Ask HN: Third world country, Internet company success stories? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a CS student living in a third world country, and I am starting a Internet company in October.
I was curious to know about other successful Internet companies in third world or developing countries. There for I could use their experience.
Here in third world countries we have quite different problems. For example we don't have that many Internet users.
EDIT: I have read lots of PG's essays but little info there are applicable in my country. Like we don't have angles or VCs here. <comment><USER2> Well, I guess we would have first to define success...

I'm currently in private alpha with my Blackberry App. Is a panic button for Blackberry users in dangerous cities in Latin America (mainly).

I've been online for about 60 days, have done zero marketing, no push of the app and have around 300 active users. People seem to really like the app.

Twitter has been abuzz with people talking about it and in a few weeks I'm releasing the first "beta" version and will start charging for it. Lets see how that goes.

I'm starting my focus in Venezuela since I'm from there and know the market pretty well. The main problem is the government restrictions in my country to charge in a foreign country (in this case dollars) so I have to charge in the local currency, but there are no payment gateways... is very complicated.

All an all, I think the private alpha has been a success, so there you go :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of the successful internet companies in India

1\. irctc.co.in - indian railways gov site to sell tickets online. largest amount of online transactions happen over here 2\. naukri.com - jobs site 3\. shaadi.com/ bharatmatrimony.com - matrimony site 4\. redbus.in - online bus ticketing 5\. bookmyshow.com - online movie ticketing 6\. zomato.com/burrp.com - local search websites with reviews 7\. makemytrip.com/yatra.com/cleartrip.com - online air ticketing sites

There are lot more. Maybe others can add in. If you find that internet users is low in number you can try for a hybrid online/offline model. This is something that early job and matrimonial sites did in india

<comment><USER4> While I use ticketing sites quite often. I have complete hatred for matrimony services. Sure, they are successful, and are profitable, But, they offend me ethically, sorting people by race, and weighing and matching by income? Sorry, I have no respect for them.

<comment><USER5> True but that's how arranged marriages work in India. Exceptions may exist but most parents here still look for match of same caste/sub-caste with high income levels.

Matrimonial sites just help people find brides and grooms in they way they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm from Mexico .. my company is: Guali.com.mx.

We do adwords assistance for company's in Mexico, we started this with $300usd 15 months ago and now we have around $8,000 usd on the bank and like 25 paying customers (each give us at leas 80usd each month)

We also applied for "Startup Chile" Program and we got selected yesterday .. they will give us $40k on equality-free money.

I'm 24 years old .. i started my project just when graduated and I'm really satisfied with the accomplished goals by now.

And yes .. I'm from a third world country .. if you want excuses you will find a lot, if you want a way to succeed .. guess what? .. you can find a lot to.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm from Iran.

I really liked your finishing sentence.

_if you want excuses you will find a lot, if you want a way to succeed .. guess what? .. you can find a lot to._

<comment><USER6> thanks man :) .. 100% true

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a huge fan of the work of Ushahidi in Kenya (<http://ushahidi.com/>). They're probably the first "real" tech startup out of Nairobi.

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out Nasper's portfolio; they have heavily invested in successful Internet and media companies in emerging countries: [http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/naspers/investment- port...](http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/naspers/investment-portfolio)

In Brazil, the four friends in a garage to multi-million dollar company story every young entrepreneur tries to emulate is the shopping comparison site BuscaPé.

</comment><comment><USER9> I know that visualwebsiteoptimizer.com is run from India.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.flipkart.com>

Very successful. And outstanding service.

I am a happy customer.

<comment><USER4> flipkart aren't profitable yet. are they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be easier to access your situation, if you tell your country.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Iran/Tehran. Our situation in some what similar to other countries in Middle East, but worth. e.g we don't have paypal, EC2, google app engine, good Internet speeds, etc.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can/should we resubmit links? - <AUTHOR> If we believe a piece of valuable content has slipped under the HN radar, is it bad practice to resubmit later? <comment><USER2> You are allowed to resubmit as long as the article hasn't had discussion in a year, and if it isn't resubmitted too much.

</comment><comment><USER3> yes.</comment>


Experts believe Fukushima to be far worse than governments are revealing - <AUTHOR> http://aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

<comment><USER2> Yesterday's discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661364></comment>


Show HN: I parsed the entire en.wikipedia for events, time and location - <AUTHOR> https://whataday.info <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

When browsing wikipedia, sometimes I find myself asking the question, "when this was happening, what else happened around the same time/location?" After debating whether this was actually useful and researching how it could be implemented, I finally set out to build this tool that allows you to browse and search (almost) all dated events on en.wikipedia. Given an event, it also shows you what was happening closeby, in spacetime.

I don't know how people will use it. I don't even know if anyone will find this useful. But I enjoyed building it.

</comment><comment><USER2> wow, really nice IMO. I'd be interested in seeing the spider and crawlers to do this, as it's something similar to other project I want to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Mind sharing what kind of project?

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to scan the whole Android Store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is pretty cool! One suggestion is making it easier to search by date. I was able to figure it out by clicking a link but if it was possible to select from a calendar or type in a date and get all events that would make it more friendly :3

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yup I need to spend more time on it. I had a hard time finding an intuitive calendar UI that works on both desktop and mobile, and finally settled on just relying on search. But I did have a hunch that it's not good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool! Do you plan to open source it? I'm curious what it looks like :)

Great job'

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! No plan at the moment. The frontend is not very interesting. The backend is basically a "giant" database with all the events. I think the interesting part would be the way I collected the events, with a language model.

<comment><USER5> Open Sourcing it would move the judgement of what is interesting or not from you alone to the whole community.</comment></comment></comment>


Problem: To Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gksoft.com/a/fun/catch-lion.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The Naïve Developer / Fake Lean Startup Approach: We construct a trap, any trap that works and deploy it (supply pizza for deploy party).

The trap fails (quickly), the Lion escapes and angered by the failed trap attempt said Lion devours and/or maims developers of trap and pizza.

Lion is now tired and full and will fall asleep in the afternoon sun. Capture of Lion left as exercise for reader.</comment>


Spyware Data Leak Is So Bad We Can't Even Tell You About It - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j573k3/spyware-data-leak-pictures-audio-recordings <comment><USER2> "We can't tell you the name of the company that's the latest—but certainly not the last—to join that list. That's because despite our repeated efforts to alert the company to the leak, it has yet to fix the problem or acknowledge our request for comment. Because the leaked data violates the privacy of hundreds if not thousands of people, and because that data is still very easy for anyone to find and access, even naming the company publicly could lead bad actors to it."

If even naming the company would "lead bad actors to it" then so will publishing this article. I imagine the list of companies making "consumer- grade" spyware that "markets itself mostly to parents" and whose domain is registered through GoDaddy with a "Gmail address" for the "site's administrator" is relatively short.

I don't think they should have published this before it was secured.</comment>


OKI still makes dot-matrix impact printers - <AUTHOR> https://www.oki.com/us/printing/products/dot-matrix-printers/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I remember OKI Data printers from the 1970s and 1980s. They weren't the cheapest or most popular, but they were fast. I got a brochure from OKI today and saw that they still make dot-matrix impact printers that use a ribbon. They will work with multi-part forms and continuous feed labels. They also appear to have a very low operating cost, and I suspect they have a lower environmental impact compared to laser printers. They would only be good for text output, though.

</comment><comment><USER2> I remember fixing one for a maintenance department over 10 years ago. When I showed up I had never seen one before but I knew of them, and I couldn't believe one was still in use (for their work orders). It kept jamming up and I removed some part on the front, like a guide or something, and turned it upside down (it was symmetrical in that regard) and it was back to normal. Never touched one again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to really like them. I had a driver (sorry I don't remember the name) that looked like a type of markdown that made use of "in between" carriage shifts in order to increase the dot density, and thus output significantly better fonts.

For example, to bold something, you toggled with a .b (dot-bee). I don't remember how you un-bolded though, but it was similar. Same goes for underline, and also choosing entirely different fonts, font sizes, italics, super/subscript etc. Suddenly the printer that made all that blocky print normally, looked _great_ as long as you didn't mind it taking more than twice the amount of time to print out.

It made amazingly good looking documents that wouldn't pass the muster at all since the invention of bubble and laser jets. Those were the days.

I very much dislike environmental noise (ASD and all), but for whatever reason I really kinda liked the intermittently steady drone that constantly changed pitches, and the occasional squawking that came along with it.

<comment><USER3> OKAY.... I was looking for that driver so I could update this with better info, and found this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkkXFL0x1cM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkkXFL0x1cM) 7 Best Dot Matrix Printers 2019

Amazing.

PS: They seem to cost quite a bit more than a bubble jet, generally between $300 and $500+. Here's one from Okidata: [https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00007G7O1?linkCode=g12&tag=ezvid-2...](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00007G7O1?linkCode=g12&tag=ezvid-20)</comment></comment>


A Brain-Recording Device That Melts Into Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencecodex.com/a_brainrecording_device_that_melts_into_place

<comment><USER2> Articles on this topic are always depressing. They only ever talk about brain implants to treat epilepsy or help recovering stroke victims.

What about the rest of us?

Yes, obviously, the state of the art described here is still too invasive to be used on uninjured brains. Is it too much to ask, though, for these guys to say "commercial applications are at least 20 years away"?

By omitting that one little line, the authors are suggesting that it's never going to happen because nobody is thinking about it.

<comment><USER3> > What about the rest of us?

20 years is still good, at least for me. By then, my iPod will be able to hold several brain dumps and I will be able to be restored to a previous state in case I have to.

More interesting will be to fork new virtual instances and merge them back later. Send one to virtual med school and send another on vacation. When both merge you have a well-rested doctor ;-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What gives you motivation? - <AUTHOR> I realize this is kind of an open ended question, but I'm curious as to what you guys will answer. <comment><USER2> Curiosity

</comment><comment><USER3> Dopamine

<comment><AUTHOR> _eyeroll_

<comment><USER3> I'm totally serious</comment></comment></comment>


Threads, slow and buggy - <AUTHOR> http://www.and.org/texts/threads <comment><USER2> Interesting article.

Threads should always be an absolute last resort. Programmers working on concurrency, locking, etc are often solving self inflicted problems. I don't know why they do it.

edit:

I've mentioned it in the past, and I do hate harping on about mibbit ;) but I had a similar experience there - as you can imagine, a large amount of dns lookups (both forward and reverse) are required. First version used a single separate thread to do them. Had to do lots of synchronization in the callback. 2nd ver had a threadpool, which was even more complex. Still slow as hell.

Final version, and the version in use now uses async nio in the main network thread, and is as fast as fast can be. The code is far simpler/faster than the threaded version, and handles thousands of lookups with minimum of fuss. There's just an initial investment of writing dns packet+udp code (Not rocket science).

At first glance, threads often seem like the 'easy' option. Often they're not. In my example, it was far easier just to knuckle down and write a simple async dns client than constantly mess around with concurrency issues and try and get it to go fast.

The code in this article looks horrible to work with, and reminds me of how my first version looked :/

<comment><USER3> The problem, in my mind, is that many languages provide 'transparent' shared state between the threads - which can easily introduce very subtle bugs.

The simple solution is to requires any sharing of state to be made explicit (e.g., message passing). This obviously introduces some overhead, but I think it could eventually become like assembler v. higher level languages. A handful of very talented hackers will still be always be able to beat any threading abstraction by manually dealing with everything - but the abstractions will get more and more optimizations (e.g., copy-on-write variables, more static analysis) until you rarely bother looking underneath them.

<comment><USER4> Either that, or only use co-operative (not pre-emptive) multitasking via coroutines. Specifying the points at which control is allowed to switch from one to another is far easier than trying to reliably specify where it cannot and using locks.

Message-passing works quite well, but coroutines are also a viable option. The problems come from using pre-emptive threads AND shared state, because reasoning about who is modifying what (and at what stage of completion) becomes difficult. Co-routines avoid the former, message passing the latter. Which is simpler overall depends on the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Message-passing works quite well, but coroutines are also a viable option.

Why not both as in CSP/Limbo? ;)

Edit: Note that you can get both in C too using the confusingly named libthread(2) <http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/thread> (Also available in Unix as part of Plan 9 from User Space <http://plan9.us> )

<comment><USER4> You can do either in Lua pretty easily, too. Doing _both_ doesn't make much sense, though - schlepping around large data structures in message-passing can be a performance problem, but unlike coroutines, can be very easily switched to a run over multiple machines.

Coroutines are in the core language, and there's also ConcurrentLua (<http://concurrentlua.luaforge.net/>) for message passing.

<comment><AUTHOR> > schlepping around large data structures in message-passing can be a > performance problem,

Not really, it is not too hard to implement it locally as passing pointers around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The quality of the argument against mutlithreading is undermined quite a bit by choosing one of the most poorly written networking library functions around. If you want to do this right, use libevent or Boost.Asio asynchronous resolvers.

I do have to admit that I didn't bother to dig through the final example looking for the errors, so perhaps the author did have a better argument in there but didn't bother to pursue it more aggressively.

</comment><comment><USER6> Using non-threadsafe calls with threads... yeah, that's not going to be nice.</comment>


I don't have time for coding challenges - <AUTHOR> https://css-irl.info/why-i-dont-have-time-for-your-coding-challenge/ <comment><USER2> > "I'm writing this as an interviewee, having never been on the other side of > the interview table ..."

> ...

> "Most candidates will have side-projects or work they've done for previous > employers."

As someone who has actually done a lot of interviewing, I can say with great confidence that this is simply wrong. At my current employer, we have a "homework assignment" as part of the interview process. We tell candidates that they can point us at an existing project of theirs instead of doing the homework. Few people take us up on this because few applicants have any substantial public side projects or FOSS work they can share.

And sharing "work they've done for previous employers" is a great way to court legal trouble. They shouldn't share it and as an interviewer I don't want to see it!

<comment><USER3> Them: "We've got a coding challenge for you..."

Me: "I've got this repo on Github with millions of downloads and 10k stars. It's at least 20k lines of my own code. Would that be good to demonstrate my coding ability?"

Them: "Haha, no, that'd be too much work for us. Please do the test instead."

Me: "Fine."

Then they rejected me because I used GET instead of POST. Clearly that shows I have no idea how to code.

That was a large (1000+ employee) YC company, by the way.

<comment><USER4> > Then they rejected me because I used GET instead of POST.

OK, I'm honestly curious here. What was the request, and why did you make such a decision? Do you think it is the right approach in this case, or that it's an insignificant mistake that does not represent a person's understanding of HTTP protocol?

I remember hearing about at least one story where using GET instead of POST lead to disastrous consequences, as some robot crawled all over the "delete" links - but I have to admit, I can't imagine how it would happen without other significant design flaws happening as well (as "delete" links being public or robot being able to crawl under authenticated user's identity). This sounds like an error that can cause irrational irritation by the reviewer, but I can't imagine it being the sole reason to decide that the author can't code.

<comment><USER3> I was definitely in the wrong about GET/POST. The company I had previously worked for simply didn't really care too much about getting the verbs right, so I didn't really fret about them. And the company I'm currently at (multiple thousands of employees, strong engineering culture if I dare say so myself) just does everything as a POST. So it really is somewhat cultural whether you care about GET/POST or not.

But, IMO, even if you don't know, it's the kind of thing you learn once in code review and then don't worry about again.

<comment><USER5> For E2E encrypted APIs, one could well argue that worrying about HTTP verbs is just wasting time for no good reason. POST (consistently) lets you attach a body too.

Just using POST for everything is a pattern I've seen becoming more popular recently.

<comment><USER6> No we can get into an endless argument whether verbs are abused or not...

IMHO, GET (as of today) gas the issue that it does not support a body. If I'm executing a search (an idempodent action), how can I nicely pass a JSON object configuring the search? I'll just use POST for that... So then we're at the point where the url does not work anymore because we have a POST /findEmployee; POST /findContract; ... instead of GET /employee and GET /contract.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but it doesn't like nice in my eyes using POST in that way.

<comment><USER7> The JS API's I used to develop in used a mix of query strings (for exact matches) mixed with JSON (for more complicated queries) all in the url parameters

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Then, don't.

I want to move from my 2000 USD a month (this is a good salary already) in a 3rd world country to a FAANG that pays 20k USD per month.

I'm willing to go through any challenge because the reward is superb for me.

Not to mention, without objective interview questions, an introverted non- native English speaker (who doesn't speak latin-germanic-based language) like me would fail most of these subjective questions (e.g. bad culture fit, can't articulate as well as a native speaker).

I like coding challenges. Please do more.

<comment><USER9> I don't know of any software company that would hire an introverted person who can't articulate themselves for 20k a month. This is how micro-service architected fully optimized solutions that solve the wrong problem happen. Do you really think the high value of a developer just comes from being able to pass coding challenges when there's millions of them out there?

<comment><USER10> That's only 240k probably not for a base salary but total comp sure.

<comment><USER11> Well, I have a bridge to sell you if you believe it's total comp.

<comment><USER12> That's perfectly in line with expectations for a new inexperienced hire at a FAANG. If anything, it's a little high for entry-level even at these companies. Obviously much higher numbers are attainable via career progression or already having such a job to negotiate from as leverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You're complaining that, to get a job, you have to demonstrate your ability to do the job, in a standardized way so the employer can compare you to other candidates with the merest hint of objectivity.

For a little (imperfect) contrast, here's a quote from an article about auditioning for the Baltimore Symphony:

> In the audition I took in October of 2014 for the Baltimore Symphony, I > began preparing the required audition list in August.

[http://www.bsomusicians.org/public_html/so-you-want-to- audit...](http://www.bsomusicians.org/public_html/so-you-want-to-audition-for- a-professional-orchestra/)

<comment><USER14> > so the employer can compare

And why do we think this is objective? Ostensibly, the first one to clear some threshold of competence ought to be good enough to be hired (in fact there's even extensively studied algorithms[1] for this stuff). In the vast majority of cases, it's highly unlikely that you're going to find an underpriced genius via some misguided notion of test standardization.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)

<comment><USER15> Big companies aren't looking for underpriced geniuses. Standardized hiring is like index funds, many argue they can get better results by hand picking stocks but index funds still tend to outperform managed investing unless you are really really good at it. In a big company the people doing the hiring will be mediocre at it, so you need a process they wont screw up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 I'm of the opinion that if there needs to be some objective technical challenge to determine a baseline of competency (and there are very many, very strong arguments for that) then there need to be standards.

I've encountered so many variables (no pun intended) in technical interviews that I've virtually stopped preparing. There's hardly any way _to_ prepare when the field is so large and you never really know what you're going to be tested on.

I've had people challenge me on theoretical system-time timezone conversions (and incorrectly mark my correct answer wrong "because of physics"...), beside reimplementing native JavaScript functions, beside complex algorithmic problems, beside toy problems like building a binary calculator. [That's great if you learn I can rig a web page for adding 100 and 101, but how do you know if I know anything about databases for this back end position]

And those interviews were all for working with web tech, in a couple of the cases just front end positions.

There needs to be a common, limited standard and/or domain-specific standards.

It's really counter-intuitive to me, and I don't understand how it benefits the hiring process, if a company is looking for a web-back-end engineer for what is essentially a complex crud app and wants to propose the candidate solves a problem from a domain they've never worked in—and marking them on the correctness of the answer, rather than the work process.

I'm for objective, technical challenges. But I've seen enough that it seems apparent to me that it's broken.

(addendum: I've had several good interviews as well, and good interviewers. I had a good one recently as well that was fitting for the domain. They're not all bad, but most seem to be in my experience)

<comment><USER16> I interview a lot of people for frontend positions. I ask one two-sum question to see if they have some knowledge about data structures and simple algorithms. Then I ask them to build something trivial in React, which is what we use. If you can do those things, you're probably fine. The number of people who can't is truly shocking.

<comment><USER17> I would argue there are many well-qualified frontend engineers who won't correctly solve the two sum problem on their first time encountering it.

<comment><USER18> This one? [https://leetcode.com/problems/two- sum/](https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/)

>>> Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target. You may assume that each input would have exactly one solution, and you may not use the same element twice.

Seems trivial enough to me... except if the interviewer forgets the hard constraint that there is exactly one solution, then that's a shitstorm of edge cases.

I'd criticize the problem for asking for the positions of the numbers rather than the numbers. That's just super annoying for no reason.

<comment><USER17> Does the problem actually have that constraint? If so then yeah it's significantly easier. I thought the reason you'd have to use a clever algorithm is because a brute-force solution to find all index pairs would require n^2 operations, where n is the size of the input array, because you can't stop after you find a single pair.

<comment><USER18> Yes it does, you can open the leetcode and see for yourself. That also explains the "easy" difficulty rating.

I guess you've been giving candidates a more hardcode version of the problem, not having that constraint?

edit: nevermind, it's the other poster who was giving that problem, not you. No idea how they formulate it in their interviews.

<comment><USER17> I don't ask candidates these kinds of questions in my interviews. For a coding interview, I'd normally ask them to implement something like backend rate limiting logic for an authentication service, and continually ratchet up the complexity on each successful implementation until the end of the interview.

I was asked the two sum problem in an interview once, but I forget if it had this constraint or not. This seems much more reasonable.

<comment><USER19> Forgive me for my ignorance, but are you looking for anything more complex than a leaky bucket algorithm + gossip protocol solution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Work sample tests have been proven repeatedly to be the best predictor of future job success.[1] The next best predictor is general mental ability.

It's not unreasonable to ask someone to demonstrate their capabilities. Just make it interesting, relevant to the job and most importantly: short. Whatever time work sample testing requires should replace interview time, not add on to it. 2 hours is a reasonable ask. Oh, and you can't ask people to invest time in a work sample test unless you've already invested a significant amount of YOUR time on in-person interviews. [2]

screening interview -> coding assignment -> maybe more interviews? = not cool

screening interview -> first round with hiring manager -> coding assignment -> review assignment with candidate -> maybe more interviews? = cool

Sources:

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232564809_The_Valid...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232564809_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology)

[2] Me. I'm a ex-Netflix software engineer, now run a tech recruiting company (www.facet.net). I've seen hundreds of technical interview processes across many industries.

<comment><USER21> Tech Sector Job Interviews Assess Anxiety, Not Software Skills [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848039)

<comment><USER20> The sample size in that study was pretty small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The proposed solution to me, is much worse.

> Ask them to build something – anything!

> Instead of a coding challenge, ask them to spend a short time building > something they enjoy, and talk about what they did and why.

To me this would be a MUCH more difficult task. A blank canvas is much harder to work with, and downright frightening. Constraints foster creativity.

Having everyone code the same thing helps the interviewer (who is also very busy and has many other things happening in their work life) gauge the different levels of the people applying easily by comparing them on the same task.

<comment><USER23> The difference is the interviewer is being paid for their time, the interviewee is not.

<comment><USER24> That's a problem with the company. We at @cdr pay interviewee's $200 for their take home challenges.

<comment><USER25> This is awesome. I have taken a number of code challenges and walking away with neither, compensation nor explanation is rough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've done 5 coding challenges, I deemed each one a success on my end, none resulted in a job. A few resulted in a third interview which revealed numerous additional red flags.

At this point I consider a coding challenge a deal breaker. I'm not doing one, and if you ask, there's a near certain chance I wouldn't want to work in an environment that thinks they are a good idea.

If you're interested in my abilities, I'd be happy to spend an hour walking through something I've already worked on in the past.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree that code challenges aren't ideal. But we've been struggling with parsing resumes and titles to identify the competency of developers. Our current coding challenge isn't super hard and based on the type of code you'd see in our product. It asks you to read a simple javascript function, explain it, and then implement new functionality that can built by refactoring the existing method. It's about 20 lines of code and 50 lines of documentation. You can use any IDE that you like.

We've had many candidates that look strong on paper (3+ years of experience, senior titles, etc) come in and struggle. Struggles ranged from basic code literacy (think for loop to traverse a nested json object) to basic programming like writing a function. We've especially noticed this more with coders coming from purely a javascript and front-end background (React/Angular, etc). They understand control structures like if/else but struggle with loops, setting variables, and basic higher level concepts like breaking a problem into smaller functions.

My philosophy is for junior candidates, any level of competency is ok. Strong mentoring and experience on job usually can allow anyone to thrive and so you can prioritize soft skills and culture. But for more advanced roles, I don't know, it's hard to parse out the quality candidates without having some sort of technical interview. Definitely would love to hear how other's learning and experiences.

<comment><USER27> I've heard a variant of this repeatedly. A company justifies technical exam style interviews on the grounds that many people who look good on paper "can't code". Meaning, can't program fizz buzz. Can't write a method or function. Can't write a loop, or an if/else conditional.

But I can do all these things. I've gotten bounced from my interviews because (this was the official reason, anyway) I didn't get far enough with the coding in finding all matching subtrees in a binary tree, in 45 minutes, at the whiteboard.

Companies should feel free to hire based on my ability to do this, they should not say they were just testing basic things like lists, loops, and conditionals, or even basic data structures and algorithms like binary trees or hash maps. These exams go way beyond that.

This may not be the case for all, and it sounds like it is not the case for your process. But in the broader industry practice, I smell a motte-and-bailey fallacy here.

<comment><USER26> In our case our its based on our actual interview experience with candidates. We've been actively evolving our process and calibrating expectation based on the candidates that have come in. We've actually simplified the interview question considerably (as I mentioned the solution doesn't even require you write new logic, you can refactor existing logic that's provided). But we still see candidates struggle with the basics.

To be fair this could also be a reflection on our ability to read resumes and experiences and our initial phone screen. But it is hard. My first job was at fortune 50 company, you could have the title of senior software engineer and not write a single line of code as part of your job.

That being said i don't won't diminish your experiences. This is just our experience from the other side of the table. Also we don't have an HR department (we're a small startup). The interviews are conducted by engineers in the company and we try our best to empathize with candidates and be conscious of creating an interview process that we'd feel comfortable being a part of as well.

<comment><USER28> I don't see how this addresses geebee's point -- what makes you so sure struggling on programming puzzles implies incompetence on the job?

<comment><USER26> we're not asking programming puzzles. i described our process above. struggling to define a function and basic code comprehension (e.g. tracing a for loop that traverses a json object in candidate's preferred language) is a strong signal that candidate is not a good fit a mid to senior level for us. If it was a junior level position, sure you can learn on the job.

<comment><USER26> in our case, the problem is a highly simplified version of functionality in our code base and is close to being representative of work they'd be doing if hired.

i actually don't disagree with the prior poster. Technical interviews are highly variable and it's frustrating to go through poor interview processes. I've got bad interview stories as well. Being on the other side of table now, we're always interested in learning about better approaches hiring. Would love hear what has worked well for others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like the coding challenge we designed for hiring where I work. A few things about it that work:

\- It's designed to take about the same time as the round of interviews it replaces (half a day), and we clearly communicate how polished and complete we're expecting it to (not) be in that time.

\- It's a lot like the actual work; if you enjoy it / are good at it, there's a good chance you'll enjoy / be good at the job. It helps make sure (on both sides) that the job is a good fit.

\- But at the same time it's designed to be obviously not actually work we're going to use; we're not exploiting unpaid labor.

\- There aren't gotchas to it. We review it with an eye toward "if my coworker showed me something they'd been working on for about this long to address this problem statement, how would I feel about their work," and do our best to express that.

\- The rest of the application process takes the challenge into account in a positive way. I might have a conversation with you later to understand how you think about the problem you solved, but none of the interviews have to be gotchas or on-the-fly skills tests because I've already seen the kind of work you do.

\- Everyone takes the same challenge, and it feels way more fair to discuss candidates based on reviewing how they do the kind of work that we do, compared to "X person has a cool open source repo; Y person gave a good interview answer to this technical question; Z person worked at an interesting place in the past." There's still some apples to oranges in comparing coding challenges, but much less than comparing one person's bootcamp group project open source repo with another person's reason that their best code is closed source but it sounds cool.

With a well-designed challenge the benefits on the hiring side are really obvious (we actually have a basis for comparing applicants that feels somewhat related to the work they're going to do), but also (I hope) we've managed to make a better process for applicants without expanding the time they're spending.

<comment><USER19> a) Do you compensate folks who take these challenges. Otherwise it is half a day of unpaid labor. Also most take home tests take way longer even though they are advertised as "only a couple of hours". Do you have empirical evidence that it can be completed in the given time slot? Have you given the test to your own colleagues who may not know the background / domain knowledge / environment setup required?

b) Do you make it clear what you consider as "good design"? OOP/Imperative or Functional coding style? Even in OOP, is it sufficient if the candidate just does SOLID or do they have to implement GoF patterns? This is very subjective and never made clear in these tests.

c) Is there a guarantee that an actual person will review the submitted code and provide feedback? AFAIK, most companies won't give candidates any feedback / validation of submitted work

<comment><USER30> Not OP, just a job seeker who like coding interview.

> Otherwise it is half a day of unpaid labor.

The same true for an interview

> Do you have empirical evidence that it can be completed in the given time > slot?

As a candidate once you see the specification and you think it's not worth it you can easily can say no to it.

> Is there a guarantee that an actual person will review the submitted code > and provide feedback? AFAIK, most companies won't give candidates any > feedback / validation of submitted work

That is why I only willing to do these kind of challenges once I had the first round of technical interview and I know I would like to work there

<comment><USER31> > Otherwise it is half a day of unpaid labor.

>> The same true for an interview

Who does half day interviews? In my 3 years as a professional software dev, I've perhaps spent a cumulative 2 hours in interviews with a company. I know that some companies have extensive interviews. But they aren't as laborious as intensely grinding on a mentally challenging project in an industry such as software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What I love (sarcasm) is companies that just need basic line of business apps, but want you to complete a coding challenge navigating graphs and trees in constant, nlogn time, etc.

I find it hilarious and often ask, "Can you explain to me how solving this challenge applies to what you do day to day?"

They say.... "That's a really good question..."

Then I watch them squirm as they have no idea how to explain a real world application beyond a generic, sometimes hard problems come up...

Sure... Then give me an example.

I don't mind taking your test, but if your team doesn't need those skills you're wasting your time and mine by cargo-culting this time-consuming style of recruitment.

<comment><USER33> how about "we found a strong correlation between who can complete coding challenge do well on the job. We understand that correlation doesny imply causation; but we and the majority of the industry havent found anything better yet. We also understand that we are potentially missing out on good candidates who dont generally fare well in coding challenge; but thats a trade off we are ok with"

<comment><USER34> How did you find that correlation?

<comment><USER33> Majority of companies including FAANG (not sure about Netflix) do these type of challenges

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I require them because candidates lie, not always intentionally.

The unfortunate reality is that it can be really tough to fire low-performers. I NEED to know that a candidate can do the work. We go out of our way to make our ask reasonable, relevant to the role, not spec-work, not time consuming, and well defined. It's not uncommon for us to learn that the candidate can't actually do what their resume says they can or for the candidate to learn that they grossly overestimate their own skills.

I recently talked to a Python/JS expert that led a project at a major agency to scrape a network of websites, find and extract specific data, and deliver game changing competitive intelligence. The candidate ended up admitting that their role was limited to copying and pasting a pre-built code snippet into the dev tools console and that they couldn't actually read or write any code. The proof is in the coding challenge.

<comment><USER36> I find these people reveal themselves almost immediately when we start talking about their projects in any depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny how he starts saying he never had a whiteboard interview and he never gave an interview, yet he has such strong opinions on everything that's wrong with it.

edit: read to the end, a lot of the points are absurd, easy to realize after a couple interviews.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hiring a bad developer can be a costly mistake. In addition to the costs for the developer, there are often other costs and productivity lost.

Basically a good coder is not the same as a good developer. Coding is relatively easy - if you can visualize and solve problems using code, then you're a good developer. It's the thought process that makes you a good developer.

Coding challenges are often a good way to test this thought process. I often require candidates walk me through their code and explain their reasoning behind everything to see if they'll be valuable on my team.

However, coding challenges are just one way to ascertain someone's thought process. Watching people work on code during a game jam or hackathon often gives me an idea of their thought process, as does the advice of other people I trust who vouch for them.

So, no - coding challenges aren't always necessary. But unless there is a better way for me to learn whether you're going to be a good developer, then I'll give you one.

<comment><USER38> The author's suggestion of a 'trial period' of employment might also be one of the impractical, costly, infeasible ideas I've ever seen proposed.

So the candidate doesn't want to spend 1 hour on a coding interview because 'they don't have time.' The solution?

Spend a month on-boarding the candidate to your company (taking time from multiple team members), give them an implicitly high stakes work project while they get used to the new working environment and production codebase.

Meanwhile there's tension/friction because the company wants to quickly validate the temporary hire. If it's successful, okay proceed as an employee. If it's unsuccessful, it's a huge waste of everyone's time, a costly experiment for the company/team, and likely a very unpleasant 6 week long working engagement. Then the candidate will have to explain why they only lasted at their previous employer for 6 weeks in their next set of interviews.

<comment><USER39> _The author 's suggestion of a 'trial period' of employment might also be one of the impractical, costly, infeasible ideas I've ever seen proposed._

Then the world of 1099 IT "technician staffing" and 'contingency technical recruiting' will absolutely horrify you because an entire cottage industry unto itself is built around this employment model.

It's especially popular in call-center workforce management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This person has admittedly never even done a whiteboard interview or given an interview. Why are we upvoting this drivel to the front page?

Boohoo, you have to spend a couple hours proving you know data structures to get a new job. Give me a break.

<comment><USER19> Let us assume a random candidate Mary who is batting at 20%, i.e., she passes to the next stage on every 5th attempt. Now if we follow the typical interview loop

a) Take home test b) Phone screen c) Onsite d) Offer

How many take home tests does Mary have to take to get 1 offer? The answer is 125 and if each is 2 hours then 250 hours. So a single test in isolation may not seem like a big deal but if every company had their own criteria and take home exams as a pre-qualifier, the candidate would face a uphill battle to find work.

<comment><USER40> I mean, my takeaway from that is that Mary is not a very good candidate, not that there is something broken with the interview process. She only needs so many interviews because she has a low success rate. Most people aren't doing nearly that many interviews in an actual job search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Have a probationary period

That seems very taxing on the company. I'd rather screen the candidate before committing to anything via interview/coding challenge, etc... The take-home coding challenge seems like a good idea -- less pressure than coding during the interview and allows the interviewer to assess the "real life" performance.

> Ask them to build something – anything!

That's great, but a big part of working at a company is building something that you don't like or don't understand well -- talking to stakeholders, customers, figuring out specs, etc -- something that a good take-home exercise can assess

<comment><USER42> The probationary period seems incredibly stressful for the employee. If I am currently employed I would never switch to a role that uses a probationary period as a significant evaluation step because of the risks of leaving my stable employment, and not passing your probationary period. As an employer I wouldn't want to limit my selection to people that either are unemployed or have a higher personal risk tolerance to handle such situations.

<comment><USER43> Exactly. Not to mention younger engineers will probably work 24/7 for 12 weeks while constantly worrying they could be fired tomorrow because they didn't fix some bug fast enough.

<comment><USER44> Not to mention it eliminates anyone who already has a job from the candidate pool. No company I know would be OK with you also working full time at another company simultaneously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This sentiment is too real. And too many folks in "charge" of hiring play this game.

When I'm hiring, I give applicants a real-code task, something they'd really do if they were hired - and I pay for their time too.

This method has allowed me to skip a lot of time-suck-bullshit while finding candidates, and their process with me is easier/faster too.

<comment><USER22> > When I'm hiring, I give applicants a real-code task, something they'd really > do if they were hired - and I pay for their time too.

Most real code task require a lot of ramp up time to gain context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think one can be creative about it. Applying the principle "nobody wants to buy a 2 inch drill bit; what they want is a 2 inch round hole", the people in the company do not want to give you a coding test, they want to hire a competent candidate. So convince them you are competent for the job in other ways if you do not want to spend the time doing the coding challenge.

One way of going about about it is to find former colleagues that work for the company you are applying to, and ask them to provide references on your behalf.

</comment><comment><USER47> I interviewed somewhere that offered 3 options for the technical part of the interview. The options were a take home assignment, whiteboarding, and walking the interviewer through a non-proprietary project. I thought that was a great way to make the interview process more fair.

</comment><comment><USER48> Time is money.

If you make about $100 an hour, a six hour coding challenge costs you about $600.

If a potential employer asked you to spend $600 to fly out and see them, _on your dime,_ would you do it?

I would do it __IF __I desperately needed a job. I did it back during the dot com crash; I needed a job badly and I was willing to roll the dice.

In 2020? Oh hell no. There's a million companies who are hiring, and an employer would have to be exceptionally special for me to waste $600 on the chance they'll hire me.

<comment><USER2> Companies fly people out all the time (well, pre-COVID). They pay for the travel expenses, but not your time. I personally find this much more of an imposition than spending a few hours writing some code in the comfort of my home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I would never work somewhere that didn't make me write code as part of the interview process.

I don't want to work with people who are good at bullshitting their way through interviews, but can't actually write code.

<comment><USER50> This is definitely something to consider. I actually once turned down an offer because I thought their process was too perfunctory. (Along with some other signs.) I didn't like what it implied about how they saw me as an employee/resource nor what it implied about my potential teammates. (And since the process was so minimal I also didn't get much chance to vet the team/working environment.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> And I don't have time to hire you. You wouldn't hire a visual artist without seeing their portfolio. I don't hire a software developer until I they can quickly write a program that compiles read and follow a spec, name variables well, take feedback and ask relevant questions. To not test candidates for these skills would be recklessly negligent for my employer.

</comment><comment><USER52> I freelance, and if asked to do a coding test I'll tell them to pay for my time, usually they drop the test and contract me right away.

</comment><comment><USER53> I think that the coding challenges can be helpful if done correctly. If the challenge is clearly communicated on how complete they are expecting it to be and how it might be judged. But I did have an experience with a "homework assignment" that hit on most of the bad points outlined in the author's article.

This was not specifically a coding challenge as I was applying for a Systems Engineering role at a software company. The homework assignment was basically here is a fake product, please provide a requirements spec, user manual, and test procedure associated with the product.

My first problem was with the notion of doing the systems engineering backwards and creating requirements specs from a product.

The second was with the conflicting communication about how much time and effort should be put in. The actual homework assignment itself said "We anticipate that this exercise should take no more than a few hours". Whereas the email I got from the recruiter said "They are looking for extreme detail here, and the 'it should only take a few hours' instruction is kind of BS. It's OK if you don't get it back for a week or so. Winning submissions from my candidates have been 7 and 11 pages long, I believe. They really want someone to go overboard with the exercise".

So after putting a lot of work in (because I could, and did not have a family at the time), the only response I got was basically "Nope, you didn't get the job". And I know that employers have a lot of candidates and there is a disproportionate time spent by the employee versus the employer, but it would have been nice to at least receive 1 or 2 sentences of feedback that may have helped me in the future.

To a point made by someone further down in the comments, the exercise may be a good way to judge if you would be a good fit at the company. So based on my experience I am probably glad I didn't get that job.

</comment><comment><USER54> My employer carved out a standalone PHP script from a dark corner of a legacy application years ago. We show it to candidates and talk through what they'd do differently. I like it because I can judge not just the candidate's technical competence, but their level as well. If you're a junior, I can see if you have an eye for detail and pick up on the database query with a syntax error or mistyped variable name. If you're more senior, you'll tell me about job queues and workers. I had one candidate start with "the problem is the management structure that allowed this to happen in the first place". I have plenty of leading questions for candidates who are hesitant to criticize our code, and will tear it to pieces in front of them if necessary.

And no, most importantly, it's not a take-home exam.

</comment><comment><USER55> As someone who has been programming for 40 years and had a decently successful career but is struggling with these challenges now, I can empathize.

It's not so much what the challenge is -- it's _how_ one is asked to accomplish it.

Sitting in front of my laptop for 6 hours while people ask me random programming tasks while they watch me on camera and see every keystroke on screen while I'm editing is not how I work. I work by choosing from active tasks that fit the "space" I'm in, by multi-tasking, etc. - if I get stuck on something in the "real world" I'll go work on something else that needs to get done, etc. You'd be amazed at how many interviewers simply _refuse_ to ask you another question in lieu of or even in addition to the one the first wanted to ask, for example.

</comment><comment><USER56> > Have a probationary period

As someone who's done a lot of interviews, my rule is that letting someone go during their probationary period is an absolute last resort. It'll never be used as an excuse to take risks during the interview stage - except in extreme situations, everything should be decided up front.

This is purely for the benefit of the candidate. Many people quit their old jobs only after they've received an offer for a new one. Some even have to uproot their lives (and that of their families) and relocate. Firing someone during their probationary period for a preventable reason seems negligent. I'd rather put them under a bit more stress up front during the interview.

<comment><USER28> Why not just ask the candidate if they're willing to do a probationary period rather than deciding for them?

<comment><USER56> I suspect the type of people I'd need to fire during their probationary period are the ones who would be desperate enough to say yes to anything during the pre-offer stage.

Also, firing people isn't something I really enjoy, so even just for selfish reasons I'd rather avoid it. If it's preventable, I'd rather just get it done property at the start, rather than take these risks later.

And if it got to it, HR would make my life difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Without having a degree, I feel coding challenges are the only way I can truly compete.

</comment><comment><USER58> Many of the author's suggested alternatives clearly fail on the stated reasons why coding challenges are bad. Asking pertinent questions is clearly arbitrary; probationary periods are non-inclusive to candidates who are relocating or need a visa; asking candidates to "build something - anything" would be substantially more time consuming for engineers in many specialties. (How am I supposed to build a small demo app to show off my systems programming ability?)

It's hard for me to escape the conclusion that the author's just trying to universalize their personal preferences.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think the best hiring process would give the candidate options. Choose among pair-programming a live coding challenge or a new feature creation, whiteboard, take-home coding challenges, or going through some open-source project from the candidate.

I happen to prefer take-home challenges more than any of the alternatives. It's much less stressful than any live assessment. And I have the time.

But I understand people that hate it. You evaluate the candidate how they think they are best evaluated. And I don't think it is that much more trouble or time investment by the company.

</comment><comment><USER60> I get the general feeling that people on both sides of an interview want it to be _exactly_ what they want it to be. That never happens. There are problems with the way tech interviews are conducted now, and we should aim to fix it. But human biases will always apply just like every other thing in life.

My rule for interviews (whether as an interviewer or interviewee) is simple:

1\. Explain/ask for the exact process and stages during the first call.

2\. Raise any concerns as soon as possible.

3\. Be ready for either outcome - if your concerns are reasonable and addressed, go ahead. If not, don't.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've been on both sides of the interview process and I don't agree. If you were a chef applying for job it wouldn't be unreasonable if an interviewer actually asked you to cook something (one famous chef would ask candidates to fry an egg).

I do, however, not expect any candidate to do anything we haven't had to write ourselves. I also let them look up Google/StackOverflow etc during the interview. They're also offered a beer but nobody ever takes me up on that.

</comment><comment><USER62> I have my own misgivings about asking interviewees to write code for interviews. But some of what the author considers weaknesses of this are actually strengths:

> A disproportionate amount of time is often spent trying to deduce the > requirements of the challenge.

Deducing requirements is a job skill at least as valuable as the actual coding! There's nothing worse than perfectly polished code that solves entirely the wrong problem.

And the author's proposed alternatives seem even worse:

> Ask pertinent questions.

OK, but that selects for people who can build a compelling narrative around their work. This is not the worst skill to have, but it's not entirely aligned with the actual work requirements, and subject to cultural and sometimes gender biases.

> Have a probationary period

I strongly dislike that. At-will employment is a reality in many places, and probationary periods are a reality in even more places, but they should be seen as a last resort, rather than a routine filter. I don't want co-workers to show up and be kicked out within a few weeks. I don't want to move 8 time zones, enroll my kids in new schools, sell my house, to be told after two weeks "Hmm, this does not seem to be working out".

> Walk through their existing projects

As has been mentioned numerous times on HN, that's at least as discriminatory as take-home exams, if not more so. You may spend your free time with your kids, or welding kinetic sculptures instead of programming. That's a perfectly valid choice. People who interview forensic pathologists don't expect them to cut up bodies at home in their spare time.

And generally, showing existing projects from previous employment should be, and is, grounds for immediate disqualification.

> Ask them to build something – anything!

That strikes me as considerably harder and considerably more subjective to evaluate than a standard take home exam.

> Pair program / Focus on their ability to learn

That's reminiscent of one technique I used to like: Show the candidate a piece of product-like code, and ask them questions about various pieces in it (programming language constructs, algorithms used).

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm currently in the interview process with few companies, here's my experience with them:

Company 1:

1 hour HR interview

Coding task spend about 4 hours on it, at first i implemented basic but correct implementation, no OOD & design patters or anything fancy. They said i should redo it but with SOLID OOD and design patterns + unit tests, so i threw in the most convoluted code i could think of for a console app. That did the job and got to the next part.

3 hour technical interview, ~2 hours of HR talk & getting to know me, then a set of 5 algorithms tasks. I failed at some point, as i'm not fan of algorithms tasks and i don't have CS education, so my algorithms knowledge isn't strong.

Result : Not qualified enough no offer

Company 2:

1 hour HR interview

After which they sent me a task that would have taken me about 8-10 hours to do. I politely Declined.

Company 3: 1 HR interview 2 x 1hr technical interviews,

First technical interview : extend a very very simple code (2-3 classes) with couple of functionalities and write tests. All in all it took an hour and was pretty straightforward. With no hidden gotchas

Second technical interview : you are given task details, and have 20 minutes to come up with overall system design. after which we spend about 30 minutes going trough that and asking why i choose X or Y, or what if the requirements changed to X or Y.

then 1 hour final "culture fit" interview. Result: waiting for offer.

Company 4: 2 x 1 hour interviews with the CTO & CEO. Tech talk mostly, but no deep algo questions. What challenges I've had and how I've solved them. Result : waiting for offer.

Company 5: one 1 hour HR interview, and i have to do a 5 hours long fixed time (i.e. they sent tasks at 12:00 i have to be done by 5 and send results).

And i'm debating if i should do it at all.

I've had the most pleasant experience with companies 3 & 4\. From their HR staff to their Interviewers.

About about me for context: I'm a backend/full stack engineer with about 10 years of experience. I've coded professionally in PHP, C# and JavaScript. I've led few interviews, but never used spend-a-day-doing-it code challenges.

<comment><USER64> Company 3 is very close to the interview process that led me to my current job. They also gave me a choice between a "waterfall" approach, or pair programming where we talk about the solution as we go.

Most pleasant interview experience I've ever had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Don't know what to say, but I think this is one way to iron out senior folks who don't do daily coding and most of the time was on designing, diagnosis or debugging.

When you go to interview,you may be interviewed by a fresh graduate who throw you a trick leetcode question that is, pretty much, requiring you come up with code in 30 minutes. Without a few months careful practice, it's hard to get it right under stress.

Coding challenges are like driving, you drive at normal speed in real life so you can drive everyday safely, but for interview, your brain has to be speed up the max speed under pressure, not everyone, not even the brightest guy who can do this well, again without months preparation.

I got interviews at Amazon etc but I never had time to practice leetcode etc, there is no way I can pass its whiteboard process without at least 3 months preparation I feel, and I absolutely have no time for that.

How about hiring senior folks as a contractor for 1 or 2 months then to decide the level and pay and such? nobody wastes anytime and no obligation either.

</comment><comment><USER66> I disagree with the author. A coding challenge is a good way to judge how a candidate approaches a problem. The ability to walk through what you're thinking while you're doing it is a great judge of ability.

It also helps to weed out people who can't actually program, this comes up annoyingly often.

I agree that having intentional errors in a starter repository is bad though.

<comment><USER67> You can also have a discussion one how one would approach the problem vs actually doing the coding. The discussion alone would give great insight into how the applicant understands the whole concept, and any potential pitfalls that can be anticipated, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The prevailing opinion in this thread is that coding challenges are fair and equitable. HN was singing a different tune on the same subject just a few months ago. What changed? The economy collapsed. The labor market is no longer in favor of those selling their time and energy. So perceptions of this practice have changed.

</comment><comment><USER69> Instead of a data structure and algorithms problem, give someone a broken webpack and/or babel configs and 30 minutes to figure it out. Will let you know if they understand bundlers and transpilers, which is probably more useful than an esoteric tree traversal question, at least with respect to front-end engineering.

</comment><comment><USER70> Ugh, so many points I would like to address, but can't without turning this into a lengthy essay.

Anyway I'm currently interviewing and have been on both sides of the recruitment process.

I don't mind homework, but I know that more often than not it's never read or taken into account.

I discovered this by accident when I published my solution through a service that sends a notification when somebody downloads. Eventually they did, but only after I passed all the other steps - even though the task was given early in the process.

I've been publishing them like this ever since and this is my experience so far.

So yeah, coding challenges apparently are just a way to gauge your level of commitment, not a way to test your skills.

Personally I'm turning this around by asking to see a piece of code before we discuss compensation in detail. Dodged at least one bullet this way.

</comment><comment><USER71> The fact is, that without some demonstration of a candidate's usefulness (their code) I cannot hire them. We used to use HR, now it is the head of engineering who runs our technical hiring. The process is very simple, complete a task, and if it is done correctly we start looking at soft skills. If you can't do it in a manner that suggests you can hit the ground running, you are cut.

Reality is harsh, and unpleasant. In an environment where resources are tightened by rapid growth, we cannot afford the trappings of these supposedly "superior and modern" hiring techniques. We need talent, not mediocrity.

</comment><comment><USER72> I've been on both sides of the table and I'll tell you a coding challenge is a much better solution than the whiteboard/leetcode/code-on-the-fly during the interview. Just keep it short i.e. 2-4 hours max.

As far as alternatives to a coding challenge, the OP did suggest walking through a prior project on GitHub. I think that's a great idea (in addition to a coding challenge though); an open source project on GitHub is a bonus for a candidate, and will in many cases steer the interviewer to ask questions about your project in lieu of abstract concepts.

</comment><comment><USER73> It's a tough problem, but eventually you have to demonstrate some sort of competency. White board, open source contributions, homework. There has to be some way of demonstrating you know what you are doing.

I'm a consultant so I've been through tons of interviews at this point in my career (21+ years).

If I had my choice? I'd pair program with my potential teammates on a bug/feature for the product I'd be working on.

Give me something real that's been in the backlog for a while, and we'll pair on it for the allotted time.

<comment><USER74> This sounds good, but it will not work for many jobs. Fixing a bug in a code base that you don't recognize is more difficult that a well defined coding problem. Candidates will be limited to the technologies and problems which they are already familiar.

This approach has some value, but it can't be the only way to evaluate candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Yea, it's meant to be a waste of your time.

More accurately, if you need to learn new things to complete it - it will be very time consuming.

Someone experienced, or that uses relevant tech/skills on a daily basis should complete it in less than the time allotted.

Therefore "homework" coding challenges are useful for discerning if a candidate has relevant, current experience.

See the article on college professor solving a 30+ of CS problems in one day.

Whiteboard challenges, on the other hand, evaluate a candidates thinking process & presentation skills.

Whiteboard challenges

</comment><comment><USER76> I don't like coding challenges, but on the hiring side it turns out even really basic ones can filter out a huge chunk of people who can't code their way out of a paper bag. But for most jobs they don't really need to be anything crazy. It turns out that plenty of applicants have a hard time with things that are surprisingly simple and that's really all you need.

</comment><comment><USER77> I got chance to appear in a couple of coding challenges while applied for jobs. In one test I failed. It was a typical hacker rank riddle. The other I passed as I see my test ran properly yet I got a rejection letter. Another HN based job interview I was asked for a challenge but I simply refused.

</comment><comment><USER78> Recruiting is mostly about finding reasons to say no.

And nothing gives more open ended reasons than the coding test.

</comment><comment><USER79> Crossing concerns here:

Assignments can be helpful, but they can also be time consuming which is unfair.

Do the code or whiteboard 'on the day' \- enough with the take home tests, or, pay people to do the tests.

</comment><comment><USER80> What other industries do something similar in their hiring process?

<comment><USER81> A family member is a chef, and for new jobs you have to "stage" [0] where you come and cook for a (unpaid) shift to see if you are a fit, have the skills, etc. To me this is exactly the same thing, and I expect this is very common across different kinds of jobs.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_(cooking)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_\(cooking\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> One thing I always wonder, how do other professions do it? Do civil engineers have to make a building? Do chemists have to assay a sample? What makes programming so unique?

<comment> non-entity Well for one you wont see Chemists or Civil Engineers from the variety of backgrounds developers come from. It's near impossible to become one without the degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I've been through so many puzzle dungeons that I immediately just exit a process if it involves another technical interview. I've done technical interviews with FAANG and the like and those processes actually tend to be much nicer at more mature companies because they're actually well designed problems with people who actually understand their significance. You at least get to ask questions and not just get told to jump through the hoop like a dolphin. For the rest, you end up with interviewers who google some esoteric Python problem they think is particularly clever.

I'll stop here to state that I think any adherence to being overtly clever is my first and only red flag.

It's so pathetically obvious because the number of times I've done the exact same problem for multiple companies because it happens to be the 2nd or 3rd search result.

I once had someone disqualify my answer for using a DFA because it wasn't "real code".

To be honest, I think the technical interview actually IS important, and I've had numerous experiences enjoying it if only to showcase a lot of the more necessarily toxic behaviors of a company up front. Let's be honest with ourselves, is any employer going to necessarily have the best practices with respecting your time, money and effort? It's best to lay out those cards up front. Literally every red flag will demonstrate itself through the interviewer in most scenarios. Like any test, you get out of it what you give.

For example:

How many times do I feel this?

"We take an extra time-slot / day / email chain in what is already a hypercompetitive market just to suss you out. We wait until the last stage of the interview process to do this because we still don't totally trust you or understand anything you've done. We waste a lot of time creating elaborate puzzles that don't really matter. We're not going to pay you because our finances are already horribly mismanaged that it's complicated to contract you out for the day and also we feel like you should be gladly externalizing your labor costs for our shiny position if you really love us. Drink the kool-aid."

Sometimes the technical interview surprises me. I always use it as a motivating example of myself as a candidates to work through a problem, show grit and also demonstrate when to ask for help. Ego and pride on both sides of the equation come into play and that's always a worthwhile exercise before engaging it any longterm commitment. A good test accommodates and informs through failure. I learned this from administering the Putnam. Never got a decent score on it, but it was a worthwhile experience to fail. Interview tests are on the other hand, are not designed to teach anything except that you are unworthy.

My best roles have never asked for it. The company knew what they were looking for, were willing to trust me, were able to move along the interview process without losing me to a competitor and everyone was happy and they always pay competitively. Usually if there's a technical interview involved at all, they have no idea what I can actually do. If they're willing to waste time, effort and money on extra steps and are taking "necessary precautions" to subject you to what are essentially just litmus tests, then I'm sorry, that speaks to me a sense of your culture of mediocrity and dogmatic orthodoxy towards process.

Goodhart's law. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. When I was in school, we had other students take a year off to study for the Google interview. These were all affluent white men. At the same time, I had recruiters complaining to me that there were no decent black/brown candidates in the pipeline. I remember hearing the same thing except as a child. Uhhh, there's been plenty of time to invest into the local community. Recruiters would do well do understand to the history of the SAT as systemic racism, or literacy tests as systemic racism, or like any actual statistics as systemic racism. Everything that reduces candidates to numbers and quizzes feels rife for abuse. Who has the privilege to study an extra game on top of performing in a society that is already stacked against them? That's not a question.

To wit, there's the issue with a large number of candidates with junk resumes. There's the outstanding issue of "authenticity" in professional acumen. There's the whole problem with the industries underlying predatory behavior with regards to labor externalization and laundering numerical metrics, be it the rate of inclusion and diversity or the amount of hours actually demanded by management. What is so fundamentally wrong with the technical interview is that it's just the cherry on top for what is already a miserable process. I'd so much rather just do free work for a potential client and just give it to them so it actually means something and is useful than waste any more time solving pointless puzzles, and this is from someone who specifically enjoyed studying hard pointless puzzles in school.

No, you can't just show side projects. You should not be showing your work portfolio to anyone who isn't paying you. If they were interested in open source, they'd already be paying you.

The technical interview is dead. Long live the technical interview.

</comment><comment><USER84> Most of the alternate approaches have their own severe failings:

Ask pertinent questions - a lot of candidates are bad at immediate summation and dissemination of information. There are many good engineers who have not learned how to sell their work, themselves, or in general communicate to the intent of a question. This is an invaluable skill, largely orthogonal to writing code, but it's a skill that's often learned with experience. Learning to ask level appropriate questions is hard and evaluating answers consistently (if not objectively) even harder. It is also largely insufficient in gauging programming ability. I've had co-workers who can talk about advanced architecture-y topics seemingly competently but struggle to write even relatively simple code.

Probationary period - I've never seen this implemented (excluding internships which sort of fall into this category) and it certainly sounds like a nice option to have available but I would bet many candidates would be afraid of a short probationary period (say 3 mo) especially if they have to move their family for the job. Being a professional and being told you are on a probationary period is stressful. At many large companies it can easily take more than 6wks to get up to any sort of productivity.

Walk through existing projects - most people (vast majority) do not have any sizable or clean or even "interesting" side project they would want to walk an interviewer through. Unless you worked on open-source for your previous employer (again minority of people) or on your spare time, this is not something you can get a strong signal out of.

Ask them to build something - err, I don't see how this is that different than a coding challenge. And again, not everyone has personal projects ready to be shown to an interviewer. For example, the game I'm coding some nights after work does not look anything like code I write for my employer; there are no tests, there's a lot of experimental and often dead code, functions are not neatly factored and thought out with an eye for collaboration, etc. I would not want to be judged by this code for an interview.

Pair programming - this sounds like a coding challenge but with a more empathetic interviewer. I don't think this is an alternative, just a mild augmentation of a coding challenge.

Focus on ability to learn - companies do this but it's usually considered supplementary to coding ability. Some companies explain their product and try to see if the candidate understands where the value of the product exists or at least where some of the challenges are. This could be spun out into a product type interview or a system design interview depending on intent.

Alternatives to white-boarding or do-at-home project interviews: \- Provide a small existing but functional code base and ask the candidate to implement additional functionality. Downside is this takes a lot more effort to prepare and are limiting the candidate in regards to language they want to use. \- Provide multiple options for a coding project or question and let the candidate choose which one they want to solve. This would hopefully reduce some of the luck factor of getting a question you know how to solve. \- I can't think of any others, but I'm sure they exist

One of the big desirable goals of interviews are evaluating candidates in a consistent manner. All interviewers have biases and these biases vary between the interviewers. Trying to account for that is, I believe, important but also very hard. Using the proposed alternatives would make it even much harder.

</comment><comment><USER85> so much complaining

</comment><comment><USER86> I usually tell interviewers I don't do per-interview assignments. I'll often e-mail them a list of current open source taks I'm working on, a paragraph with good requirements or a linked issue from an issue tracker. I'll list the programing language and framework and ask them to select from the list. I'll complete my task, with tests, and do a full presentation.

Universally I get turned down. "You have to do our assignment." Oh and I'll usually offer to do their assignment for $300. That doesn't go well either.

Only one company took me up on this offer, and it's the one I work for. (They didn't even ask me to complete one of my tasks, they just looked at the project I authored and said that was fine; and scheduled a full interview).

The few times I have actually done these assignments, I've never gotten the job.

<comment><USER28> Their loss.</comment></comment>


The single most dangerous foolishness that can beset an organization - <AUTHOR> http://siderea.livejournal.com/1197853.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really insightful article. A shame it hasn't garnered any discussion, but maybe people feel they don't have much to add.

I think the next big wave of economic growth is not 3d printing, or AI, or anything like that; it's figuring out how to actually run large organisations effectively. Nick Szabo has a bunch of essays on how it was the printing press which enabled mass literacy, which enabled large bureaucratic organisations. Relatively new in human history.

Email-powered organisations are only a few decades old, and we're still ironing out the kinks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yellow on purple, how has anyone actually completed this article? The next article should be about the cost of eye strain.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not economist; but have to ask - do economist not already study the cost of information?</comment>


Re: Efforts to attract more users? (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/rms <comment><USER2> This is silly and pointless. The blogspam states "[RMS] agrees that C++ sucks" when in fact he's talking about using C++ for a very specific use case (Emacs).

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to say Stallman don't like C++ at all.

[1]. [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2010-07/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2010-07/msg00594.html) [2]. [https://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html)</comment></comment>