[tptacek]

Again, the premise is that you're exercising professional judgement. If you can't let a project go until it's perfect to a standard far past what's called for, that is itself signal. Either way: if the project budgets 4 hours, it is on you as a professional to stop at 4 hours.

[lesam]

If you run an interview process where candidates who take 6-8 hours and claim to have taken 4 hours score highest, those are the candidates you will hire.

[tptacek]

All these objections rely on removing agency from the professionals applying for jobs. You look at the work sample. You use your professional judgement. You decide if it's reasonable to execute it to what you think a professional standard would be in the time allotted. You make a decision.

This isn't a college application.

[akerl_]

I think you're answering a different objection than they're making. Their concern is that people will choose to spend 8 hours on your 4 hour problem but then tell you they only spent 4. Then you'll think they're a leet hacker because their solution is so awesome and they did it so fast.

[tptacek]

Why would I think that? There's a rubric for the challenge defined up front, before anyone does it.

[akerl_]

No clue; it wasn’t my concern.

[lesam]

Why would you design a hiring process that scores unprofessional people (by your own definition) higher than professional ones?

[tptacek]

Again: I am responsive to the concern that hiring processes can demand too much of candidates, and particularly to the idea that work-sample challenges are unreasonably demanding compared to interviews. That's why hiring processes I've designed over the last 10 years have all been budgeted against the time typically allotted to an interview loop. And then, to people who say "the challenges take more time than the budget, so I'm forced to spend more time", I say "if you believe that to be the case, don't do the work sample challenge".

The rest of this I'm not interested in. For as long as we've been talking about hiring processes on HN, there have always been staunch defenders of interviews. Lots of people have spent time getting good at them, there are classes on it, there are books, there are drilling exercises. I don't anticipate talking those people out of their investment in interviewing.

[masfuerte]

> And then, to people who say "the challenges take more time than the budget, so I'm forced to spend more time"

People aren't saying that. They are saying that other candidates will put in more time. If I do a professional job in four hours, then an equally talented candidate who puts in eight hours will produce a much more polished effort, and they will get the job.

I guess the fix is to ask the candidate to pick a four hour window, and to ask them to complete the task in that time.

[tptacek]

Again: the rubric is defined up front. You can actually lose points for doing too much.

I understand that some people are concerned that they're competing with candidates who will put in 12 hours to do what they should be doing in 4. But that's not their problem. Their problem as a professional is to evaluate whether they can do the challenge in 4 hours; that's the expectation the job is setting.

It is perfectly reasonable for someone to look at the hiring process we're running and say "no, this communicates to me that this job wouldn't be a good fit for me". That's a good outcome! Most jobs aren't a good fit for most people; that's the whole challenge of hiring.

[BoiledCabbage]

That's absurd thinking if putting in 6-8 hrs outta what everyone else is doing and what is needed to get you a job.

For all its flaws, part of the benefit of an interview is it's time bound and equal for everyone. Similar to a test.

[tptacek]

Look, if you want to make people do work samples from an uncomfortable conference room at your office, be my guest. I am pretty confident I speak for the majority of candidates when I say that that my preference would strongly be for the ability to work on this stuff from wherever I want to.

[ncallaway]

I mean, that doesn't have to be how it works. You can have a both fixed amount of time, and the ability for a candidate to work in whatever environment they want.

[tptacek]

Of course, and if you want to do that, I've got no complaints. What we want is to eliminate pressure and scheduling inconvenience. We're also not unhappy to meet people who are not necessarily experts in our problem domain, but capable enough programmers that they can ramp up given a bit of extra time. I don't feel the slightest bit bad creating that affordance, so long as you can meet the rubric if you're an experienced professional in the time we allot.