While we specifically designed the take home project track to help overcome the difficulties of coding under time pressure with someone watching, we do still need to see a certain level of programming during the interview.
“How to set up a test that works and then completely ruin the results by doing nonsensical things during a dumb ritual that our entire industry seems set on preserving.”
Question for Triplebyte: when’s the last time that a single hour of coding — while being watched — determined whether you’d get to keep your job? Not acquire a job, but keep it.
You need something that confirms the take-home test was really done by the candidate.
I have received take-home tests, passed via recruiters, where the recruiters literally sent me the solutions given by previous successful candidates "for reference".
Although that seems like a valid reason, consider how many justifications have been used throughout history to scare people into submission. “There May be cheaters out there” is of the same form as “there may be <insert statistically unlikely thing> out there, so you’d better <unnecessary overreaction>.”
If there is data to support that most people are cheaters, that’s fine. But at Matasano I believe the statistics were ~30 candidates who were invited for an on-site interview after a take home test, and ~30 happy hires.
The on-site interview was also mostly a formality; the fact that they could do the work was enough to all but guarantee an offer.
And when you reduce it to those terms, it seems ludicrous that the world should be any other way. You can either do the work or you can’t. And if you can, nothing else should matter.
There are other counter arguments: what if someone is a huge introvert and not suited to working in a team environment? Bring on the introvets, I say. You won’t regret it. The most talented coworker I’ve ever seen was also someone who had stammering problems and would barely talk. But he was very nice, and much more skilled than I was at the time.
You don’t know someone until you work with them. And if they’re a bad hire, it’ll work itself out within the first month. It’s far better to deal with a possible cheater than to miss out on a skilled, solid hire. The latter makes or breaks companies; the former are just a temporary thorn.
I went through TripleByte 2 years ago and got much the same feedback. I was left with the same feelings, on top of the feeling of having wasted a bunch of time. TripleByte only makes sense if it can fast track you to enough companies to make the investment worthwhile. And, even then, I think, at the time (maybe still now), they only let you skip technical phone screens. Never mind that their process is more or less equivalent to the standard tech on-site (which, IMO, means it should at least count for something at the client companies.)
“How to set up a test that works and then completely ruin the results by doing nonsensical things during a dumb ritual that our entire industry seems set on preserving.”
Question for Triplebyte: when’s the last time that a single hour of coding — while being watched — determined whether you’d get to keep your job? Not acquire a job, but keep it.
I’m gusssing “never.” It’s a fake ritual.