Reply to: Coding assignments for a new role

[gixxer2021]

I remember David Couthard saying he’d drive a formula 1 car for free, but was paid millions for all the politics, media interviews and other stuff he had to put up with. I kinda feel the same about development, I love coding and do it in my spare time, really enjoy that side of the work, but get paid for putting up with all the other aspects of the contract. I’ve done the odd coding challenge for interviews and enjoyed them, but do feel it’s taking the p!ss a bit if it’s more than a few hours (often feels like free consultancy).

[eek]

Me too and it has paid off handsomely.

There is many a computer science graduate who can't break into the industry because they have done zero programming outside of their degree course.

Not surprising - I want to see what you can do / have done rather than worthless immediately outdated theory

[TheDude]

And that's exactly what I did to get skilled and in a position to overtake all my peers income-wise. Good hard graft.

Me too and it has paid off handsomely.

There is many a computer science graduate who can't break into the industry because they have done zero programming outside of their degree course.

[d000hg]

Well of course. Hire those that would do it for free and think nothing of spending 60 hours a week on the tasks. That's the mindset in IT, fill yer boots!

And that's exactly what I did to get skilled and in a position to overtake all my peers income-wise. Good hard graft.

[_V_]

Who wouldn't prefer to hire people who enjoy what they do and care about it?

Well of course. Hire those that would do it for free and think nothing of spending 60 hours a week on the tasks. That's the mindset in IT, fill yer boots!

[d000hg]

I think a lot of these assignments are to see who loves coding in their spare time. They are looking for people that don't blink when deadlines are imposed that force evening and weekend coding.

I'm glad I'm finished from the industry now.

Who wouldn't prefer to hire people who enjoy what they do and care about it?

[_V_]

I think a lot of these assignments are to see who loves coding in their spare time. They are looking for people that don't blink when deadlines are imposed that force evening and weekend coding.

I'm glad I'm finished from the industry now.

[d000hg]

Not in my game - Topcoder/Leetcode style questions are pretty common though and I really enjoy doing that because I have practiced a lot over the years.

I used to to a lot on TC but that was years and years back. I never had much training for the formalised algorithm stuff (though it is fun) but actually made a reasonable chunk of money from their software design side of things on the side before I entered contracting (no idea if it's still going but it was a goldmine for a couple of boom years).

[TheDude]

So much of real development is not "write an algorithm to do X" but "write code which gets data from this front-end framework, validates it, sends it to that web-service using another framework, waits for a reply then parses the response and persists to the database layer using another framework".

Not in my game - Topcoder/Leetcode style questions are pretty common though and I really enjoy doing that because I have practiced a lot over the years.

[d000hg]

I'm not sure I'd prefer to be asked some sort of practical programming question in-interview or offline. The former typically involves demonstrating that I cannot write on a white-board or remember the standard library API names - neither of which are remotely important. While the latter can easily be a tedious long test I am not really prepared to do.

So much of real development is not "write an algorithm to do X" but "write code which gets data from this front-end framework, validates it, sends it to that web-service using another framework, waits for a reply then parses the response and persists to the database layer using another framework".

[rocktronAMP]

The worst assignment I saw was an app to crawl multiple remote stores of completely unstructured documents and process into structured data.

Note we are talking TB of data here and the solution had to be deployed on AWS (note they offered £200 towards costs)

Digital web agencies call this or used to call this "Speculative design" - and it's a no-no. They refuse. They instead write a proper Tender for Contract.

[d000hg]

This. Only happened a couple of times but I have never got a contract following a test. Same with multiple interviews.

Without fail the best contracts I have had have been on the back of quick chats.

Of course one way to read this is that the more thoroughly you were checked, the less likely you were to get the gig for some reason

[jmo21]

Why - did you add a calories field to the Product class?

[Gibbon]

Never had to take a test. Been close a few times, but I'd already been recommended to the client and they all declined that part of the interview. Usually though now days I get my own by contacting hiring managers.

[eek]

The worst assignment I saw was an app to crawl multiple remote stores of completely unstructured documents and process into structured data.

Note we are talking TB of data here and the solution had to be deployed on AWS (note they offered £200 towards costs)

Isn't that the entire business model / project within that one coding assignment.