Hacker News Reader

The best coding challenge I had to do was when the company basically gave me a set of requirements, said build this. Took about an hour. Then during the interview, I was asked about my decisions, and blockers. Afterwards I was given another feature to add. This took another half an hour.

I wish more companies would do this. The hardest part for me at least is staring at a blank document.

View on HN

different companies need different skills and it changes even as a company grows. Part of the frustration about this entire process is that it feels very cookie cutter and sort of like a lowest-common-denominator type effort on behalf of companies.

Huge companies like google are for the most part hiring people they can slot into almost any team in the org so it makes sense for them to place less emphasis on tooling expertise. They have plenty of time and money to upskill employees.

The same can't be said for the vast majority of consumer start ups that really just need people who can rapidly prototype.

Of course those groups are not mutually exclusive, I just think it's sad that everyone has adopted the approach that works for a select few companies

Reply on news.ycombinator.com