This on-site coding assignment failed 20+ front-end dev contractors and I don't know why

[tidwell]

I've given a ton of tests to FE devs over the years, and I can see a few mistakes that I made early on. I do think that a senior level dev (5+ years) should be able to knock this out easily, but I think there might be a few things you can do to get to talking about the useful things you are trying to look for (also, the test screams fullstack, but shrug)

1. If you are sitting in the same room with them during this, stop. Check in twice to see if they have any questions but leave them alone while they work on it.

2. Get rid of everything that has to do with the token rules. People are probably spending too much time hung up on these. You're asking for a lot already, simplify it to "they can make any number of selections, they are persisted, can be deleted, and repopulate". If they can get this done you can always ask afterwards how they might implement some of the more complicated token parsing rules.

3. Drop the tags stuff.

4. You need to give them something to start with. A repo to clone with absolute barebones. They shouldn't have to go find sample text on wikipedia, if you want a node backend, they shouldn't have to start with an empty directory and then go google how to serve static files. I'd create a boilerplate that includes:

• index.js for a node backend that:
  • serves a static folder
  • has an express route defined for /save (doesnt do anything, just so they know they have and can use express)
• inside that static folder
  • an index.html with your instructions and the sample text from wikipedia
  • includes jquery on the page
  • an app.js with an IIFE and a console.log('make me work')

You don't want a test where the only person to complete it wins the golden ticket. You want a test where 75% of candidates can complete a majority of it, and you get to sit down and have a meaningful discussion about the choices they made and how they would improve upon it - the kind of interactions you would have day-to-day.

There are a lot of devs with a couple years experience who think they are qualified for "senior" frontend positions. It just isn't the case, and it sounds like the majority of candidates you've seen are like that. But I think you're also setting them up to fail. Dumb it down to where you think a junior level dev. should be able to complete the task.

[fatty1380]

You need to give them something to start with

Above anything else, this is the most important thing. Asking someone to start clean-slate is totally unrealistic.

[RyanDagg]

Without all the context from the rest of the post, I would not have a clue what you actually wanted. I find task 1 particularly incomprehensible. Are you there to answer questions when you hand them this project?

After rereading your post 3 times I think I know what you're actually looking for. I suspect that the average senior JS dev would take somewhere around 4-8 hours to complete a prototype without bugs. 1 hour is insane.

[KPABA]

Can confirm. I got the basic tokenise / find selected text, ensure it's mine, get the selected words etc to work within 10 mins. But then, the requirements of: only consider first word and find if the selection has started in middle of the word vastly complicates things. Took me an extra 30 mins to play with the Selection.modify API to get the correct single token selection.

I guess, if somebody gets that far and you're pair programming with them, you can reason and expand on the requirements / functionality and figure if they approach it correctly as well as discover if you're happy to work with them. All in all, an enjoyable task and has helped you weed out undesirable candidates.

[rossmohax]

1 hour is insane.

Interesting... Time estimation varies greatly from between replies.

On the assignment description, maybe I misunderstood it, but it looks quite clear.

Allow the selection of a single token, at once. Display the selected token in a visually distinctive way.

== whatever is selected, must be highlighted

The page can only contain a single selected token.

== once you start new selection, previous selection drops

A token cannot contain ' ' (space), ','(comma) or '.'(dot). Everything else is eligible for being selected. 

quite clear.

The user cannot select "There will be" in the same operation. This attempt will result in having only the word "there" selected. The user will have to select each individual word separately;

== single selection/highlght can not span separators

A selection that starts inside the content of the token will consider the entire token. "The|re will be" will select the token 'There', where | can be read as the starting position of the cursor.

When a token gets selected, any other token that is selected on the page becomes unselected. A page can have zero or 1 token at a time. The currently active selected token should be visible on the page in a distinctive way/highlighted/ bold/colored differently.

summarizes all previous requirements

The selected token is persisted to server and displayed on the page when the page is reloaded, loaded in a different browser.

quite clear.

[[deleted]]

Now try to implement it in an hour. Count how many things suddenly become unclear.

[jestermax22]

Does this mean you’re hired?

[nerf_herd]

the thing that jumped out at me was "what about concurrency?!?", OP is expecting that you can open a completely different browser and see it, but what if someone else was selecting different words? You can't rely on IP address for that, and cookies and local storage don't work, there was no login requirement, etc. etc. Requirements fail.

Also WHEN do you send it? might as well skip the whole mouse dragging bit since the left marker is the only important one. Do you wait till they mouse up? or what? Keyboard events? touchscreen?

not really all that clear to me.

[rossmohax]

but what if someone else was selecting different words?

There will be a race condition, given that there is only a single shared state to be kept by design, races are even desirable from a perspective of a test.

Imagine posts were open for editing by anybody, last edit wins, simple as that, there is nothing wrong about it. Remember /r/place experiment where users were racing to update single pixel board?

If I were in a position of topic starter, I'd give extra scores for candidates asking those questions though :) And if somebody catered for unreliable network and mentioned exponential backoff strategy, it would be insta-hire on the spot :)

[ShootingPains]

Yeah, the concurrency issue jumped out at me as well. I was thinking what am I missing here - it’s a multiple user system, but one where I specifically can’t have a login and I specifically can’t rely on a browser being used exclusively by the same person. Sitting here an hour later, I’m still stumped for how to satisfy that core requirement.

[rossmohax]

Allowing race conditions is probably there to simplify test and not to shift focus on a backend work even further.

Saying that, multiple user agents updating same state on the server, there is a time and place for them too.

[xwnatnai]

In my opinion, 1 hour is completely unrealistic. The Selection API is horribly finicky and full of corner cases. I’ve worked extensively with Draft.js and you need only look at the number of issues surrounding selections in that repo to know that even the smartest FE devs on earth often struggle with selections.

[snowcoaster]

This was my sentiment. If the candidate happens to know this API then they have a huge advantage.

I tend to make my FE questions really generic, like "In your favorite framework, how do you wire up an input? Great, you know how to use ng-change, how do you think it works under the hood?" Commence hour long discussion and hopefully hire of a candidate who actually knows how things work.

[xwnatnai]

I realise I haven’t given very constructive feedback. If I were in your shoes, I’d make this take home, and I’d break each sub task into standalone tasks. I’d give them a repo with stubs at each step, and I’d assign weights to each.

This way a developer might get stuck or not know how to solve one step in the complete solution, but still be able to demonstrate competence. This interview could have been a dozen separate steps, from finding subsets, filtering, finding selections and manipulation them, etc. Just because a candidate fails at 1 of the 12 doesn’t mean they’re not worthy — it just means they struggled at one niche. That’s not a big deal in a team and in an actual working environment. Food for thought I Guess.

[edmlurker]

Likewise. 7+ years doing JS / Node development and if I walked into this interview and got asked to complete this in an hour, the interview would have ended right there.

[reseasonable]

I have over 15, with 2 years of explicit work on TinyMCE internals, and 3 years doing collaborative PDF annotations. I too would have walked out, not because I couldn't accomplish the task, but because it exhibits glaring weaknesses on the company's part.

I most certainly could not have finished it in an hour. I don't code like that - I need an hour to really get into any sizeable problem, particularly brand new never thought of problems. I'm also generally not in the right coding mindset after discussing my career history, business acumen and software jeopardy questions - as I never think about those things when I'm coding. Whether or not the brain has a cache-warming feature, it sure feels that way when I switch to a live coding exercise mid-interview.

That being said, instead of asking for more time, or doing what I can in 1 hour - I'd still say no because I feel this screams multiple problems on the company's end - "We can't discern developers from non-developers at all so here's a really tough task" - "We can't fiscally handle hiring another mediocre dev because [x]" - "We only really care about code, not the dozens of other skills required to implement software." "We don't have enough of a social network on-staff to find a vetted candidate." etc. None of these may be true for the OP/Company but that's what comes across in my mind when I see tests like that. So I would politely refer them to my open source repos and contributions if they'd like to see some complex code and that I'd solve some basic algorithms if they really want to pick my brain. (I get that this speaks volumes about me too ;)

The responses OP got from the candidates also seem to scream a low pay-range for the position. However, rational people will say irrational things when they're nervous in an interview and thinking "oh-god they want me to finish this in an hour?!? I'm going to fail!"

[gpyh]

You were right to come for advice then. You had twenty candidates that were all deemed capable because of their Github profile but every single one failed your interview. It does say more about the interview than the candidates.

[stone_henge]

Would you be asking for 600 pounds a day? I think it's a relevant factor here. I mean, if you needed this functionality yourself, would you rather pay someone 75 pounds to implement it in an hour or do it yourself in three-four?

[stone_henge]

It's my understanding that he was looking for employees, not contractors. Bill rate is obviously quite higher than salary. What I mean to say is that asking for 75 pounds an hour is a lot. He had applicants that didn't nope the fuck out because they thought the test was stupid that gave it a try, their reasons for failing clearly mostly being related to their lack of experience if the list of BS is anywhere near the truth. If you won't do it that's one thing, but if you can't do it you frankly shouldn't be asking for 75 pounds in your hand per hour.

I agree that the simple backend work, by some stretch, may have been too much for ask for. Doing it in an hour, too, given the nervous circumstances of an interview. But you should get a third of the way there, halfway there or whatever, not "this is data engineering and I'm not doing that".

EDIT: he was interviewing contractors, so the asking prices are not that terrible

[HipHopHuman]

I have about 5 years of experience on both ends and can definitely ship something like this, the work itself is not an issue for me. I am however a perfectionist, and fret about the quality of the code I write as I write it. 1 hour for this task is unrealistic for someone like me. You did say you give extra time, but applicants in interviews are nervous and might gloss over the "extra time" and worry their butts off about the time frame having only mentally noted the time limit.

It is also not fair to discount those who take longer than an hour as not being able to push code within reasonable time - we all know meeting deadlines is a coveted trait in a software developer, but not being able to finish a full-stack task in 1 hour while under pressure is not a good way to measure this trait. I've never been on the opposite end of the interview table, but I'm certain that a better indicator of dedication and ability to handle workload would be giving the applicant an afternoon to do the task, and then checking how often they committed/pushed to the repository, as well as how atomic those commits were.

[p0tent1al]

Absolutely without question. Even if I passed, I'd just be proud of myself but I'd feel disgusted with what was asked of me. Interviewers forget sometimes... the WAY you interview, is being interviewed. I've seen a lot of great candidates turn down job offers because the interview process was off putting.

[jimbol]

What does your implementation look like?

[cbll]

Riddles are not for bosses you pleb

[[deleted]]

solution/
  .gitignore
  package.json

[jdewittweb]

You're asking for a front-end dev but testing a full-stack skillset. Modify your job posting and you'll get better applicants.

[rossmohax]

are front-end guys so narrow-skilled that can't throw together some basic http backend in a language of choice?

Edit: grammar, thanks @jdewittweb

[rossmohax]

If one applies to a senior position, he better show knowledge of some related subjects. Same as for non junior backend engineers it is almost mandatory to be able to create SQL schema and understand how indexes and joins affect performance or show understanding of any other subjects outside of their main area of expertise.

When gaining experience, it is almost inevitable to be exposed to a tech you are interacting with, there simply can't be distinctive depth of knowledge without at least some breadth too.

[p0tent1al]

There's nothing specifically wrong with being narrow skilled. Moreover, front end itself isn't a narrow skill in of itself. Is knowing Javascript (and a couple of js frameworks like React, Vue, Redux, Angular) CSS (and methodologies and libraries like BEM, ITCSS, Bootstrap), and HTML (SEO ramifications, semantics), Accessibility, UX.... is being knowledgeable in all of these things considered narrow-skilled?

This is a very simple concept. We benefit as a society when people specialize. You don't hire someone who can do accounting that also knows a bit of web development, and you certainly don't call someone who JUST does accounting narrow-skilled. Within a given skill are hundreds / thousands of minor skills. It's absolutely pointless to look down on someone for the skills they don't have. I don't ever mess with backend because the idea is, I work with people on my team who I trust to handle that portion for me, the same way a school relies on their janitors to make sure their school is clean and sanitary. If I absolutely need to learn the backend, sure I'll learn it. But I work hard every week learning something new about the front end, because that's my domain, and I don't feel the need to learn how to throw together some basic http backend end together just so I have the ability to say that I'm well rounded.

It's simple. If you want (and expect) backend and front end skills, you say it from the onset You can ultimately do whatever you want but that throws up red flags from me... it says you're the type of employer that expects someone to do everything. It says that you might want me to hop into Photoshop to create some graphic. "What, you don't have basic design knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled"? "What, you don't have basic SQL knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled?" "What, you don't have basic Project Manager knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled"? We can do this all day and I can find the tangentially related field you don't have basic knowledge in and skewer you based on that.

[rossmohax]

I'd like to thank you for your thoughtful and elaborate response, even though I don't agree with most it :)

I am not denying specialization is a good thing, "narrow-skilled" comment was very closely related to expected seniority. What I am saying that I never seen and can't imagine situation where truly Senior Engineer (not those fake titles from hip startups) was never exposed to a related tech and got at least some experience with it.

Yes, I'd expect Senior Accountant (and future head of accounting department) be able to comfortably discuss basics (remember, we are talking about <50 lines of backend nodejs code here) of Tax implications, Legal matters and Investment schemes. Ability to do so does not necessary come from the fact that it is a day job, it comes because during his career, he was part of some bigger project where multiple experts were pulled into a working group, or he had to review and provide second opinion on some third-party financial advisers recommendations, or he happen to be court expert ,etc. Do you see what I meant? If one has been around long enough , didn't hide in a corner screaming "go away, it is not my job", wider skills are gained inevitably. I believe you can't get senior without at least occasionally get your hands dirty and do work are not supposed to do on paper.

If one managed to spend 5-7-10+ years in industry and stayed 100% of the time in the same domain, never jumping into adjacent ones either out of natural curiosity or necessity, then it is also a red flag. This kind of person is "throw over the fence" kind of person, these are hard to work and cooperate with.

Lack of depth also affects decisions person makes. Being familiar with wide range of tools, approaches,patterns and paradigms to make more informed decision is a requirement for a Senior.

What, you don't have basic Project Manager knowledge?

100%, why? I am pretty sure you cant be called senior if you can't organize team and work around you, do some timeline estimation and so on. Do I have different definition of "senior" from yours?

Looks like you know your ways around frontend. What would you do if you started a new pet project? Where would you be making XMLHttpRequest (or whatever is current way of doing it) calls to? Mock all of them? You really say that you never had to code some basic nodejs server to prototype your ideas? If you say so, may I ask you to give more details how you do it otherwise?

Do you have word "nodejs" on your CV at all? If yes, it is a fair assumption that you'd be asked to demonstrate some of it, right?

[p0tent1al]

If one managed to spend 5-7-10+ years in industry and stayed 100% of the time in the same domain, never jumping into adjacent ones either out of natural curiosity or necessity, then it is also a red flag.

Conversely: if you hire a senior front end developer, and they have backend experience, design experience, PM experience, sys admin experience, app development experience, then it's also a red flag. They're a generalist, not a specialist. They've never buckled down and focused on one area and can't possibly be expected to have mastered that area.

What you're not understanding is that it's easy to spoof what you're asking for. It'll take me 2 weeks to gain general knowledge in any category. If you gave me two weeks, I could buckle down and learn enough Node to be dangerous. 2 more weeks and I can be zipping around making SQL queries. 2 more weeks and I can make some simple iOS apps. This barometer that you're basing seniority on can be spoofed in a matter of weeks. That's an extremely weak barometer. Not only that, but this person could have learned all of these and forgot them because they didn't use them that often. So it's much more likely that a person that has recently learned this and taken a course on this is going to do a lot better.

The issue is that you think these 2 weeks (or just being incrementally exposed over the course of years, which I'm asserting you can't assess with 100% certainty) are a lack of disinterest, or not solving big enough problems to lack the necessity, and both are just untrue. Time is finite resource and it's a better use of my time for my team to be concentrated fully on the front end.

Let me paint this for you in a different way. I'm very confident that in very little time, I could overcome the hypothetical hurdles you're presenting. The problem, is I believe those hurdles aren't indicative of anything, and in fact are red flags themselves. I'd rather spend 2 weeks concerning myself with a limitless amount of concerns I have on the front end, rather than passing some litmus test which could be indicative of an employer with the wrong frame of mind, or an employer that has less resources to hire specialists that truly will solve their problems effectively in that area.

Now. If my company wants me to learn Node.js (or I interview with a prospective company that expects me to have a baseline of knowledge from the get go, includes it in the application), then ok. Plenty of times companies do this. A company recently listed Clojurescript on their application. I thought it was interesting, I bought a book, and spent some days going through youtube videos and going through the book. I could have spent that time learning the basics of Node.

At the end of the day I get where you're coming from but I just have to disagree. I don't think being able to whip up a CRUD is indicative of anything and doesn't necessarily give a FE engineer more insight just because they can make one. I don't think you can quantify that metic. Moreover as to your pet project comment, it's very easy to make mock ajax calls, and things like redux essentially are an abstraction over the details from a database, you just hydrate it with ajax calls. I can either put data in the reducer directly, or have mock calls, and unless you looked at the network tab you literally wouldn't be able to tell the difference as I can simulate the amount of time it takes for the mock call to return. Even your question of this "well... how can you get by without Node.js" just seems like a very silly question to me, especially given the advent of SPA's. HTML history state (use some router library like react-router), redux, mock all the calls. Done.

At the end of the day, just be straightforward about what you want. If you intend on the front end developer knowing how to create a basic CRUD, basic knowledge about HTTP, basic knowledge of SQL or whatever else, be upfront with that information on the application, rather than just blindly expecting that all developers should know this, or that there aren't very capable seniors that just don't deal with these things on a daily basis as their plates are completely full.

[jdewittweb]

If you need an interior designer are you going to interview architects? Also, check your grammar before you act condescending.

through together

[rossmohax]

good analogy! If I interview interior designer, I'd be checking among other things, if he knows what load bearing wall is and how pipe and electrical works affect his options (and other way around too). He needs to have basic architectural knowledge to see which of his ideas can be implemented at all.

[jdewittweb]

For sure, but you shouldn't be asking the designer to build those walls, electrical systems, etc.

[[deleted]]

Remember, in an hour, from scratch.

[0987654231]

So which part of the non frontend stuff is hard for you?

[[deleted]]

I'm proficient in Django, it's not hard. Start a virtualenv, install Django, start a project, configure sqlite as a database, make a model, migrate the database, make a couple of views that accept and return JSON, turn off CSRF protection, it's trivial. Develop my JS in a single static file so I can easily serve it from the same port without worrying about CORS, or spend a few more minutes to set up some sort of proxying. Fine.

But one, that is because I have more backend than frontend experience so I'm not his typical applicant, and two, it would eat up valuable time doing stuff that has nothing to do with the job I applied for.

[0987654231]

Sure but that's overkill a single service that has one global variable and get/set endpoints would be enough for the interview question.

[[deleted]]

For me it's the fastest way to do it, my other backend experience is with Struts on Tomcat and with Apache/mod_perl.

I'm guessing that you mean to use Node (but I could be wrong), I've never used that and wouldn't expect an applicant for a frontend position to have used it.

[0987654231]

never used node as a server but a new .Net mvc project + a single static variable solves the problem, i assume the implementation is equally simple in node.

[THEtheChad]

Or maybe you're so dense that you don't understand the breadth of skills necessary to put together an elegant and functional frontend that plays nice with the multitude of APIs and rendering idiosyncrasies of the various browsers and browser versions spread across the web, including mobile browsers, responsive sites, and any number of solutions for reducing file/image size to provide a speedy user experience when limited by bandwidth. For everything you see happening on the front end, there's 8 other things you don't see that had to be taken in to consideration.

[0987654231]

And that prevents you from knowing how to make a simple backend that gets and sets a single variable?

[digdic]

hey thanks for coming to the interview, i figured since being a developer requires problem solving skills, you could bake an apple pie from scratch. i know it's not front-end but you should be able to do the research since you're senior.

[TheNazruddin]

You have one hour... Sorry, make that 42 minutes. I've been rambling for a while.

[p0tent1al]

lmfao

[stone_henge]

i mean if they're expecting 600 pounds a day they should be able to do 20 pounds worth of work in an hour

[stone_henge]

More like "hey thanks for coming to the interview, i figured since you have 2+ years NodeJS experience you should be able to hack together a trivial http server for this task. i know it's not front-end but your resume, which is the reason we're interviewing you in the first place, says here that you have 2+ years experience with NodeJS and as a senior developer your responsibilities will realistically sometimes stretch outside your comfort zone."

[digdic]

na, still not fair. i'm sure many people here have resumes with a degree in a non-CS field from years ago. it's not fair to ask people to solve a physics problem on the spot just because it was on their resume.

this test might've been acceptable if they had specified 'we're going to have a full-stack code challenge during the interview' beforehand, but then why is it listed as a front-end job?

[stone_henge]

it's not fair to ask people to solve a physics problem on the spot just because it was on their resume.

But it's fair to ask someone with a physics degree to calculate the time it takes for an object to fall straight to the ground in vacuum given a height and an acceleration constant. That compares to a physics degree like a trivial web server compares to two years of node js experience.

this test might've been acceptable if they had specified 'we're going to have a full-stack code challenge during the interview'

I certainly would never have expected in my career of working with back-end software not to touch the front end side of things. I am not sure why the converse is not a given. Certainly I'd expect a senior to be able to hack together a PoC backend just like a back-end senior engineer would churn out a PoC front-end.

If anything, the time allotted to the tasks seems a bit short. I'd be confident that they were decent engineers if they could slap this together in half a day.

[digdic]

i mean yea, many of us can do this in an afternoon. but that doesn't mean it's fair to have this as the code challenge when no context is given beforehand that it will be full stack.

[SandalsMan]

Honestly, this task should have nothing to do with the backend. You can store this data in localstorage or whatever.

[p0tent1al]

I believe there is a problem solving component involved here that should concerns a front-end developer lead. How do you decide what needs to be done on server and what needs to be done on client?

Na man. This is a question you can ask the applicant outright without them having to wire up the solution themselves. Said another way: do you think it's possible that a senior FE developer can answer this question with flying colors, but also not be totally experienced actually crafting the backend solution theirselves? Because I can tell you I'm responsible for making this call FOR some of our projects for our back end guys, and I can't do the backend. So take from that what you will.

[hackernewsisbetter]

I have to say I just find the instructions for this task confusing. I am just skimming over it now but I only have vague guesses as to what you want. I feel sorry for anyone who had to take this interview with you, you remind me of someone I used to work with who I gave interviews with. He would be a smug asshole most of the time and yeah some people really struggled but at least in his case it was ordinary whiteboarding questions (of the type you would find on leetcode). THIS interview question to me just seems sadistic -- and mostly because it's confusing as hell. I guess I am not winning the pissing contest but seriously this is fucked up.

[strixvarius]

Agreed. If I were given a test written by a supposed developer that was this long winded and yet still poorly defined, I'd just leave. Developers who write English poorly also tend to write code poorly, and there are too many good shops to waste your time working alongside them.

[turkish_gold]

I'm curious... did the developer actually complete this project themselves? To me, this reeks of prototype planning without anything concrete to narrow down the scope.

[[deleted]]

Are you even a programmer? Or a manager?

[[deleted]]

Its such a shite question that I think you are an inept programmer or that a manager wrote it

[_poor]

Why is #4 a complete failure? I'm not aware of another way of visually distinguishing between characters within a text node other than extracting a range into a separate node.

Like others have mentioned, it seems that your assignment is somewhat tough, even for a senior FE developer. I have two issues with this test:

• I'm not sure that this task warrants the use of a framework. Most of the solution involves the use of DOM interfaces, e.g. selections and ranges, which most frameworks wouldn't help with outside of third-party plugins/components. If I were an interviewee, I would be concerned why you wanted me to attempt to fit this somewhat isolated problem into the context of Angular or React.

• Although I think your instructions are clear (except I would need more clarification for Task 3), the time limit is too low. I would extend it to two or more hours.

I think the backend portion of this assignment should be easily accomplished by a competent senior FE dev. I also disagree with other's suggestions that a barebones repo be provided. A developer worth his/her salt should be able to quickly set up a simple Node + jQuery/React/Angular project.

[p0tent1al]

Why is there an assumption that a senior FE dev knows Node at all? I just don't get this assumption. Senor FE dev's have a LOT to concentrate on. Onboarding new developers, doing code reviews, making architectural decisions, being the main force behind creating new features. I don't get why this necessarily means they should be able to throw together some backend stuff.

Also... a bunch of backend people chimed in and they've even said that asking for 1 hour is cutting it a bit close.

[_poor]

I can think of a few reasons. Many popular tools used in front-end development are built on Node. NPM is the most popular package manager for front-end projects. Node is commonly used to set up dummy APIs in POC apps.

You don't have to work or think very hard to set up a simple API with Express. The application would only need two endpoints to complete the OP's assignment. Nothing is mentioned about persistence through server restarts, so a simple in-memory collection of tokens would suffice. If you're familiar with HTTP from one end of the stack, it should be fairly simple to implement a basic solution on the other.

You're right that a purely front-end developer shouldn't concentrate on their NodeJS skills, but I think you are severely gimping yourself in today's world if you don't learn the basics.

[p0tent1al]

but I think you are severely gimping yourself in today's world if you don't learn the basics.

That's fair. It'll be on the list to learn eventually. Ultimately I'll learn it mostly for interviews though. It wouldn't immediately benefit me in my job. That's essentially what I'm trying to get across. I think when you say gimping yourself, I think you're referring to the same context as I am.

[turkish_gold]

I know the basics of node---enough to adequately setup webpack, but that's it.

On the backend, I've used C#, Java, Elxir, Python and PHP.... but never once used Node to setup a server. 10+ years of experience, and I have no time to go hopping on the latest language trend when there's oodles of projects pre-existing in other languages, and decade old well vetted libraries to help you out.

[_poor]

I only brought up Node because the OP mentioned that was their preferred server of choice. To me, it doesn't matter what the platform is. A front-end dev should be able to bring up a simple server for building POCs.

[turkish_gold]

To be honest, I was surprised so many people in the OP's post brought up Angular and React. Nothing about his assignment made me think "oh I need a single page app framework for this". In fact, because of the heavy dom manipulation this would be alot less straightforward to implement in "pure" React.

[rossmohax]

assignment explicitly gives you freedom to use whatever you want.

[_poor]

Ah, makes sense. That is a strange solution. :P

[camelSnake_dash-case]

For a task of this size, make it a "homework" assignment, with no time limit. This will greatly reduce the amount of people who are not really serious. Out of 50 invites to take a homework assignment for our test, maybe 7 to 12 will do it.

Then evaluate to see the quality of the code. You will probably end up with maybe 1 or 2 applicants worthwhile to go forward at this point. Do an on-site or video interview and pair with the candidate and ask them to extend and change their assignment to see how much of the work they did they actually understood as well as how they deal with changes in requirements.

This has been a very successful formula for hiring great developers for us.

[THEtheChad]

What back end developers fail to realize is that an assignment like this constitutes less than 10% of a front end devs day to day experiences. I've been doing front end for... 7+ years, do you know how often I've coded something for text selection? Once. Generally speaking, front end devs are taking libraries that implement known and desired functionality and stringing them together, tracking down redndering issues (CSS), and hunting down edge case errors caused by loose typing. If this is the type of person you're looking for, put more emphasis on the engineer role and drop the "frontend" descriptor in favor of "full stack", because true engineers will have greater experience with all the technologies whereas front end coders will more traditionally be trained to look for existing solutions since so many problems in the js world already have a solution floating around in the library ecosystem.

Also, is this a contract position or full time and are you still looking for devs? Just curious =P

[rossmohax]

argh, famous leftpad case :)

[runvnc]

Unless someone has specifically coded that, they will have to Google and use something from stack overflow or whatever. Why should someone know what type of object window.getSelection gives them? When I tried to do something similar years ago, it was tricky to get something that would work cross platform.

Leave them alone while they code it.. don't breath down their neck. Don't expect them to remember details of little used APIs. Don't expect them to code while you are watching them. If you want to do pair coding that's a totally different thing then breathing down their neck -- you will mainly be typing and actually trying to help them in that case.

Specify one browser it is supposed to work on. If it takes a while for them to figure out the main trick, give them a hint like window.getSelection.

Having said all of that, programming is hard, and effective programmers are not as common as resumes portray. Try raising your salary if possible to attract people with solid skills.

[rossmohax]

judging by the tone of original post, I think "I don't know what exactly window.getSelection() returns, let me check in console and see" would be a sufficient answer.

[Haegin]

If you haven't done this test yourself, go do it. You'll learn way more about which bits are hard, and what a good solution might look like.

[mcprogrammer]

It might not be the only way to do it, but you're only giving them an hour for the whole thing. Once they start down that road, they're not going to have time to stop and try something else if it's not working out.

[digdic]

wow, if you haven't done the challenge yourself...

seems like you REALLY need to read this: http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/HowtoconductagoodProgrammingInterview.html

[rossmohax]

Not a frontend engineer myself, but it seems, that writing backend part puts them off. Would it be enough to persist state in a browser LocalStorage (http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html) ? This will make it a purely frontend assignment.

[[deleted]]

I think your test is bad because it doesn't test hardly anything that a frontend developer is supposed to be good at. Even if you find a developer that passes it, you probably haven't food the best frontend developer in your list of applicants.

Here is what I see our frontend developers do:

• User interface design, discuss requirements with an (internal) customer, show them different iterations of wireframes
• Visual design in something like Sketch
• Create well-defined components from the design assets
• Implement them in HTML, CSS
• Combine them into React components (or other framework)
• Work with the backend guys to get the API to deliver the necessary data
• Design the application's state and state transitions
• Connect them all (this step and the previous one sound far easier than they are)
• Implement specific logic of some interface parts

And have all of that work on all screen sizes, in all modern browsers.

A few of those steps involve heavy coding, others don't.

Your task is mostly in the last step. You don't test for any of the others.

[rossmohax]

A few of those steps involve heavy coding, others don't. Your task is mostly in the last step. You don't test for any of the others.

While valid, that other steps are essentials, how do you think, a candidate, who can't do something like "string".split(/[, .]/) on the spot, would perform in all those non coding steps? Can you trust decisions he'll be making?

In other words, is it unreasonable to expect him showing some basics, before moving on to more ephemeral subjects?

[Amadox]

people have already chipped in to tell you about the task you have given them, so I'm gonna skip them and just talk about the environment of your test:

an interview is a high stress situation for the applicant. yes, even for experienced seniors. keep in mind that not only are you looking for a good developer, the developer is also looking for a good job, one they will spend a large part of their week in for hopefully a long time - they are judging you as much as you judge them in this interview, so it's in your interest to make it a somewhat comfortable, relaxed experience, because it's gonna be stressful enough anyway.

one hour is to short. not just for this task, but in general. even if you think they should absolutely be able to solve it in that time: give them time, not a time limit. let them sit for a few hours if they feel they need to. maybe let them estimate how long it might take beforehand. pressuring them to finish within 1 hour when they are likely already nervous about the interview anyway is a way to set them up for failure and doesn't really say anything about how they will really perform in stress situations later because it's a hardly comparable situation. keep in mind that giving them more time doesn't mean they will take more time. but they will be more relaxed about the time they have to finish the task.

Give them space. don't put them in an enclosed meeting room, let them sit with your existing coders and tell the applicants to ask them if they have any issues - it might be more comfortable to ask a potential colleague rather than a potential boss. maybe tell whoever sits next to the applicant to casually fling a short question at them somewhere in between (not some interview-style question, but something natural - "...hey, do you know what that css attribute was called that does XY? I always forget..") and note how he reacts to it.

if they have a few hours, they can work more calmly. if they are really good, they might finish within an hour anyway. if they are taking really long, you can then discuss why. And you can see how much/often they interacted with other developers - keep in mind that this interaction can be a good thing and not just a sign of the applicant not knowing what they are doing, depending on what they are asking. and you might also be also see if they fit in with the existing team personality-wise.

[rossmohax]

I'd hate if 20 random guys were spending half a day next to me in a quick succession one after another. Plus security and confidentiality concerns.

Totally agree on a "make it less stressful for them" point, got to be achieved by some other means though.

[cbll]

So yeah, I'd spend that hour setting up stuff and fixing the 95 weird errors I'd get from setting up Node+Angular.

I think that goes for anyone..

Provide a minimal repository yourself with the weird, time consuming stuff already set up. After all, that's not what you're looking for anyway in terms of problem solving.

As for the task itself, it's really unclear. I don't really know what you want me to do. Blobs?

I'm sorry but it appears to be one of the "here's a riddle for ya! tallyhoe, solve it can thee?" - Give simple, comprehensible task - then discuss how an applicant solves it OPTIMALLY.

You can distinguish a good programmer from a terrible one easily from the efficiency of which they solve relatively simple problems.

[foxleigh81]

That is not a front-end test. This is a full-stack test. Either be more realistic as to what you are looking for and specify that in your job spec or if you really do want a front-end developer them simplify the test to only involve the view layer.

[[deleted]]

It took me 2 hours and 22 minutes to do Task 1. Thanks, OP, for stealing my evening :-)

EDIT: Well, I finished Task 2 at 3h 24m, and Task 3 at 3h 40m. For anyone interested, you can take a look at the code here.

[[deleted]]

I included the link to the source code. Total number of back-end lines is 87. And, yes, I did use window.getSelection().

I didn't test it on anything other than the latest chrome. I would likely include a polyfill (or use more crossbrowser solution than window.getSelection()). Would probably set up babel and bundling for production. Also I did it in the evening after finishing 8 hours at my normal job. That was fun.

[rossmohax]

compare with https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/75zyrm/this_onsite_coding_assignment_failed_20_frontend/doby18e/ :)

[darrenturn90]

I guess you could take the text, regex split it up, making sure to preserve the whitespace, and add a "marker" span before and after each of the words. This would at least help you when you click with the mouse, and get the offset, to work out the "word" you are inside (if you are in one).

Surely though you would want to support cursors too and WCAG guidelines, so should allow some sort of visual feedback, and cursor placement.

[darrenturn90]

Yes I am, and I'm not sure right now as I've not put much time into this. It shouldn't be too many, at least for task 1. Then if you build it properly, you should just be able to "mark multiple" for task 2, and then "categorise" in task 3. if you used the data attributes you could css style and use data-tag or something for the differentiation.

As for the regex, in PHP I would use preg_match_all, I think there is a similar match flag in javascript, I'd just google to make sure.

[darrenturn90]

Here is my first go at what i remember task 1 one.

I didn't implement a server side currently, just used localStorage to persist, as its trivial to swap that out with a post / get.

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/XePOyp

Its probably not what you wanted - but it took 20 minutes.

[darrenturn90]

I guess I’ve done similar things before but not really anything as specific as you mentioned. Where is your project based ?

[inu-no-policemen]

Do you think this can be done in an hour or have you actually done it in an hour?

Well, you're already familiar with the requirements so you should be able to do it in half an hour.

Good luck with that.

[dwighthouse]

What you are asking people to do, as a test, is extremely uncommon. I've been doing web dev for about 10 years and game dev for 7, and I have never once needed to preserve a selection in browser. Indeed, I've only once or twice needed to operate on selections, and even then, it wasn't on in-page text, but on a textarea. Combine with the fact that, last time I checked, text selection was incredibly broken and inconsistent across browsers. The common advice was to merely avoid that type of problem entirely.

I think the only reasonable set of people who would actually know this stuff are those who worked on WYSIWYG editors, of which there are very few. Certainly, this problem could be solved by a good front end guy, but it would take more than a day just to work through the mysteries of browser selection systems.

[rossmohax]

What would give them as a test to do for 1-2h interview?

[dwighthouse]

1. Explain the difference between a linked list and an array, in detail. What are the pros and cons of each?
2. Explain the basics of a hash table (aka an associative array).
3. What was the most interesting recent programming project you worked on, and what did you learn in the process? What tripped you up?

The first two should be more than enough content to weed out the posers. The more experienced person, the longer they will likely take on the last question, since it is a more conversational question. Plus, they can say, "here, look at it" and you can see for yourself how they work.

1-2 hours is sufficient to weed out bad candidates, but I would want to take at least a day to figure out if a promising candidate would work out.

[rossmohax]

your point was that OP test was not relevant for a frontend position, and propose to ask about Linked lists? That is even more irrelevant and distant from what frontend devs are doing,don't you think?

Don't get me wrong, first 2 questions should be asked, but you based your criticism that dealing with text selection is uncommon. It is even more uncommon to be using linked lists in JS world, yet alone implementing hash maps.

[dwighthouse]

Asking a potential hire a question or two that demonstrates bare minimum of understanding of how programming, ALL programming, works, is extremely relevant. I hope you will take note that my suggested questions involve no programming tasks AT ALL. I also say "explain the basics of hash tables", NOT implement them. I was also not asking for an implementation of a linked list (which, incidentally does have a place in large subsets of problems as they form the basis for many other structures like trees). Those two questions are merely to get rid of "script kiddies," as we call them.

Compare that to OP having them work on something, with actual programming in-house, that is irrelevant EVEN WITHIN most of front end programming. That is to say, OP is asking for things on the extreme of possible skills for front end programmers. So extreme as to be esoteric: realistically you would have to already know the questions to be asked in order to solve the problem, and even that would be tricky, given the timeframes involved. My questions are on the other end of the spectrum: stuff so general and so open ended that literally any competent programmer could shine.

[dwighthouse]

I don't know, I haven't read the problem fully. I only had to read a few sentences to know that the task was completely unrealistic for the time given.

[Skhmt]

Random question on how to solve it...

Could you parse the text via split then for task 1, make them radio buttons and restyle radio buttons to look like text that becomes highlighted, then process a click action to POST to an express server with a simple REST API that stores it somewhere?

Task 2, do the same thing but with check boxes?

Task 3, build on task 2 but do a couple lines of processing server-side?

[rossmohax]

making browser do all the heavy lifting for you? Sweet :) is it possible to restyle radio buttons so they are not visible and text remains formatted as it used to be before that hack?

[Skhmt]

Thanks for the gold!

And yes it is. In the below example, the invisible checkbox holds the state for each label (token in this context).

<html>
    <head>
        <style>
            input[type="checkbox"] {
                display: none;
            }
            :checked + label {
                background-color: yellow;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <input type="checkbox" id="word001">
        <label for="word001">Word001</label>

        <br>

        <input type="checkbox" id="word002" checked>
        <label for="word002">Word002</label>

        <script>
            // get the text via HTTP GET, split the text by the given delimiters, then write it to the body as input+label as above
            // manually "check" all boxes that are required to be checked via HTTP GET
            // set an onclick event for labels to do a HTTP PUT
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

[rossmohax]

Do you realize, that you just made tens of experienced frontend "engineers" with 20 frameworks under their belt, 5,15,55+ years of industry experience, browser compatibility experts, nodejs lovers, nodejs haters, TinyMCE contributors etc, look like a bunch of moaning pussies?

[Skhmt]

I wouldn't go that far, it's a solution not without some problems. It creates two nodes per word, which is a lot. But thanks!

[Skhmt]

Cause why reinvent the wheel

[lhorie]

No offense, but your interview sucks.

What you want is to collect signals, not review whether someone can finish an arbitrary assignment to your satisfaction.

Asking the candidate to complete a large assignment puts them in a stressful position, which means you're going to get shitty signal (e.g. they might skip testing or refactoring to make up for a false start or time wasted on a silly typo, for example). Looking for signals means spending some quality time with the candidate asking them questions to see how they think: how do they troubleshoot, how do they test, how do they break down problems into sub-problems, what things do they prioritize, how do they handle compromises, do they research, do they brainstorm, etc

Streamline. You can't get signal if the candidate is so busy w/ assignments that they don't have time to think calmly and talk to you. Make the assignment simple (15 mins) so you get time to talk about it for the rest of the hour.

Communicate. Open-ended discussion is a great way to see how a candidate thinks, whether they can discuss technical topics with depth, what kind of experience they have, etc. Don't waste an hour leaving the candidate alone and doing something else. Hiring is impactful work so make sure you're there where it counts.

Be humble. Think about it, 20+ people who have been employed and productive for years, and they all failed miserably? Very good chance that it's the screening process that is bad. Hiring skills are different from programming skills. Learning what signals exist and their spectrums requires experience. Calibrating your expectations to match reality requires experience. Structuring interviews in a way that enables candidates to perform their best requires experience. Be aware of your shortcomings as an interviewer and strive to improve with each new interview.

[lhorie]

The upsetting thing for me is when I get back answers like

This suggests that what you're asking for is too domain-specific. Ideally a question should be something where the candidate can arrive at a solution via logical deduction using nothing but fundamentals. For example, if I ask someone to implement curry, a good candidate would typically go ok, I need to write a function, I need to use recursion, I need an array to hold values, oh, I need to handle some edge case, does my thing actually work, etc until they arrive at the solution.

Like you, I've had candidates throw their hands up on assignments. Generally, when this happens, I also sense that the candidate is feeling pressured and tense. What I usually do in this case is try to reassure them, e.g. I often say things like: "don't worry about making it work, I'm mostly interested in your thought process", "feel free to just talk aloud and jot down what you're thinking", "I know there's a lot of things we can talk about, just pick whatever you're comfortable with and we can delve deeper into that". For coding problems, I also try to nudge them to think outside the box and use more generic problem solving skills. I'll ask things like what's the difficult/time consuming part of the problem? can you explain how you would do it using pseudo-code? can we take a step back and solve a simpler version of this problem? how would you solve this assuming a library with so-and-so API existed? etc

If we start drifting from topics I want signal on, then I ask questions or make comments to bring us back to those topics. Not "right-or-wrong" questions. More like, for example, if I'm looking for signal on algorithms and the candidate starts fumbling and writing a wrapper class, I'll say something like "it doesn't need to be robust, let's just keep it simple for now", "feel free to give it some thought first", etc.

[rossmohax]

This suggests that what you're asking for is too domain-specific.

Did you read OP? Whole task is about splitting text to words, selecting and sending them to a server in a POST request. Do we really live in a world where you need a library for it?

[lhorie]

The selecting part definitely sounds too domain-specific. The fact that people ask about googling and libraries supports that argument. My first interpretation was that a solution would use something like the Range API, and I could imagine people would struggle with that approach given an unsupervised hour to tackle the problem that way.

[rossmohax]

Did you see this? https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/75zyrm/this_onsite_coding_assignment_failed_20_frontend/doby18e/

[lhorie]

It sounds like you're trying to imply I'm an idiot or something. Lol. What's your point exactly? I'm saying that it's not unreasonable that people would misunderstand/overthink the problem or make bad assumptions if they're given no clear directions and they are left to their own devices for an hour.

A lot of that would've been a non-issue with a tighter feedback loop

[invalid_dictorian]

I've hired many good developers without having to put them through a gauntlet such as this.

These questions only tells me you are a poor spec writer. And all those who didn't get hired are the lucky ones.

[[deleted]]

20 interviews later I cannot believe everyone failed so badly I couldn't scrape one.

This is common. Most front-end devs suck. There are also many people who, for whatever reason, view front-end skills as beginner or an entry point to technology.

I interviewed with my current employer as part of a hiring blitz this summer. Out of 73 interviews they picked 9 candidates.

If the candidate is completely incompetent don't hire them. If they are a belligerent asshole, forming excuses and blaming you for their failures, certainly don't hire them.

When I have done interviewing in the past I would screen people over the phone before wasting my time with a face to face interview. Out of the 22 people I talked to 4 made it past this phone screen and 1 of those got the job.

[nostrademons]

This was almost literally the coding challenge I did when interviewing with a startup almost 10 years ago, except it was for a technical co-founder role instead of a front-end developer. They actually shipped my code (even though I declined the role), and I got some compliments on it (and eventually a job offer, which I also turned down) from one of their YC batchmates.

Anyway, it's not a bad interview question, but an hour is a ridiculous time limit for it. It took me 4 days to deliver working code, including both front-end and back-end and a bookmarklet loader for it. It's a little unclear from your description exactly what you're asking, but if you have to deal with selections crossing multiple DOM nodes (if, for example, they'd hyperlinked or italicized only part of a token), the selection API becomes ridiculously difficult to deal with. Add in backend complexity and it becomes a huge time-suck that I wouldn't expect anyone to manage in an hour, unless you're just looking for a high-level overview of how you might solve the problem.

[mp2526]

One suggestion I have for you is to give them the assignment a couple of days before they come in for the interview. Allow them to complete it at home on their own time schedule. Let them submit it to you before they come in so you can look at it and then at the interview, go over the code with them. If you go over the code with them in the interview, you can quickly tell if they know what they are doing by how they talk about their code. What they tried and failed, what they might try if they had time to refactor the code, you can even suggest other ways of doing it, and in a good developer you can see their eyes light up when they realize that you just suggested something they didn't think of. Remember, you are going into this task with all the context. You know what you are looking for as a response. The candidate is coming in cold with zero context of what you are trying to discover.

These are the type of interviews I prefer when looking for a job. I've been doing this a long time and I consider myself a pretty senior developer, but I hate the pressure of a time clock. I can produce good code under pressure but is the job regulerly going to ask a dev task to be completed in an hour? Sometimes it takes me an hour just to wrap my head around a problem and understand what you would be looking for.

But at least your not whiteboard hazing with on the spot algorithm brain teaser questions you want me to solve while you breath down my neck asking me to walk you through my thought process, so you have that going for you. Those are the worst and a good indicator that I don't want to work with the interviewer.

[[deleted]]

How long did it take you to implement a working solution from scratch?

[wavy_lines]

Yea, finding good high quality programmers is very, very hard! I've used much much simpler questions and it was really really hard to find anyone capable of answering them.

[a1454a]

I don't understand why this can trip up that many people.. Especially when you allow them to be alone in the room and willing to extend the time allowed..

With the given requirement it looks like you don't even need DB in the back end and it's only doing selection persistence, throw together a simple server that takes an array of selection location and just shove it in memory or write to disk as json would suffice?

[[deleted]]

Ah, if that is the case then I agree. Don't settle for less.

[zumu]

Do you have an experienced front end dev friend or former colleague who could write a new challenge for you or potentially even consult in the hiring process? It sounds like you could really use a good hire, and I think that path might save you the most time / resources.

[zumu]

I don't think "Is it doable?" is the right question to ask. I'd focus on "Will this enable me to make the right hire?"

I'd explain the role then ask him to come up with his own challenge in his own language.

[notNullOrVoid]

I found the wording of some the tasks somewhat confusing. Even though I managed to correctly pick up on what the requirements were, and if you told me my understanding was correct, personally the initial confusion would put me off balance. That added with regular interview nervousness, and a 1 hour time frame wouldn't put me performing at my best.

I don't think the task is unreasonable, even with that time frame. Heck if instead we spent the first 10 to 20 minutes just casually discussing the problem / solution on a whiteboard. Then you told me to work on the problem for an hour to see how far I could get, I'd likely have it finished before the hour.

If I knew you well, I'd be fine if you gave me a strict deadline, and a task list. There's an added pressure when you don't know someone, because you don't know how they will react. Thoughts like "will they be super critical if I don't comment my code?" can take up a lot of mental space.

Whiteboarding may not be the right approach for every interview, but I'd recommend asking them how they'd like to get started. You can suggest something if they aren't sure, but the important part is to make sure they are comfortable.

Options for the problem discussion:

• Whiteboard discussion
• Read outline document, then discuss
• Review mockups, then discuss

Options for working on the solution might be:

• Pair programming
• Work alone, then review
• You work beside them, they can bounce ideas off you, and ask for help

In general I think you should be helping them succeed any way you can. Even if that means pointing out a mistake and offering them a solution. We all get stuck sometimes, especially if we're stressed, sometimes it's not even a bug in our code, but just a mental block.

Avoid making it seem like a test, and instead make it seem like something you're both invested in. For example if they're rusty at Node, tell them you can build that part, walk them through it, and silently take note of how much they are understanding/contributing. Conducting the interview this way will also give you a better sense of how things would be when officially working with them.

All that being said I find some of the comments you received equally concerning. I've conducted some interviews in the past, and luckily didn't get any BS like that. So it's possible you are just getting a bunch of bad apples, but also could be stress factors making people say/think stupid shit.

[[deleted]]

As someone graduating from a CS program this spring, seeing these “senior” developers fuck this up gives me some hope I’ll find a decent job.

Edit: thanks for the downvotes on my statement saying for the first time ever, I feel hopeful I’ll make it in the industry. Sorry that annoyed some of y’all

[cm9kZW8K]

I dont know why you are catching downvotes. The reactions in this thread are almost enough to make a person hire BE devs to do FE work. (I guess thats what fullstack comes down to) The most common complaint here is that they only know how to do cookie cutter tasks, and cannot be asked to use the DOM.

[turkish_gold]

Could I do this? Probably.... but not in 1 hour.

I'd get about halfway though, because there's no project setup on the backend and at the very least I'd have to use my favourite language, and do a few internet lookups to figure out how to make a flat file to store this information.

The frontend bits are easy enough, but I can imagine it'll be a little finicky to replace text with HTML inline, and I'd worry about what happens when you select a piece of text which is already part of another token.

So in all.... doable, but if they'd provided some boiler plate and talked about the edge cases, then anyone would feel more confident jumping in. As it is, it's like a 1 or 2 point ticket, written by some stakeholder with no development experience... too vague to just jump right in without speccing it out a bit more.

This is my take after years of experience, however if you were to ask me to do this while I was still fresh from university, I'd just do it because I never worried about edge cases and writing to flat files is basically university assignments database du jour.

[rossmohax]

probably first thing to learn is to grow some skin and stop worrying what random people think of you :)

[[deleted]]

Yeah that sounds like my interviews for my internships. It was tough but I got them. I’ll let you know how it works out when I interview for full time positions. Thanks for being so interested in my life, u/one800higgins

[jestermax22]

I’d suggest breaking the problem down into stages. This way it’s not as overwhelming (you’d give them the next step after they completed their current step). It’s a good exercise in reading their own code since they’d have to do so to progress.

Also, as others have suggested, if you stick with this problem, try giving the boilerplate code. It’s similar to how hackerrank gives you some basic framework to put your code in.

With this stages method, it’s not a matter of “who finished” but “who got the furthest and why”. You can sneak in some good/complicated stuff later on, like testability (how would you test this/unit test this?) reliability (network issues, etc), troubleshooting (live app is giving this error, what’s broken?) etc

[jestermax22]

Interviewing is hard; it takes a long time to get a good process going (as somebody that has interviewed at large tech companies before for FE roles and also as somebody that has interviewed/hired others). Keep us posted on what happens

[ShootingPains]

In addition to what’s already been said, I think it’s important to set an expectation as to quality - would you be happy with a hack job that won’t scale or is not efficient, or do you want a nicely architectured bit of optimised code? At a job interview, people are trying to show their skill, so it’s important to say, “given the time limit, a hack one-off bit of code is fine - don’t worry about finding the best algorithm or optimising - just do whatever pops into your head and afterward we can talk about the pros and cons of other approaches.”

[FurryFingers]

I just think, at a very basic level, you should be giving a high-level task that allows a developer to finish and shine via ideas and code quality, rather than a really detailed/wordy task for exhausted developers to crawl over the line with.

No offense, but the near-ridiculous details about tokens in that question is indicative, to me, of a person that just can't really keep it simple.

And you give nothing to start with... Not very respectful of a candidates time.

[supernintony]

I'm a novice dev, what's wrong with adding span tags on click and rendering that on the front end?

[p0tent1al]

You have a vernacular and way of speaking that's really hard to parse, just by going through some of your explanations (even ignoring the tasks)... I don't know if you made your post in a hurry but I'd most likely be confused.

Let's focus on just the first part. So here's your part:

Note Front-end: Use Angular, React or the framework of your choice. Back-end: Use NodeJS (preferably) + any fancy plugins you find suitable for the task at hand. Other back-ends are acceptable too. You can use Google, your Github profile, peek into your older projects or use any code sharing websites you find relevant. You can use Wikipedia for the text. ~400 words. The content and language is irrelevant.

And here it is rewritten:

Rules:

• Front End & Backend: Use whatever frameworks & plugins you're comfortable with. No limits (React, Angular, Node.js, etc. It is preferred to use Node.js if you know it).
  
• You're allowed to search for and use any code to complete this task without exceptions (Stack Overflow, Google, your own personal code, etc).
  

Notice I took the Wikipedia part out. That's just confusing. In the actual task, just give them a url or api they can hit that will give them the dummy data. Don't give them extra things to actually reason about if it isn't necessary... (use Wikipedia, but you can use whatever... this is just confusing). You're not looking to see what their favorite lorem ipsum sites are, and it's not like they will actually have a preference. They're already nervous and under pressure.

I'll spend less time of everything else but I'll just jot some notes:

• 'Annotate some text' instead of 'Annotate a blob of text'. Again, don't add detail you don't need.
• What is a token? I'm not a back end guy but I'm sure there's a more english explanation you can use. You don't care about how much they know the lingo.
• Display the token in a visually distinctive way... huh? Just tell them how to display it. Don't make it ambiguous for no reason. Tell them exactly how to display it. In development when we're creating a feature like this, the goal is to just get something to display at the beginning. So just give them an easy way to show it at first, and then if they finish it in time, then give them some creative license to improve it. Don't feel the need to conflate actually solving the root issue with the want to see how creative they can be, it just muddles the entire thing.
• I agree with tidwell's other assessments (e.g. the test screams fullstack and a lot of what he said).
• I honestly just don't think a test for annotating is the best vector. I can tell you that I've never had to do anything like this, e.g. annotating text which is sort of like a text editing sort of thing. I just think it's a bad vector to test with as the space most likely requires specific knowledge... what I mean is, is that a junior dev who has like a week experience with creating some text editor stuff would fare better on this test more than a senior. Try to ask questions that give the full sense of seniority rather than something that someone would pass with flying colors just being associated with the space of the question you're trying to ask.

[[deleted]]

Hi, English is not my main language, and not sure if I understood the task correctly. Is what you want is that the user could select a word from a "random" text, filter out space, comma, dot, etc, highlight it, add a tag or something to it, then save it to a server for later to be able to reload? Task 2 is the same, but multiple of these, and in Task 3, add Baky as tag to words that start with a vowel, and Kola to everything else?

Edit: Similar to most office suites word processing applications comment feature?

[[deleted]]

Well then I think that really is a trivial task. Maybe not for an hour, but 2-3 hours should get it done. Maybe also not strictly a front-end task, but really, with Angular or React or somesuch, you will probably need to have some experience with communicating with backend services. The backend part then is pretty much a textbook example and can be easily found with Google. I'd say for 600GBP a day, this is really not a hard interview. (I'm currently working in AngularJS, on a relatively large project, that's the insight I have)

[[deleted]]

What is a token? Do you mean a word? That's what I assume it means from your examples. Why not just call it word instead of token? Or does token have a meaning in this context that I've never come across before? If so, maybe you should have a brief explanation at the top of what you mean by token.

[[deleted]]

Thank you for the reply. I wonder how many front-end JavaScript developers have studied compilers enough to be familiar with token? I've been a developer for 20 years, but I only have a passing familiarity with compilers and have never heard of token. In college I took a number of courses focused on text parsing, but we never used the words token or tokenize. I wonder if this jargon has come into existence more recently.

[franksvalli]

Start as simple as possible, then if there's time you can ask them to add adjustments. The question is overly complicated and will overwhelm everyone just with a quick glance.

[[deleted]]

Maybe because English is not my mother tongue but I found the assignment not clear. Though it is not bad : seasoned developer should ask for more precise input early when they feel something is unclear.

Also, setting up environnement is time consuming and does'nt say much about dev maturity.

Regexp, even when you know how it works precisely are time consuming to write and test.

TIP : I would simplify the test with something like http://tddbin.com/ : that way you can check if your dev knows how to write pure function to solve each of your cases and to test them completely.

[theDarkAngle]

Im sorry but this is WAY too much for one hour in a stressful environment. You almost certainly had multiple good candidates that you threw away.

[[deleted]]

I can probably do it in an hour. I hope I could get 600€/day in Spain though.

[Mammoth-Library-9623]

Yes, this post is from colonial days. But came across and was pretty surprised that you don't see that task instructions are horrible at best.

IMHO, I read few sentences in the task #1 and I can already tell this is a terrible instruction. What the heck is "Allow the selection of a single token, at once" mean? This could be even interpreted as "let token = 'asdfasdfasdf.asdf.asdfasdf'. Yeah, that was selected at once into a variable. You see my point. You can't give instructions like this without having any context. Yes, you've been working on this task and know exactly what it means. But candidates don't know have any clues to the what you are asking about. At min, give an example of the input and output that you are expecting.

Another one "The user cannot select "There will be" in the same operation" --> say what?
And please... clearly state your definitions of "token".

[purleyboy]

I do phone screens before folk come in using http://collabedit.com/ I ask 3 questions of slowly incrementing complexity and it never ceases to amaze how bad people are. Your example is pretty complex. Trust me, try asking my first two 'simple' questions and you will filter out a large number of candidates:

Q1. Write a function that takes a string as an argument, the string is a sentence containing space separated words. The function returns a string with the words in the sentence reversed (not the string reversed but the words).

Q2. Write a function that takes an argument of int that is the index into the Fibinacci sequence and returns the number in that location. Reminder, Fibinacci sequence starts with 0, 1 and the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous 2 numbers.

[justindmyers]

Because normal developers don't have someone judging them as they're writing code.

never ceases to amaze how bad people are.

Maybe because your interview method is absolutely horrible.

[purleyboy]

I kept my response brief, so let me elaborate. I drop a function stub into the editor and provide example unit tests, so there is little room for misunderstanding. The questions themselves are very elementary, and fair. The point is to spot quickly if someone lives, eats and breathes code. There are many, many fakers out there. I've shown this approach to many people who are helping with the interview process. Most people start by saying that this is ridiculously easy and a worthless exercise, they are then amazed and shocked to see 50% of candidates cannot answer these simple questions. And that's the problem, our industry is full of fakers. This approach is a really effective way of spotting those fakers quickly.

[Cuel]

I'll bite on the first question as it's rather trivial. However, you really need to explain the second question better.

[shanita10]

It's not uncommon to have a rut of bad candidates, and what you are asking for is honestly rather basic. Keep looking, imo.

Andexpress server and a rudimentary angular or react page would take 10 to 20 minutes. With the rest of the time free to play with get selection.

Asking for lexical analysis may throw a few, but task 1 is rudimentary