

CodeSprint programming contest to match developers to companies - rvivek
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/codesprint/

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rdouble
A company runs the risk of exposing other hiring biases by using these
services, or pre-interview puzzles. If someone solves the problems, yet is not
offered an interview, it makes the hiring process seem more opaque and
arbitrary, not less.

I enjoy programming puzzles and solved the puzzles for Spotify one weekend. I
sent in my resume to see what would happen. I was rejected about 2 hours
later. I went in thinking it was cool that Spotify was so meritocratic to use
programming puzzles as a hiring filter, but came out thinking the process is
just totally arbitrary.

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JosephHatfield
With all due respect, on the surface this seems like a way to find desperate
20-somethings with stamina, a serious Red Bull habit, and a willingness to
work obscene hours.

~~~
mikeinterviewst
Companies choose candidates on a per-question weighting system. Thus, if you
spend only a couple of hours, but on a problem that is valued highly by a
specific company, then there's a good chance that they'll still notice you.

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veemjeem
So it's basically like topcoder.com -- do you know any great developers that
use that site to get noticed? Neither do I.

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moocow01
For people with experience and multiple job offers which most likely are the
types company's want or at least should be trying to hire, there is no
incentive to utilize these services in my mind. While I'm sure there are a few
great applicants, I'd guess the quality of the applicant pool is going to be
quite low in that the cost benefit analysis for a very qualified person is not
so great. If anything, I'd probably see it as a red flag on a company that is
hiring heavily from services like these.

~~~
jphackworth
_For people with experience and multiple job offers... there is no incentive_

That's true. But think about a smart programmer who is fresh out of school, or
maybe dropped out. If you don't have anything on your resume yet, this could
be a reasonable way to break into the tech scene.

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vilya
This sounds absolutely awful from a candidates point of view. 48 hours is a
very long time for what is effectively an extended technical interview.

The hackathon format works well for one-off fun events, but no-one should ever
be pulling 48 hour coding stints at work. Being charitable, I guess this tests
how well people perform under crunch conditions - but would _you_ want to work
for a company which is actively planning to crunch?

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rvivek
Hey vilya, there are multiple challenges and short interesting real-world
problems. So you can finish sooner, in fact the rank #1 last time finished in
12 hours :) You can checkout codesprint.interviewstreet.com for more info.

~~~
vilya
Everything on that page gives me the impression that it's a solid 48hrs; maybe
you need to adjust the copy? The explanation posted elsewhere on this thread
by mikeinterviewst makes it sound more reasonable.

I'm probably not your target audience anyway (happily I'm past that stage in
my career), but I was also put off by being asked to login in order to see
sample questions.

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heliodor
This is as shallow as interviews get. In terms of the interview process, I
agree with a post yesterday where the writer was explaining how the more you
interview people, the more you move away from the solve-a-problem interview
technique and shift toward analyzing the recommendations the person has.
Recommendations provide the signals you need: gets work done, drive,
communication skills, people skills, work style, etc. Then you ask for a
source code sample to examine what goes on under the hood and you're finished.

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mikeinterviewst
Wow, we did not expect to see this level of criticism from the comments.

A lot of the focus is on the 48 hour period, in that it's basically way too
long to expect you guys to participate. We don't expect people to code all 48
hours; the decision was basically "make it a weekend long", but we are not
tied in any way to that time period. Would it be much better if we shortened
the time period to 24 hours? (We can't shorten it any more than that; as this
is a global competition, everyone needs to have the same amount of daytime)
The goal is not to have you guys burn yourselves out. The goal is to assess
you all as quickly as possible.

From our perspective, we sort of viewed CodeSprint as a time saver; everyone
you apply to nowadays requires some sort of technical proof. Sometimes you can
get away with it if you have a github with a lot of open source projects, but
not everyone has that.

With CodeSprint, you get to choose among a variety of problems, and companies
with those specific problems get to find you. Because they receive the full
code solutions, our goal is for CodeSprint to consolidate and replace the "do-
a-technical-problem" part of the normal interview process. Except, this time
around, this one set of problems is what's used for multiple companies,
instead of just one.

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nerds2
I think people are missing the point of Codesprint. The point is not that 48
hours is too long etc. etc. (enough coders spend 54hrs at Startup Weekend) or
that you are working for free for a big co.

The main point is that tech talent is extremely hard to find. Therefore it is
valuable for companies to find someone who walks the talk.

For someone who is a good hacker and is just entering the job market, this is
the real shit. No BS, no fake answers, no "i-want-to-change-the-world crap" -
just being able to solve the problems at hand. And, these are the kind of
people who end up changing the world by being part of sexy startups and maybe
even starting up on their own later. Heck, if you are real hacker, 48hours of
challenges is the best way to spend that time.

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alexis-d
Nice error handling from them...

    
    
      A Database Error Occurred
    
      Error Number: 1048
    
      Column 'email' cannot be null
    
      INSERT INTO `recruit_hackers` (`email`) VALUES (NULL)
    
      Filename: /var/www/istreet/html/recruit/models/supermodel.php
    
      Line Number: 335

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rvivek
hey alexis, when does this happen?

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alexis-d
When I tried to see problems of fall 2011 (using Facebook for login).

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mikeinterviewst
It looks like your privacy settings / a plugin you have installed doesn't
allow for even obsfucated email sharing. Normally, what we get for Facebook
logins is app+<random_string>@proxymail.facebook.com. This is the first time
we've heard of that it's not able to be shared.

~~~
alexis-d
That's strange. While it's true I have "very" secure fb settings, I allowed
your app to use my email address. Anyway I'll try to login with Google.

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mikeinterviewst
Just to clarify a quote: “Everything will be based on performance — how fast
they code, how many they get right.”

This is a slight misrepresentation of the original intent. What we meant to
say is that we measure code execution speed, not how fast people type.

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jebblue
I'll be glad to prove my hacker chops, what's the rate?

~~~
mikeinterviewst
It's free for programmers to participate.

~~~
tomjen3
One of us missed the point -- I don't think he was talking about the rate he
had to _pay_.

Programming is a valuable skill. How much does he get for spending 48 hours of
his time?

~~~
moocow01
He gets the satisfaction of knowing that a company probably solved one of
their problems for free by running off with his code while flipping him the
bird.

~~~
tomjen3
That is what is so nice about patio11 - he has effectively thought the rest of
us what the value of a good programmer is.

Fuck code sprint and the rest of the guys who think we accept being treated as
dirt.

