would be like, "feel ya, the job market is theoretically good but a lot of the time it feels lovely"
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Aug 7, 2019 16:17
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So changing the topic slightly, if one wasn't in dire need of a [new] job, what are you guys' thoughts on refusing take-home tests specifically? I enjoy coding, but I have a life outside of work and I'm strongly disinterested in sacrificing my time to do a project. Doubly so if they're playing the "we gave you poo poo specs to test your ability to ask for clarification" game because playing I have no problem with on-site whiteboarding or any other "typical" interview process testing, but expecting me to sacrifice 10, 15, maybe even 20 hours of my time outside of my current job is horseshit IMO. I stare at a screen and write code all day, the last thing I want to do is go home and write more code. Also, frankly, I have ADHD and it's really hard for me to just force myself to do "productive" work when I'm not on the clock. I know that's kind of "just an excuse", but  I don't really care because I'm not in need of a job.I've never considered just flat-out telling recruiters/companies about my unwillingness to do take homes. The last time I was given one, I asked for some spec clarification, briefly started the project and then after thinking about the interviews I had more, I simply told the recruiter I wasn't interested. Would it be worthwhile to save everyone's time to make this point clear ahead of time? Something like, "If you know they give take-home tests, don't give them my resume" ?
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Aug 7, 2019 16:40
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To spend 20 hours on a "take-home" project seems a bit too much. To spend an evening, let's say 5 hours or so, is a lot more reasonable. I never had a take-home that I spent more than 5 hours on. They should be simple things, not a fully functional product of some kind. But, at the end of the day it's up to you. Every person is different and every job is different. If the place looks extremely appealing, the people working there are awesome, maybe I know a few of them, the paycheck is fat ... dunno, maybe I'd say yes to even 20 hours. But if you don't want to, then don't.
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Aug 7, 2019 16:47
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Sab669 posted:So changing the topic slightly, if one wasn't in dire need of a [new] job, what are you guys' thoughts on refusing take-home tests specifically? I posted this earlier, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say, "hey, I won't have time to get to this any time soon, can we substitute this thing that I already did that is similar?" When you're casually looking, if they're dead-set on making you do the take home and they can't give you a reason why they aren't interested in looking at some code you already have, then it's also not unreasonable for you to pass based on timing. But also don't be How and point to your entire github history either. Gotta provide a specific project.
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Aug 7, 2019 16:48
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Volguus posted:To spend 20 hours on a "take-home" project seems a bit too much. To spend an evening, let's say 5 hours or so, is a lot more reasonable. I never had a take-home that I spent more than 5 hours on. They should be simple things, not a fully functional product of some kind. But, at the end of the day it's up to you. Every person is different and every job is different. If the place looks extremely appealing, the people working there are awesome, maybe I know a few of them, the paycheck is fat ... dunno, maybe I'd say yes to even 20 hours. But if you don't want to, then don't. The longest I ever spent was 8 hours, but that was specified - I was directed to do 4 hours, get feedback, and do an additional 4 hours over a 2 week period. I think a big part of that evaluation was "how well do you respond to feedback". That was also for my very first role after switching careers, and they knew that, so the take home was probably a bigger piece than it would be for a dev with work experience. I couldn't rely on my resume or github for code examples, so I needed to ace the take-home and whiteboard sections. I think it's possible to get jobs without doing take-homes, but you're limiting your job pool. Which doesn't mean it's a bad idea, you just have to understand what the tradeoffs are. Remember that job interviews are a two-way street, and a company that expects extensive, unpaid homework probably has other bad expectations around people's free time. Alternatively, a company that requires no proof of coding ability is probably desperate and/or doesn't really know what they need in the role, and that's not something I am interested in either.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:00
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The last one I was given was basically, "Go build a slightly feature-lacking imgur". Maybe it wouldn't have taken 20 hours, I suck at estimating project lengths. But it definitely would've taken me way more than 5 hours.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:05
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I have very little experience with take homes, but I can't imagine spending more than a couple hours on one unless it was a prestige job or I was desperate. Just gimmie the 1 hour screen share interview.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:11
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Sab669 posted:The last one I was given was basically, "Go build a slightly feature-lacking imgur". Maybe it wouldn't have taken 20 hours, I suck at estimating project lengths. But it definitely would've taken me way more than 5 hours. Yeah this is such an unreasonable take home assignment. The scope is way way too big. The take home our company gives is basically write a small program that: - fetches some data from a public API - does some sorting and filtering of the data - displays the results in an organized way - handles errors and some edge cases gracefully - a brief write up about what you did and what assumptions you made - do it in the language of your choice, but something common that people actually use is preferred The end product is then used as a jumping off point for a code review and “what if we made this more real” design session at the onsite. For a senior dev this task should be pretty dang easy and take no more than 2-3 hours, but it should show clarity in approach and code structure. You’d still be surprised how many folks get wound around the axle on this.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:27
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My biggest gripe with take-homes is that so many companies want you to do it greenfield. Even with Rails, which excels at being fast to publish, it takes an hour or two to get a fresh project set up. Especially if it's also a SPA. Best take-home was an already created project and a trello board with a few bugs, a minor feature request, and an "if you have time" major feature request or two. A mid-level dev should be able to get the bugs, minor, and one major request done in 4-6 hours. A senior should take 4-6 hours to clear the board or 3-4 hours to do what the mid-level dev did. The key was that the setup was already done. Otherwise, a big part of the test is how you create your skeleton and how well you can set up webpack.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:43
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Volguus posted:To spend 20 hours on a "take-home" project seems a bit too much. To spend an evening, let's say 5 hours or so, is a lot more reasonable. I never had a take-home that I spent more than 5 hours on. They should be simple things, not a fully functional product of some kind. But, at the end of the day it's up to you. Every person is different and every job is different. If the place looks extremely appealing, the people working there are awesome, maybe I know a few of them, the paycheck is fat ... dunno, maybe I'd say yes to even 20 hours. But if you don't want to, then don't. Holy hell, 20 hours is way too much. We always stated to spend a maximum of 3-4 hours on a take home and write in the README what you would have done had you had more time. We never punished people for that.
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Aug 7, 2019 17:44
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kayakyakr posted:My biggest gripe with take-homes is that so many companies want you to do it greenfield. Even with Rails, which excels at being fast to publish, it takes an hour or two to get a fresh project set up. Especially if it's also a SPA.
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Aug 7, 2019 19:32
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Sab669 posted:So changing the topic slightly, if one wasn't in dire need of a [new] job, what are you guys' thoughts on refusing take-home tests specifically? If you absolutely must give senior devs coding exercises to make sure the people who had been paying their salaries for the last 20 years weren't just chumps, I feel like a takehome is the least bad commonly exercised option. It's always been an easy sell for me to say "look I'll be happy to do this but I still have this other job from 9-5 and I've got family obligations and so forth and carving out 8 hours for work isn't easy, so it may take me a few weeks to get this back to you." As for the length of time, if it's really gonna take you 20 hours, I feel like maybe there's one of three possibilities: 1) they have an unreasonable test 2) you've set an unreasonably high bar for a take home test 3) you are overestimating the time it will take I tend to think 2 & 3 are probably more common, but I don't deny that #1 will exist somewhere. quote:I've never considered just flat-out telling recruiters/companies about my unwillingness to do take homes. The last time I was given one, I asked for some spec clarification, briefly started the project and then after thinking about the interviews I had more, I simply told the recruiter I wasn't interested. Would it be worthwhile to save everyone's time to make this point clear ahead of time? Something like, "If you know they give take-home tests, don't give them my resume" ? I wouldn't, because some take-homes are fine and others aren't and you'll never know which are which until you see them. It's totally ok to look at the take-home and say "nah." I've done it a couple times, mostly because front-end jobs these days assume everyone knows react.
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Aug 7, 2019 19:34
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