<story><title>The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework</title><url>https://work.qz.com/1254663/job-interviews-for-programmers-now-often-come-with-days-of-unpaid-homework/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teachrdan</author><text>Real talk? I&amp;#x27;d be concerned that, at a non-tech company, I&amp;#x27;d be seen as a IT rather than a software engineer. And the conventional wisdom goes that IT is a cost center.&lt;p&gt;Some of the best career advice I&amp;#x27;ve ever gleaned is to work on something that visibly makes money for the company. I get to do that every day at my tech company. I don&amp;#x27;t know that I could say that if I worked in a technical capacity in another industry.</text></item><item><author>reaperducer</author><text>&amp;gt; Our industry&amp;#x27;s hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious.&lt;p&gt;Agreed.  The solution is to not work at a tech company, but instead work in a tech capacity at a real company.&lt;p&gt;- No silly games (before or after hiring).&lt;p&gt;- Better benefits (I&amp;#x27;d rather have proper health coverage and a pension than a room full of toys and vaporware stock options).&lt;p&gt;- Immensely more job security (Henry Ford didn&amp;#x27;t have an &amp;quot;exit strategy&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;- People respect you more as a professional with a needed skillset, and not a throwaway cog in a machine who can be replaced or offshored on a whim.&lt;p&gt;- And in many real companies, proper internal HR groups focused on making you a better person and a better employee, and not some farmed-out commission-based headhunter group that makes money on employee churn.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In an ideal world, you could trust someone&amp;#x27;s resume.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not an ideal world.  That&amp;#x27;s the real world.  Meaning not SV, and its wannabes.</text></item><item><author>speby</author><text>Our industry&amp;#x27;s hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone&amp;#x27;s resume. e.g. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve written large production programs in C.&amp;quot; Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly.&lt;p&gt;Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have them)? Well, sure, but we don&amp;#x27;t really know, for sure, if that code is their own or if they indeed truly wrote it, can we? So we can&amp;#x27;t count on it. It helps but it can&amp;#x27;t be an automatic &amp;quot;this person passes the technical&amp;quot; signaler.&lt;p&gt;So maybe the person shares &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; code and walks us through it that they wrote, even if not open source? Again, we can&amp;#x27;t know for certain it is their own code and not some friend who wrote it for them 2 years ago that they claim is their own. Or was a teammate&amp;#x27;s, or what-have-you. So we can&amp;#x27;t count on that either.&lt;p&gt;Apart from getting a candidate to actually pump out some code, even trivially, we don&amp;#x27;t really have a way to de-facto verify that the person says they can do what they say they can do, short of a personal reference from someone, say, in the company already that knows and has worked with the person in the past.&lt;p&gt;I absolutely hate this practice of having to constantly &amp;quot;re-prove&amp;quot; to the next employer that someone knows how to write software. It&amp;#x27;s extremely redundant and yet we keep on doing it, with no real hope of actually making it better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ams6110</author><text>The best &amp;quot;work environment&amp;quot; tech job I ever had was at an investment bank. Didn&amp;#x27;t disrupt anything (quite the opposite) but got great experience with databases, unix, C, scripting, working with internal clients, determining requirements, managing projects, etc.&lt;p&gt;9:00 - 4:30 daily hours, no nights, no weekends. Full benefits, good salary, good yearly bonus, quiet office, great people who were there to get a job done and then go home.&lt;p&gt;Had to wear a shirt and tie but that&amp;#x27;s not the worst thing in the world.</text></comment>
<story><title>The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework</title><url>https://work.qz.com/1254663/job-interviews-for-programmers-now-often-come-with-days-of-unpaid-homework/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teachrdan</author><text>Real talk? I&amp;#x27;d be concerned that, at a non-tech company, I&amp;#x27;d be seen as a IT rather than a software engineer. And the conventional wisdom goes that IT is a cost center.&lt;p&gt;Some of the best career advice I&amp;#x27;ve ever gleaned is to work on something that visibly makes money for the company. I get to do that every day at my tech company. I don&amp;#x27;t know that I could say that if I worked in a technical capacity in another industry.</text></item><item><author>reaperducer</author><text>&amp;gt; Our industry&amp;#x27;s hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious.&lt;p&gt;Agreed.  The solution is to not work at a tech company, but instead work in a tech capacity at a real company.&lt;p&gt;- No silly games (before or after hiring).&lt;p&gt;- Better benefits (I&amp;#x27;d rather have proper health coverage and a pension than a room full of toys and vaporware stock options).&lt;p&gt;- Immensely more job security (Henry Ford didn&amp;#x27;t have an &amp;quot;exit strategy&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;- People respect you more as a professional with a needed skillset, and not a throwaway cog in a machine who can be replaced or offshored on a whim.&lt;p&gt;- And in many real companies, proper internal HR groups focused on making you a better person and a better employee, and not some farmed-out commission-based headhunter group that makes money on employee churn.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In an ideal world, you could trust someone&amp;#x27;s resume.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not an ideal world.  That&amp;#x27;s the real world.  Meaning not SV, and its wannabes.</text></item><item><author>speby</author><text>Our industry&amp;#x27;s hiring practices are absolutely obnoxious. In an ideal world, you could trust someone&amp;#x27;s resume. e.g. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve written large production programs in C.&amp;quot; Ok, great, so then clearly this person knows C so there should be no need to dissect code or run them thru some linked list algorithm and see if they know how to use pointers correctly.&lt;p&gt;Yet, we do. Ok, then what about open source contributions (if they have them)? Well, sure, but we don&amp;#x27;t really know, for sure, if that code is their own or if they indeed truly wrote it, can we? So we can&amp;#x27;t count on it. It helps but it can&amp;#x27;t be an automatic &amp;quot;this person passes the technical&amp;quot; signaler.&lt;p&gt;So maybe the person shares &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; code and walks us through it that they wrote, even if not open source? Again, we can&amp;#x27;t know for certain it is their own code and not some friend who wrote it for them 2 years ago that they claim is their own. Or was a teammate&amp;#x27;s, or what-have-you. So we can&amp;#x27;t count on that either.&lt;p&gt;Apart from getting a candidate to actually pump out some code, even trivially, we don&amp;#x27;t really have a way to de-facto verify that the person says they can do what they say they can do, short of a personal reference from someone, say, in the company already that knows and has worked with the person in the past.&lt;p&gt;I absolutely hate this practice of having to constantly &amp;quot;re-prove&amp;quot; to the next employer that someone knows how to write software. It&amp;#x27;s extremely redundant and yet we keep on doing it, with no real hope of actually making it better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neurobashing</author><text>Real talk? There is nothing wrong with being in IT. Imagine if someone said &amp;quot;I would be concerned I&amp;#x27;d be seen as a carpenter and not a woodworking artisan&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re a carpenter. You nail boards together to serve the business interests of the company. Even if the boards are SQL queries or ReactJS or whatever.&lt;p&gt;Companies need tech. You can bring value by making everyone&amp;#x27;s jobs better with your technology - sand off those rough edges on everyone&amp;#x27;s workflows. Demonstrate your value.</text></comment>