Re:Show HN: I made a job board that doesn't allow HackerRank...
by redshirtrob on Friday January 01, 2021 @01:18PM
(#25605278)
Yes! I've been on the interviewee side of this a couple times and absolutely love it. It has so many nice properties:
1. It fosters meaningful conversations about code that is not dependent on the candidate solving a toy problem.
2. As you said, it tests a candidate's ability to read and understand code.
3. It's actually representative of the type of work you _will_ do at any given company, i.e. code review.
The major downside is if you give the candidate code in a language they're totally unfamiliar with then that candidate will likely bomb. I think this can be mitigated by sticking with mainstream languages like C/Java/Python, or domain specific languages where not-knowing would be a deal breaker anyway, i.e. must know Swift for iOS dev.
1. It fosters meaningful conversations about code that is not dependent on the candidate solving a toy problem.
2. As you said, it tests a candidate's ability to read and understand code.
3. It's actually representative of the type of work you _will_ do at any given company, i.e. code review.
The major downside is if you give the candidate code in a language they're totally unfamiliar with then that candidate will likely bomb. I think this can be mitigated by sticking with mainstream languages like C/Java/Python, or domain specific languages where not-knowing would be a deal breaker anyway, i.e. must know Swift for iOS dev.