
Ask HN: Why do companies interview using Google Docs as a coding environment? - anonymousjunior
Why do companies like Google and Asana push developers into writing &quot;production quality&quot; code in a non-IDE like Google Docs during tech screens?
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carusooneliner
During coding interviews, I'm looking for the following evidence in a
candidate:

1\. how good is the candidate at problem solving?

2\. is the candidate able to think in code?

3\. are there any glaring syntax errors?

To assess the above three, a whiteboard, paper or Google Docs is sufficient.
I'm not averse to using an IDE, just that the IDE's syntax checking hints will
shift the candidate's focus to writing syntactically accurate code (#3) rather
than on the problem (#1 and #2).

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diehunde
If all the interviewers were like that I'd be OK with using whatever they
want. But one time I was doing a Python exercise on a google doc and I was
missing a colon after an if statement. The guy had me for a couple of minutes
trying to find my "error" without telling me it was syntax. The algorithm was
correct.

The other problem I see is when you don't agree on something with the
interviewer. One guy made me write some fictitious SQL queries on a doc and
then asked me some questions. He was wrong about several things but we didn't
have any way to test it. I was so shocked he didn't know that stuff that I had
to tested after to see if I was actually wrong, but no.

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smt88
I've never heard of this, and it's completely insane. It sounds like satire.

Stay away from companies that do this if you can. It indicates a deeply broken
hiring culture.

~~~
anonymousjunior
lol it's literally the initial tech screen for Google

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gtirloni
I think we're going a little bit crazy with the complaints about the tech
interview process lately (I'm not a fan as well). Now it's the shared
scratchpad to blame as well?

It's just a shared buffer that works pretty reliably and no interviewer cares
about your typos or lack of indentation.

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BjoernKW
So, they're basically hiring humans to mimic the features of an IDE? Right,
sounds like solid plan ...

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would do this. What this will achieve at
best is optimising for rote learning and selecting for people who are capable
of writing syntactically perfect code unassistedly. This however is an
unrealistic scenario during daily development work because that's - among
other things - what an IDE is for.

Problem analysis, mapping requirements to code, finding solutions in a
deliberate rather than haphazard manner - these actually relevant aspects of
software development aren't assessed at all by such a 'process'.

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sethammons
I'm part of my company's hiring guild. We are revamping the way we hire.
Someone on the HR side proposed and almost got Google Docs as part of the tech
screen and on site coding interviews. I successfully pushed back. The real
goal is collaboration or collaborative editing, and that is just the first
tool that jumps to mind. There are others. What I'm pushing for is just screen
sharing (probably with zoom or hangouts) and the candidate uses their own
computer or a loaner laptop.

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cwt
It shows mastery of the language, one could argue. With the tools available
today it makes development a lot faster and easier. Functions have tooltips on
how to use it, you can scroll through the available functions, libraries
imported, and more. While it is unpleasant, it is an exercise that
demonstrates your independence from dev tools.

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keithnoizu
why do they care if you have memorized all of each languages specific apis
when you can easily look them up on the fly with intellisense or similiar. My
own pet peeve since being super dyslexic despite being a solid programmer I
memorize very little just the general idea and capability of how different
constructs generally work across languages.

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thisisnotatest
For what it's worth, when I do coding interviews, I really don't care if the
candidate calls the function at() or get() or find(), whatever that particular
library in that particular language actually has, as long as their usage of
the supposed function is appropriate in the language.

~~~
keithnoizu
I've transitioned away from spending too much on coding and mostly ask
stylistic open ended questions although I still do some coding when
interviewing a candidate. As a dyslexic though the current industry white
board interviewing process is a poor indicator of how I actually perform in
the real world.

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tathagatadg
I don't know if they are ok with you taking the liberty to make some changes
to google docs.

There is an add on called Code Blocks that you can install on google docs for
free. Huge language support - but don't expect it to be a fully functional
ide.

Other than that, you'll want to turn off auto-capitalization, and spell
checking from Tools->Preferences.

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shanemhansen
Worse is better. It's an easy place to do collaborative editing. For google
specifically, I think they leverage some google docs automation for capturing
artifacts for hiring committee in their interview workflow.

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anonymousjunior
It's not though. They expect shit to run afterwards. As someone who primarily
writes Python (whitespace matters) in Vim (it's universal), having to code in
Google Docs is a horrifying experience

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orangecat
_They expect shit to run afterwards._

No reasonable interviewer expects you to write perfect code on a whiteboard or
in a non-IDE editor. I'm sure there are plenty of unreasonable interviewers,
which is an indicator that you don't want to work for them.

~~~
anonymousjunior
That was my thought, but I got syntax complaints after my first tech screen
with Google. Now Asana is asking me to do the same so I'm hesitant to even
move forward.

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sergiotapia
Never heard of this, is this an actual thing?

~~~
diehunde
Yes, happens very often.

