Comment by manish_gill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manish_gill | Hacker News Reader

Homework assignments suck. I was once asked to basically create a clone of Yelp in a week (during which I was working full time). I would rather take a full day off and go interview on whiteboards - come at me, algorithms. What I do not have time for, is setting up an entirely new project and work on it in my space time to impress one dude that will be useless in a few days.

Edit: Why are people scared of whiteboards interviews so much? Don't you use them every day to map thoughts out, working with your colleagues etc etc? I'm not saying some questions are (used to be) absurd - the Google/MSFT manhole thing. But why is it so scary to talk about a linked list, a graph traversal algorithm etc? Most of this is stuff that's taught in basic CS classes.

Sorry to sound condescending but it almost feels like that as technology spreads and more and more people come into the field who haven't actually studied proper CS, they're blaming the system instead of trying to learn.

One forgets most of that stuff over years in the industry. They are not difficult to remember either or solve in real time - but it does require practice for achieving consistency. Only having to revise them for an interview is really a waste of time. Let me elaborate with an real life example - programming challenges that require graph traversal and other approaches. If I give one after preparing and revising for few hours over 1-2 days, I can solve all 3-4 questions in an hour. If I revise for one or two hours, I am likely to solve 3, but maybe falter on the 4th. I am the same person in both the cases. Maybe that elaborates the problem and disgruntlement - it pisses me when I pass some and get rejected in another. There is no consistency in the test. :)

> I was once asked to basically create a clone of Yelp in a week

That's just unfair, inconsiderate and unsustainable, and is also a red flag (ie: I would not go to that company).

Giving up a week of your life for an interview ?

and for free ?

And most importantly - what if ALL companies did this ? you would have to spend months working from home, for free, just to get to the next level of the hiring process .

I don't know what the solution IS, but I know for sure that it IS NOT a 1-week work-from-home-for-free task .

(edit:formatting and some grammar)

Edit2: people will actually pay good money for a yelp (or craigslist/etc/etc) clone on places like upwork. And they asked you to do it for free .

You just gave me an idea.. you could actually run an entire company on nothing but free work by candidates doing "homework assignments"...

:)

it is probably something like : 1. go to upwork

2. find a 2-3 hours task (eg: scrape entire site [sitename].com, design a logo etc. etc.

3. give the same task to 5 different candidates

4. choose the best one

5. make profit and gain upwork cred

6. send a "thanks but we chose a different candidate" email to all the candidates

7. repeat

(edit:formatting)

edit2: you can even let candidate X make a code review on candidate Y.

step 8: automate the process and go public

Managing all the candidates and submissions is actually a full time work.

Whiteboards are bad for writing programs. Think about how often you write programs on whiteboard, it's mostly for diagrams and system flow not to write for and while loops for hard problems. My thinking pattern is different when I write program I tend to write the skeleton first and then fill it out. Writing on whiteboard although I know the solution I'm just spending time writing which sucks (may be because the only thing I write is a cheque once a month and I'm not used to writing for years). Now if it were typing, within the same span of time I can write two or three programs find mistakes and solve everything. Hence I find coding on computer much better than whiteboard and these days I refuse interviewing on whiteboards and say so to anyone who wants to hire me.

Edit: It's ironic how the so called cutting-edge tech companies can't afford a keyboard, mouse, laptop and a projector which would make things way better. I even had a case where the interviewer changed the question with 5 min. to spare , I explained the solution he said it would work and then told me to write it. I was just erasing and pointing arrows because I did not have space etc. So easy to forget that while typing you just hit enter and get a new line. Draw on white board, write on computer; that's how it should be.

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