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How to make a coding challenge to hire a new engineer? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by hi65435@discuss.tchncs.de to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev

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We're a very small team with little experience in hiring but got approval for a new engineer. Basically HR will look for people through the usual channels and I think we have a reasonably good job description. Unfortunately the coding challenge (a 30h+ take home) is atrociously difficult and doesn't really reflect what we do. On the other hand I think the false positive rate would be low. FWIW it's a Linux application and it might be difficult to only count on experience from the CV.

Any ideas how to build a good challenge from scratch and what time constraints are reasonable?

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[–] vahtos@programming.dev 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A 30h+ take home that doesn't even reflect what you all do is a waste of everyone's time. I'd think most qualified applicants are going to ghost you when they are tasked with that. You have to keep in mind you're not the only place they're applying. Are you sure you want the engineer who has time for a 30h+ coding challenge for a potential job, that might then make a competitive offer?

[–] hi65435@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 year ago

Good point, I fully agree with you. Didn't come up with it myself but it has been used for years already but I think HR also complained about it.

Actually I did the challenge a year ago and it was only circumstantial that I didn't decline. Yet, we need a good replacement for the challenge (or the whole interview process) because most of the workload is on me at the moment.

[–] kraegar@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I interviewed for a position that I was comfortably qualified for. As soon as they mentioned a 3 hour whiteboard interview in person I politely hung up the zoom call.

On the flip side, I had a company give the best interview process of all time. They told you how many people were remaining in the rounds. The programming task was to implement a hugging face model as a FastAPI. There was also a short video interview that took 5 minutes if you had basic ML knowledge. Likely took 1-2 hours tops and it was actually fun.