Activity Log
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 10:39
Bouncy Dog charging his bounce for later.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 15:44
Starting to solidify my opinion that tech assessments are bullshit. Code for no pay? Fine, whatever. But if I write some code and I’m supposed to treat it like a pull request, then you damn well better support the fiction by giving me useful feedback.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 15:44
next time somebody says “treat this take home tech assessment like a pull request” I’m gonna respond with “fine give me a ticket number and a triage meeting”
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 15:52
@WuMargaret strong agree. What did you like about this that made you move me through? What struck you so raw that it moved you to reject me?
That lack bugs me more than anything. Free labor is one thing. Free emotional labor is another.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 16:02
@WuMargaret I see no hijacking! You deserve the feedback too.
Orgs will blame a lot of things including liability, but it kinda boils down to they don’t want to commit to the work required in a feedback cycle. They don’t want to do free labor.
Which I get. So they shouldn’t run this nonsense.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 18:19
An actual pull request style tech assessment could be awesome actually, though what I’m imagining would be way more work.
Have a tiny test repo with existing code and an open ticket.
Fork the repo, fulfill the ticket, make a PR.
Interviewer does an actual code review, you make your changes and / or defend your choices. There might be a couple rounds of this.
By the end of that you should have a dang good idea if you want to work with each other.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 18:21
“but that would be a lot of work for the interviewer”
for the interviewing team
but hey it’s a lot of work for the interviewee too
what’s the matter, don’t want to do free labor?
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 18:23
But yeah all this is wildly disproportionate to the value gained from all that effort. This brings me back to my original thesis:
Tech assessments are bullshit.
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 18:31
@gizmomathboy funny that’s about how I feel about employers
hackers.town: 2023-08-21 Mon 18:32
@gizmomathboy (in the abstract of course; I’ve had specific employers I’m quite fond of)