

Show HN: CodePair - etherpad + codechecker + analytics for interviews - rvivek
https://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit2/codepair

======
mseebach
For the nay-sayers out there: You have _clearly_ not been anywhere near the
hiring funnel of a tech company. The sheer number of people with impressive
academic credentials, even with industry experience, that can't code a for-
loop and reason about it is _staggering_. Anything that facilitates actual,
hands-on coding early in the process and on an actual computer (as opposed to
whiteboards or paper) is a very welcome addition.

~~~
uniclaude
> _The sheer number of people with impressive academic credentials, even with
> industry experience, that can 't code a for-loop and reason about it is
> staggering._

I read this a lot on HN, and I've been doing a lot of hiring. Still, not only
I've never encountered this case, but I have a lot of trouble imagining how
one could get "impressive academic credentials" in CS without being able to
write simple algorithms. Not that I don't trust you, but this is honestly
beyond me.

Or maybe people lie more often than I expected on their resumes.

~~~
travoltaj
I'm in India, still a student, and I can only speak for the situation in my
university, but in my class, a 80%+ student once asked me how to disable the
antivirus. Another 80%+ student thinks cryptography and email spoofing are the
same thing. This is from last year CS graduates in one of the better private
colleges in the state.

A student in IT uses google to search for google, then uses that to search for
facebook. Another good student couldn't write a "separate the digits in a
number" program. Another top student couldn't write a "selection sort and then
select alternate elements" program. The top nerds use drag and drop
programming. A friend who runs an IT outsourcing company told me about all the
candidates with fake experience certificates who can't code a Hello World
program.

All these people have impressive academic records - Good GPA, graduation from
a reputed university, research papers, internships.

That's not to say everyone's like that, I've seen great programmers too in my
college, but the majority of people I've come across fall in that category.

------
ddoolin
I've had coding interviews via phone/Skype + browser since I started applying
a couple of years ago. I'm not sure why anyone would be depressed.

It seems like a lot of posters here just don't like being interviewed on any
terms except their own. It's a very snooty position to take, but I suppose
there's enough room for those types of people as well.

I prefer this over some companies who (seriously) have a great phone-only
interview with me, only to reject me after looking at my GitHub. I also don't
blame them for not dropping a lot of money to fly me out to meet them when
they wouldn't even know if I'm qualified or not. This is a pretty good medium,
I think. This is only second to my preference for being given a project and a
few days to do it, but I wouldn't fault a company for whatever method they
chose, unless it was downright asinine.

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k3n
This is really cool! A few things though:

* You probably have your reasons, but requiring an email to simply test it out is too much IMO. I don't want to go through the email invitation dance, I don't want spam in the future, and I don't want to wait; so, I practically always refuse.

* In general, the ratio of marketing info to specifics is too high; in other words, more details would be nice, such as: I see it supports 16 languages; ok, great! So, what are they...? (mind you, I wouldn't be asking if there was a public demo)

~~~
rvivek
Could you check now? You don't need an e-mail to use.

~~~
k3n
Perfect! Thank you, I'll actually go and kick the tires now :)

------
ghshephard
One anectdote, for whateever it's worth - Our company adopted online code
testing, in which the screening interviewer (as opposed to the entire
interview team) tossed out sample coding questions, and had the candidate
write code real-time with feedback from the interviewer - it COMPLETELY
revolutionized the quality of candidates that started coming in for in-person
interviews, and increased the percentage of candidates interviewed in person
being hired from around 20-30% up to 70-80%.

The single greatest advantage of "pre-testing" candidates is that the amount
of time engineers had to spend interviewing candidates was reduced
dramatically. A secondary advantage for the candidates, is that they didn't
have to waste their time coming in for interviews for jobs that they were
really not qualified for - win all around.

I don't understand how anyone can't see that it would be useful to determine
whether a developer can code prior to coming into an interview.

All of the top engineering managers (by that, I mean the ones who are really
effective at hiring and retaining great engineers) have always told me, that
part of the interview for a developer who is expected to code, is that they
should demonstrate their ability to code, during the interview.

I'm not sure why being asked to demonstrated this ability online is considered
an issue.

~~~
mgkimsal
I had an opposite experience - years ago, I drove 8 hours for an interview.
Got there, was asked some basic perfunctory stuff that could have been done
over the phone (they knew I lived in a different state). I'd brought a printed
portfolio (laptops weren't _too_ common, wasn't sure if I would have wifi
access, etc). I had printed code samples ready to discuss, and offered them,
but was told "no, that wouldn't be fair to the other candidates who can't
bring example code".

I was slightly flabbergasted to say the least. That said, I was offered a job
(after a second 8 hour drive to meet the owner the following week), and I took
it, and it was a pretty darn good gig for the first year. But... "not fair to
the others" is just odd reasoning.

Like you, I think understanding if someone can do at least basic programming
('basic' relative to the skill level you're hiring for) should be a non-issue.
_How_ it's done - automated tests, screen sharing, etc - may be up for debate.

~~~
rvivek
This is true and a lot of people relate to automated testing as something to
ask about hard competitive style programming challenges. It can be fun too.
Eg:
[http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzle_archive.html](http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzle_archive.html)

------
rvivek
We have modified it so that you don't need to signup or provide your e-mail:
[https://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit2/codepair](https://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit2/codepair)

Check it out! Thanks for the feedback

------
gxespino
Naysayers: This product is not for you. It is for the interviewer's benefit.
You are not the one paying for it so your "depression" due to tools such as
this is almost a non issue.

If you don't want to do a technical interview such as codepair, then don't.
I'm sure there will be other candidates who wouldn't mind.

Now the question as to whether or not this is effective in gauging the actual
resourcefulness of a potential employee - that is a little less certain. I'm
sure their are other factors beside one's ability to answer coding problems
that play into the overall ability of a potential employee.

------
bretthopper
I guess I should be impressed with this product but it's actually just
depressing.

Obviously this is just a tool and it's up to the companies how to use it, but
I think we all know how that will work out.

~~~
rvivek
Hey bretthopper, thanks for the feedback. I didn't quite get your comment of
being depressing. Could you explain? or feel free to e-mail me: vivek [at]
interviewstreet

~~~
bretthopper
I was referring to long standing problem of tech interviewers of getting
caught up in academic style programming questions as if they're representative
of the work that's actually done in a company.

While the product looks awesome, I'm assuming it will be used to cargo cult
bad coding questions instead of companies really trying to do something
different with their interview process.

~~~
lambda
I'm curious what you consider to be "cargo cult bad coding questions."

When I do phone screens, I generally do two coding questions, plus several
other technical questions. The coding questions are a fizz-buzz level warmup
question (not fizz-buzz itself, but something fairly trivial that any
programmer should be able to do in 5 minutes), plus a more real-world question
that requires walking over the filesystem, looking for particular things in
particular files.

Beyond that, I do non-coding technical questions that are based on actual
problems I've had to solve on the job, and actual technologies that we use
every day like standard networking protocols (HTTP, TCP, DNS).

This seems like it would be fairly useful for my coding questions. So far I've
done them in Etherpad or Google Docs, and told people not to worry about the
precise syntax since that can be hard to do in such a different environment
and without being able to run and test your code; then I inspect it manually
and look for obvious logic errors. However, something like this would be
fairly helpful in letting people write real code and run it.

------
Ave
Shameless plug for my sideproject I'm currently working on,
[http://hiresync.io](http://hiresync.io) which is aiming to do much of the
same thing.

~~~
nickpresta
Hey Kaizhi,

Small world, eh? Hiresync looks awesome! I wish you the best of luck with it.
Really love the simplified interface.

------
taude
I'm not sure how I'd feel about doing some coding before I even went through
other parts of the interview process or meeting the team I'd be working with.
This sends me the message that I'm going to be a COG in some system.

Sending a potential candidate something like this might be a turn-off to a lot
of candidates (especially in this marketplace).

~~~
Kronopath
I've done interviews like this before, with the interviewer asking me
questions through Skype or phone with an Etherpad or similar document open in
a browser where we can share code, and I haven't been bothered. The key point
is that (from what I can tell) this is supposed to be used live, as part of an
interview, not as a pre-screening process.

~~~
rvivek
Yes, that's correct.

------
vadepaysa
This is awesome. I always ask people to code in phone interviews and I use
Googe Docs.

You will be surprised at the number of people who have good resumes but cannot
code at all. Watching someone code even a simple Fizz Buzz problem will help
you understand the person's programming abilities better.

------
Lambent_Cactus
At my last gig we used Stypi or Google Docs plus a phone to do live code
exercises, and CodePair likes like a step up from that.

But what we're running at my current gig is sending a trivial problem ahead
(after an initial phone screen) and then asking for extensions over a Google
Hangout with the candidate doing a screen share. This lets people work their
way in their own environment with the language of their choice, and do any
boilerplate or other overhead up front.

It's not perfect - I'd prefer not to require someone use or make a Google+
account, but it's the best I've seen so far.

------
btucker
I can't help but feel nervous every time the mouse moves to the top right of
the screen, narrowly missing the "End Interview" button in the animation...

I'm sure there's the a confirmation dialog or something, but I'd be afraid of
accidentally hanging up on the person the whole time.

~~~
rvivek
Yes, there's a confirmation dialog :)

------
akanet
For anyone looking for a similar take with a larger focus on real-time REPL
experimentation during the coding interview, check out:
[https://coderpad.io/](https://coderpad.io/)

~~~
thewillcole
Suspiciously similar. Which came first, CoderPad or CodePair?

~~~
rvivek
[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/93884663-eb5f-4926-8d1...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/93884663-eb5f-4926-8d16-f430573d0e46/3545a93e2e8ebca0c47c8007475cf36b)
CoderPad checker is actually powered by interviewstreet.

------
oakaz
I hate code interviews and hope that they won't exist in the future.

~~~
minimaxir
This is still a better alternative to code interviews by whiteboard though.
(or worse, code interviews by _phone_ ).

~~~
dave809
> code interviews by phone you're joking right? would you speak the code out
> loud like so:

a equals list open bracket range open bracket ten close bracket close bracket
new line

or is it more abstract, like:

create a list from 0 to 9 and store it in a variable called a

------
coldcode
Why isn't there more information like a list of languages/compilers etc? The
site needs to say more than "contact us" or try an interview to figure out
what you can do with it.

~~~
rvivek
Yes. Adding them. As far as the languages and timelimits, here you go:
[https://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/challenges/faq/view](https://www.interviewstreet.com/recruit/challenges/faq/view)

~~~
coldcode
Are all the tests canned? Wouldn't people be able to figure them out ahead of
time and prepare the right answers?

~~~
rvivek
You can create challenges on your own.

------
iamleppert
Impressive. But this product also makes me depressed. It dehumanizes the
interview process. My question is why don't you just have a challenge server,
like facebook?

~~~
rvivek
We do. The challenge server at facebook is also powered by us. This is for
phone interviews.

------
ernestipark
This is pretty cool but part of the interface is confusing me. What do I put
into the input field? Or is it just using the input defined in the question?

~~~
akshay3004
You will have to enter the input for your code there. Example: For the sample
code given (which is for finding the largest element of an array), the input
would be something like: 5 1 5 10 0 3

which represents an array of length 5 with elements 1,5,10,0 and 3

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kirang1989
This is pretty cool for phone interviews, but I certainly do hope that people
refrain from using this as their only method of interviewing candidates.

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Johnyma22
Hey I'm the guy behind the Etherpad Foundation, wanted to just say thanks for
the Etherlove :)

------
rvivek
Fixed the CSS issues. Can you check?

------
rvivek
Some CSS issue. Fixing it.

