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Comment by blablablame | Hacker News Reader

then do it like I do. Whenever they send you a link to one, don't take it. Explain you are more than happy to talk to an engineer but you won't do some random online test.

(or if you want to be mean, take it, answer every question with a variant of 'this is dumb' and then email the company saying they just wasted their money on these systems)

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I have begun doing this. The RoI just isn't there for me.

I've been looking for full time employment for over 6 months now, doing contracting to make ends meet and to stay involved in the industry. I started out doing the tests, putting lots of effort into the insipid take home exams, and so on. It amounted to absolutely nothing. I'd get invited on site, get tortured with a whiteboard for 6 hours, and get no offer.

Meanwhile, contract "interviews" have been "What have you done at your previous jobs?", "How can you help us do $THING", and finally "What's your rate?". They have, unlike FT interviewers, understood that I am telling the truth about what I have done, what I can do, and how I do it, and so didn't require a college test to prove it.

Yeah, you have to pretty much assume that if you balk on their "weeder" test, they'll balk on you.

The only alternative is to be at least -somewhat- compromising -- as I don't mind these tests too much, if they're on the short and sweet side (up to 90 min timed, or 3-4 hours untimed). But once you've decided what your limit is, hold to it. "I'm sorry, but I've done enough of these already -- sometimes without getting any response at all from the company, even though I felt pretty confident my solution was at least ballpark correct -- so unfortunately I can't justify the time investment for your drippingly pretentious mandatory 4-hour HackerRank hazing session."

(Same goes for ridiculously over-hard and/or over-rushed algorithm questions which in realistic terms almost no one is able to genuinely "solve" in the time provided -- unless they crammed and/or did them very shortly before. Just sit back and assess the situation for 5 minutes before jumping in. And if, heaven forbid, you don't think you'll be able to crank out the flawless the solution they'll undoubtedly expect in the next 35 minutes -- just say, "I'm sorry, but I done challenges like these before and I just don't they're realistic problems to ask people to solve on the spot. So I'll have to pass.")

Of course you don't have to use the exact phrases "drippingly pretentious" and "mandatory hazing session." But at least you're giving them a qualified rejection (instead of "Neah, I'm just too cool for your shit.") Which they'll also almost certainly decide to pass on you for. But if so, then at least you've managed to hold your ground, and keep your head up.

And who knows, maybe at some point these companies will start looking at the response data on these poorly considered "challenge" tasks -- and will move on to some other filtering fad.

I was polite but ended a phone interview recently when they wanted me to code in a Google Document.

Good call. The sheer idiocy of expecting people to show off their mad hacking skills in such an obviously crippled environment is just... breathtaking. Especially when the cost of renting a session on one of the services that does offer a full-featured IDE (with vi and emacs modes) is close to zero.

But given that it's most likely the result of junior hiring managers giving marching orders to junior engineers (i.e. the people conducting the screening) who just don't know any better than to say "no" to such a silly and insulting request to make of incoming candidates... the depth and reach of this annoying fad becomes less surprising.

This is really misguided. As a programmer you should be able to write a few lines of code in a Google Document.

On the other hand it would be idiotic to expect people to be able to code in IDE XYZ (whether it has vi and emacs mode or not).

I've written code for pay for over two decades in a variety of languages and on a variety of platforms. I can say if I don't wish to write code into a Google Document, nothing misguided about that. Someone fresh out of school, maybe, even then, most coders are using an IDE all day or have another window or terminal open so we can do a quick compile sanity check so even for a new coder fresh out of school, this makes no sense.

You should be able to write code with half-busted crayons on the back of yesterday's newspaper, also. But it's much classier (and time-efficient) for all concerned if the employer provides at least ballpark-adequate tools upfront (meaning at the very least an editor that doesn't overtly work against you -- like Google Docs does).

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