[morkfromork]

Lately I have done a few at home code challenges for companies. They usually take several hours. They are perfectly functional and use minimal code but, the only feedback I receive is: "we're not moving forward". They won't discuss anything with me. The only impression I get is that your company is terrible and I will never respond to your recruiters again.

[bendixso]

Never take a code test until you speak on the phone with an engineer at the company. That way, they need to at least trade something valuable of theirs (expensive engineer time) for something valuable of yours (your time). When you adopt this policy, all kinds of B.S. magically vanishes from your life.

After all, you would never continue to try to win the affection of a guy/girl who wouldn't at least give you a first date? Why do the same for a company that can't bother to give you some of their time?

[mitchitized]

I despise the "legal risk/threat" aspects of this process, which is most likely the reason nobody can actually tell you something useful. In many large companies you can't even provide critical feedback to your own employees, and if you end up letting them go as a result, you are unable to tell them what really went wrong.

I understand an aversion to legal risk, but IMHO this is going to an extreme that hurts all of us.

[cr0sh]

That has always got me about interviews; I've tried emailing back the company, calling them, etc - trying to get some kind of feedback.

I consider it lucky if I even get an email or voicemail saying they've decided to pass. Honestly, most of the time, I don't even get that.

If you're a recruiter, or interviewing someone for a position, it's my opinion that you should be able to give the candidate feedback on what they did right, and what they did wrong, so that they can improve themselves for their next interview.

So often, as a candidate, I've been left to guess at what I did wrong, or why things didn't turn out well. Sometimes, you can figure it out. Other times, it's not very clear what it is you did or answered wrong. Maybe you have a nervous tic or other habit that you are totally unconscious of that nobody has pointed out - and that put them off? Or maybe you need to work on your delivery, or who knows what?

I can understand why companies don't do it; I can see it from their side. I'm sure they (well, their recruiters) can see it from the candidate's side as well. I wish there were a way around this impasse.

I tend to wonder if it has become this way, in part, due to candidates getting honest feedback, and then they in turn went off the rails against the employer or employees? Pure speculation, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out this was the case for some of this.

[yitchelle]

For me, honest and accurate feedback is the one thing that is missing.

When I get rejected, the response is usually "You are not a good match to our company culture". What I would appreciate would be "Your lack of experience in managing remote teams is a gap for us."

I feel that quality to the pool of candidates will increase once this feedback loop problem is fixed.

[gota]

I'm not sure this is true but I've heard people who work in 'hiring' say so: from the company's point of view there is almost no upside to providing insightful and useful feedback, and there's always a chance that feedback will be used to sue for discrimination, or ridicule the company online, etc. Best to be generic and forgotten about by the candidate as soon as possible

[geomark]

Mostly this. I was a hiring manager at a big company where HR made it very clear we cannot give specific feedback to applicants. We also could not give references for the same reason; fear of being sued. But after a while you learn to speak in code for those cases where you really feel you need to provide meaningful information.

The last time I was asked for a reference I was contacted by a hiring manager who said they were about to make an offer and just needed a couple references. It was a previous employee who had been a particularly low performer. My response was "Company policy prevents me from providing any references. However, (pregnant pause) you should always be very careful and selective in your hiring process." The hiring manager asking for the reference was baffled. She must have been new and had not yet learned the code. Later I bumped into her at some industry event and she thanked me profusely because my non-reference prompted her to do more digging and she learned just how bad that candidate was.

Moral of the story: learn the code (strikes me as kinda funny on HN where the usual advice is learn to code)

[michaelmrose]

If you can't for legal and ethical reasons say bob sucks don't hire him then you can't communicate the same thing in a way that is as subtle as a brick.

Next time before you do something like that I suggest you communicate with your companies lawyer and ask his opinion on the matter before you get your company sued and yourself fired. Especially if you are going to discuss the matter on the public internet.

Odds are incredibly good that its trivial to discern your actual identity and that you have done the same thing repeatedly. Its entirely possible that someone could be working out right now why they weren't hired and whom they should sue.

[jahrule]

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be.

you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ?

what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ?

immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

[sethammons]

It is almost like the impressions you leave with former colleagues and managers matters. Who would have thought that is what a reference call is attempting to uncover.

[geezerjay]

> you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ?

I disagree. If you had a bad experience with an employee and you're asked to validate the quality of that candidate why should you lie or omit that info?

When you're looking for a job do you also feel that it's wrong to ask current and former employees for references?

Furthermore, it seems you're oblivious to how many candidates outright lie about their CV and working experience.

You need info to make good informed decisions. Otherwise you have no alternative other than to fell for con jobs.

[geomark]

I wonder how that is actionable. I did not say anything about the candidate. Just the opposite, I was clear that I cannot say anything about him. What I said was very generic and sound advice for any hiring manager. Any negative information concerning the candidate came from somewhere else after the hiring manager did more digging. So any legal action would have to target my intent, not what I said. And my intent was for the hiring manager do a complete assessment before making a decision, which is of course sound advice, and the same advice I would give for any candidate. Good luck suing me. If the candidate wanted to sue someone they would go after whoever provided negative information, which was not me.

[sk0g]

When asked for an assessment of a co-worker, providing said assessment is immature and somehow discriminatory? What do you even think is the point of references?

Not everyone's great to work with, I'm sure you have had a few co-workers you would rather not work with again, right?

[jahrule]

yes, doing what the previous poster did - giving vague "bad signals" even against company's policies - is what i consider immature and discriminatory.

references in form of background check - worked years a, b, c, on projects x, y,z - yes, sure.

references about performance, likability, etc - why ? how are you going to judge that ? are the references legit ? are you going to get references on the reference giving people ? are you gonna research the excompanies culture to judge tbe referential credibility ?

you're just fooling yourself giving any meaning to this, you could be as well tossing a coin.

[rightbyte]

Strange. Where I live it's common practice to ask former employers about a persons performance. I you have no prior work experience they would want to call your math theacher or army drill instructor.

In the US it's illegal? It's discrimation yes but isn't that the whole point of a recruitment process?

[BeetleB]

Not at all illegal, and is quite the norm to ask for references.

You can get sued for anything - it need not be illegal to be sued for it.

[cr0sh]

It's illegal in the US for the company or anyone representing the company to say anything more than that they worked for the company, and what they worked on.

They can't tell the person that the employee was fired, or anything like that.

But as noted - there are ways used to get around such things (that is, the laws of our country). Those laws exist because people were wrongly discriminated against by using such "references".

But if you have a reference to someone you worked with, and they are no longer employed by that company - then I'm pretty sure they can answer anything they wanted too (unless there's some kind of NDA they are still under after leaving the company). Because they don't represent the employer any longer, and are a personal reference - things become more casual.

[jimbokun]

Then what is the point of a reference?

[mikekchar]

When I do interviews I try to give good feedback. My goal is that in 2 or 3 years if the candidate is interested in working with us again that they will certainly pass the interview. However, "You are not a good match for our company culture" is feedback I've definitely given and it's a bit hard to give details.

There are a couple of main things. Usually when I have this issue it's because the candidate seems really keen to do things or have things that we just don't offer. For example, "Every piece of code must be a micro service". Some of our code works that way but lots doesn't and we aren't going to change it. Another example might be a very junior person saying, "I want to be the scrum master". Well, we don't do scrum master in our team and even if we did, we would be unlikely to pick that person.

Basically, "You aren't a good match to our company culture" is saying "I really think you would be very unhappy here based on your responses". Again, I try to explain if I can but I also don't want to get into an argument. If I'm getting "no go" feelings and they aren't reciprocated, this seems doubly like a problem.

My advice, if you are getting this response a lot, is to consider how you are responding to questions. You may be projecting an inflexible attitude. Don't wait until the end of the interview to ask questions about how things work. Try to make sure to fit it in at every place you can. How are they doing their development? What are the people like? How do they resolve disputes? How do they decide on their tech stack? etc, etc.

However, also think critically about the place you are applying into. If you think, "Oh this is an awesome place" and they think "This guy isn't a good fit", That's a pretty bit mismatch. Did you listen well enough to their explanations? Are you sure that it works the way you think it does? However, if you are thinking, "Oh well, this place is OK. There are problems, but I can fix them", maybe there is a mismatch between what you think is a problem and what they think is a problem.

And while you might be thinking that "not a good match" is corporate speak for "you can't balance a B-tree", my experience is that it really means exactly what it says. As much as my ego takes a hit when I experience it myself, in retrospect every time I've gotten that response it's because it was true. I would have hated that job.

Sorry for the rambling nature of this reply. I should be working, but I hope it was helpful.

[yitchelle]

Your comments are helpful and it is aligned with my observations as well.

I have been on both sides of the hiring table, and while the engineer in me wants to give constructive feedback so that the rejected candidate can better themselves for their next interview, the corporate management in me is telling to do something else.

It has been a conflicting point of view in my head ever since I got involve in hiring.

[jahrule]

a) dont take these rejections personally. dont hold a grudge. it might be someone incompetent is reviewing your code. it might be the company does not have urgent need to hire but is only on tge lookout if they spot someone matching their (awkard) criteria.

b) if its a repeating thing consider asking someone (a friend, a forum, a senior dev) for review of one of these "exercises". this could show you what youre not seeing. or could show you your code is just fine or perfect and it's about the company not knowing what they want. so either you will learn something or you will boost your self confidence.

a series of "rejections" can put one's self-confidence to a test, remember good times will come again.

[tombert]

I hate these take-home code projects, to a point where I won't do them for similar reasons that you mentioned ("we're not moving forward, we will keep your resume on file!").

It's sort of a selfish way of interviewing; to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours. An engineer where I live (NYC) can fairly easily make $50/hour (usually more), so they effectively expect me to give $350-450 of time for this company where there's a fairly high likelihood that they'll tell me to buzz off. I typically write in a very functional lispy style (even when I did JavaScript), and while the overall understanding of FP has improved in the last couple years, a lot of the interviewers would simply not understand what I was writing, and ask me to write it "more object oriented".

Big corporations like Google can get away with that, but for a small startup I really don't think it's worth it to do them (not to mention that I had a friend who did one of these assignments, and they ended up using his code in production without paying him).

[minimaxir]

> to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours.

The good data science take-home assignments I've done suggest a 2-3 hour limit and they were correctly scoped for that limit, although technically there's no incentive for the candidate to stick to that limit.

The worst take home I did suspiciously did not have an expected time limit (but was due in 48 hours after issuing). It was extremely broadly scoped, and as a result it took 16 hours; even after a couple years as a data scientist now and familiar with time-saving tricks, it would still take 8 hours minimum if you weren't already familiar with the company's data.

[tombert]

Even 2-3 hours is pretty high, expecting me to spend $100-150 of labor for it.

16 hours is kind of insane and you have my sympathies. My record is around 10 hours.

[jimbokun]

"I typically write in a very functional lispy style (even when I did JavaScript), and while the overall understanding of FP has improved in the last couple years, a lot of the interviewers would simply not understand what I was writing, and ask me to write it "more object oriented"."

Which is a good way for you to weed out companies where the developers are low to average intelligence.

Not understanding basic functional programming concepts, in 2019? Seriously?

[tombert]

In fairness, the times this happened was 2015, so about four years ago. Still, even by then it was getting to the "it's not ok to not know this" territory.

[gwbas1c]

Honestly, this is why I'm skeptical of take-home coding. They require a high investment of my time, and a lower investment of the hiring company's time.

It's fine when I'm in a "my job is to get a job" situation, but I haven't been in that situation very much.

As a result, I only start these kinds of projects when I have a clear understanding of the company; and when my personal ramp-up will be very small. Otherwise, I just walk away. My free time is limited.

[drugme]

Another fun aspect is that, surprisingly often, these "tests" are poorly (and in some cases, plainly wrongly) articulated and/or simply not do-able as articulated.

Or do-able, but they end up requiring 2-4x the "just a couple of hours" they asked for to be done reasonably well.

After which at some point one starts asking one's self: "Do I need this industry actually?"

[pmiller2]

I've got you beat regarding feedback. I applied to a backend position looking for 3-5 years of backend experience, and was told I "didn't have enough API experience." I had 5 years of backend experience at the time. Literally all I do is write, modify, and interact with APIs.

[techterrier]

Try not to judge the individuals too harshly in this circumstance - their lawyers have probably forbid them from saying much if anything at all.

[theelous3]

I'll judge them all the same because it's not illegal to give someone feedback. Unless you have discriminatory hiring practices in which case the judgement holds true, or your legal team is so far up their own and everybody else's ass, the judgement still holds true.

[piokoch]

Partly the problem is "the system" people created for themselves. At some point people started suing employers because of some really contrived reasons so employers became very, very careful.

If there is a big company that hires a lot of people and this is managed by many HR stuff, it is much cheaper and safer not to give any response than go through every rejection response to double check if something seemingly innocent cannot be interpreted as "discriminatory practice", rightly or not.

[diminoten]

Yes, it basically is illegal to let a non-lawyer give someone feedback. Not literally, but negligent of a company to allow.

[ABCLAW]

The requirements to open yourself up to a discrimination lawsuit are fairly high.

Legal doesn't have 'interview experience - net promoter score' or any other interview quality metrics as one of their KPIs, so they're happy to mandate the nuclear option because it gets work off their plate.

[jimbokun]

Can you elaborate? What do these laws actually say?

[diminoten]

It's less about what the laws say and more about what the consequences of not following industry standard would be.

If you explicitly flout standard and as a result get sued for violating one of the related hiring/discrimination laws, your investors may have a good case to sue you personally because you didn't act in the best interest of the company by opening your company up to that extra risk for no tangible benefit.

[kryptiskt]

That's not a reason to let them off the hook, because they control the rest of the experience. If they can't give feedback, then they shouldn't have a hiring process that asks for such effort from the candidate.

[latortuga]

That is pretty bad behavior. Our position is that if you took the time out of your schedule to complete our coding task, we will take the time to do a technical interview with you.

[antt]

I always use those as a way to test a new language/paradigm/something. I'm naturally lazy and this is a wonderful way to get new knowledge.

>Sorry I want to write an extension to emacs so I'm solving your problem in elisp.

[sokoloff]

We used to give standard questions for college candidates, language unrestricted.

I saw several candidates solve the problem in scheme and every one of them was beautiful.