Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

To respond to both you and the sibling comment, a short take home assignment which is used to guide a final interview is fine for junior positions.

For senior positions, I would rather spend an hour or two talking through hypothetical scenarios, including design decisions and teamwork. I want to hear deeper knowledge from a candidate, not "do they know valid syntax and are they able to solve trivial problems".

As in all things, it depends on the company that is doing the hiring and the role they are being hired for. In some cases, "senior" roles are basically individual contributors with a few years of experience. In others, a senior should be able to translate business requirements into a big picture technical solution, break down the portions of the stack they are familiar with, and explain what assumptions are made and what unknown factors need to be sussed out in order to plan a proper implementation.

The latter portion is difficult to do with a take home assignment without careful planning for the follow-up interviews. 5 hour round-robin interviews typically (in my experience) end up being "live leet code" sessions that don't represent day-to-day work at all.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: