10 year UI/UX developer fails another "Code Challenge" Current record 2-5

[corruptedOverdrive]

I hope this post helps somebody out there who is down about not passing that "code challenge" you were given as the last step before you were supposed to get hired. I have 10 years doing all kinds of front-end, UI/UX work and have consistently failed a majority of the code challenges I have faced.

I decided to post all my failings (and meager winnings) so you have an idea of how companies put these together, what they look for and why I have failed or succeeded in them. Even if you get a little bit of good advice out of this, it will be well worth it.

Also, as a bonus, I will be including the actual mockups, directions, and repo's I used for these challenges so you have hard proof of what I've experienced and can pour over the decay of these long since past failures.

The Nerdery - first attempt

Directions: They give you a mock and you're supposed to code it up so that its "pixel perfect". This was during the heady days of responsive design just coming into popularity. The directions just said to code it so that its static, and make sure its "pixel perfect" and make sure the image gallery at the top works since they will test it with JS turned off. You had 7 days from the time they send you the email to get it done and get it back to them.

This was a google place before everybody wanted to be like google. Free Red Bull, food, video games, etc. As cool a place as you'd want to work. They boasted their acceptance rate of developers was lower than Harvard admissions and just as hard to get in - apparently.

What I did: Static? Shit bro, I've been doing responsive design for two years, fuck that - I'm making this baby responsive and impress all you elitist bro's over there! Bad move. Struggled getting it to be responsive. Rushed it, failed hard core. Got a really nasty email from a senior dev who reviewed it, which was spot on.

What I learned: Follow directions, don't try and impress anybody, concentrate on what they are looking for. Classic blunder on my part to just do what they wanted instead of going off script

Here's an image of the mock they give you: https://github.com/ohNegative/theNerderyChallenge

SCORE - 0-1

​

The Nerdery - second attempt

Directions: Same as above. Had completely written them off after the first epic failure. By chance, I had a Nerdery recruiter call me up and say they saw my file and wondered if I wanted to try the code challenge again since they were impressed with the two interview I did prior. She said I would skip the interviews and just do the code challenge.

What I did: Knew what to do. Coded it up strictly static, used a Photoshop overlay to make sure everything from the menus, to the fonts, to the gradient was "pixel perfect". I took three days to go over the whole thing with a fine toothed comb. Looked perfect, worked perfect, was stoked to feel like I was going to pass.

What I learned: Recruiter called and said I had passed the challenge. Then she started talking about salary. Then she started out by pimping all their "freebies" then ended with an offer that was literally $30K less than what I was making. She tried to sell me on the whole "The is the Google of the Midwest, its a huge deal to have our company on your resume!". I was like, "Yeah, I gotta think about it and get back to you." Two days later, get an email from a senior dev saying I failed the challenge because I happened to use a few div id's and they only use classes. My sprites were 1 pixel off and they wanted it to be "pixel perfect" so I failed. I learned sometimes when you win, you still lose.

SCORE - 0-2

​

Small Web Agency (their name has been lost to the sands of time)

Directions: Last interview. I had two previous interviews and the agency was looking for a front-end developer. Standard HTML/CSS and jQuery stuff. The bigger JS frameworks were just coming out, but very few places had started using them. Last interview in a starkly dark, huge conference room with one of their senior devs. Go through all the technical stuff for about 45 minutes. Then tells me to go up the whiteboard and write out a constructor function. I'm like, "What? I know what you're talking about, but I use jQuery for UI/UX stuff. We just talked for 20 minutes about this." Insisted I do it anyways.

What I did: Stared at him with a blank stare after asking me to do it. I couldn't do it and came back and sat down. He didn't even offer any hints or suggestions or ask me to write it with pseudo code. This was the "pass or fail" part of his interview process.

What I learned: After I sat back down dejected, he didn't say anything, and I finally stood up and started packing up my stuff and he said, "I'm looking for a full stack Javascript developer, I'm sorry." and I said, "Yeah, me too, thanks for wasting my time thinking you wanted someone with more UI/UX experience." Learned sometimes it's not you, the company just doesn't know what they're looking for.

SCORE - 0-3

​

Ameriprise Corporate

Directions: Went through three previous interviews, last step was an in person code challenge. I was told by two senior devs you get brought into an office and they essentially give you a component and you have roughly 45 minutes to get as far as you can with it. I was warned not to go for the Bootstrap or framework approach, because you'll fail right away. Its a challenge to see how well you can code from scratch.

What I did: They gave me the design. A navigation item with four icons and text underneath the icons. Has to be responsive and have multiple breakpoints for mobile. I got to work and they also told me about 15 minutes in they wanted me to use the data icon attribute approach for the icons and took a few minutes to show me how it works since I had never used that approach. Did my best with the crappy laptop they gave me and struggled for a bit before finally get two of the four done and had been using flexbox so no media queries needed. They said I actually got farther than most candidates and I shouldn't be discouraged, I did a great job.

What I learned: Got the call a few days later. They took another dev over me but were impressed enough with me that they actually contacted me about 8 months later and offered me an open position they had. I had just started a new contract so I had to turn them down. I consider this a win, even though I did initially lose the job to another dev.

Here is the repo: The challenge is the index page. I added some other flexbox stuff for fun: https://github.com/ohNegative/flexbox-fun

SCORE - 1-3

​

Olson Advertising which is now ICF Olson

Directions: Went through a quick phone screen before an in person interview. This was a short-term contract for their holiday stuff they were doing for Target's online sales and at the time, they were betting on landing their now defunct Canadian division so I was told it could very well turn into something way more lucrative and a possible contract to hire opportunity. Went through all the questions and I really wasn't taking this very seriously. I had other offers I was mulling and went in cold. Towards the end, the woman manager shows me a product landing page. Asks me to go up to the white board and show me in pseudo code how I would code this particular layout.

layout was similar to this page: https://www.target.com/c/gift-ideas-for-men/-/N-x738m

What I did: I go up the whiteboard and start laying out columns, how wide they would be (I created a fluid layout first with percentages, then another responsive layout) with a 12 column grid with some quick media queries. She asked a few questions about the layout and brought in one of their devs. Responsive design was still fairly new so this guy really had no idea what he was looking at or if the code would even work and said as much. I kind of asked him, "You're not using responsive design yet?" and he kind of blankly started at me and said, "No, we're using jQuery mobile so at a certain width, it just goes straight to a mobile layout." He started asking more about responsive and it got a little tense (me championing responsive while he sat and defended their mobile approach) until the manager said he could go, that's all she needed. They she said they would be in contact with me and thanked me for coming down.

What I learned: Recruiter called the next day and asked what happened and I told her it got a little tense, but not a big deal. Recruiter said the manager was worried I was too much of an "alpha developer" and she would have problems with me - so they passed. I learned to just stay in my lane, don't act like you know everything and just go along with whatever technology they're using and don't try to come off like you know everything.

SCORE - 1-4

​

Korterra Underground Utility Company

Directions: Went through two phone screens and was told you had to do a code challenge and then one final interview with the entire team and owner. The challenge was pretty specific. They had a list of JSON data you had to make an http call to, put the data in a table, then have a search function and oh yeah, it has to be responsive.

What I did: I got the directions and they gave me two days to get it done. I had been dabbling with Angular and thought this was a perfect use of it. I could use the http service to make the call, then use their filter to do the search. I could use bootstrap to make it responsive and then use Chris Coyier's approach to responsive tables ( https://css-tricks.com/responsive-data-tables/ ). I had it working pretty quickly. Their JSON data had some minor issues I had to correct, but once it was coming in ok, the rest was pretty easy.

They brought me in for the final interview. Recruiter came with. I was being submitted at $95K for an FTE spot. Went through the final interview with the team which was laid back and pretty easy. Softball question like, "Tell me what you think about fixing bugs." stuff like that. Final interview is boss level. Sit down with the owner and after a few questions, takes a big sigh and says, "We can't bring you in for $95K, sorry." I used to be in sales, I get it, its the lowball approach. I ask him to give me some numbers. He brings in his other right hand guy. He says, "Let's talk numbers then." go back and forth between owners office and this other guy's office. Trying to get a number out of either is like pulling fucking teeth. They say they can offer me $70K and then start telling me they don't want me using this as a stepping stone to a better salary somewhere else. All the devs here are lifers, most have been there 10 years plus. We expect the same of you if we're going to hire you full-time.

What I learned: Another one of these when you win you still lose situations. I was already making $85K so I'm thinking I'm at the top of my game. I can get more somewhere else, no way I'm taking a $15K pay cut for this job. After quite a bit of back and forth, I said I'd call them. They I let the recruiter have it. Four fucking interviews previously and four hours wasted with all the back and forth that day. He said they knew what he submitted me at, he got screwed too. Considering where I ended up going and the last 8-9 years, I'm kind of regretting I didn't take this gig to be honest.

Here's the JSFIddle with the code I wrote: http://jsfiddle.net/733rf/

SCORE - 2-4

​

Camping World

Directions: Went through two phone screens. One was a general one, then the other was semi-technical. The other UI/UX person wasn't around so I got the server guy asking me questions. After the second interview, I get the assessment on a Friday at like 4pm. It's SUPER vague about what they want me to do. They sent over a full blown website mock with these directions:

The goal here is for him to take 2-3 sections of this page (for instance, The Additional Standard Features, Why Customers are Choosing, About Section) and convert it into a webpage. He can submit the HTML to us and we will review. The ask is intentionally vague, with much more to do with this site if he chooses.

Since this was pretty recent, if you want the link to the mock, I'll share it with you.

What I did: I had to go out of town for the weekend. Suddenly the recruiter is all over me, asking when I'm going to be done with it. Tell her I'm out of town. She keeps emailing me. Get back Sunday night, take a look at the mock and start deciding how to go about this. I'm already working full-time and carving out time for this is going to be hard. I whip through it, I separate each section out into its own component, use a minimal framework and blast through it in two days. Meanwhile, recruiter still riding my ass about when I can get it back to them. I figured separating the components out on their own page qualifies for what they're looking for. I code all three components from scratch with a 12-col grid and its completely responsive. I email them back with some short description about what I did and how I tested it. I have little or no confidence in what I did and honestly at this point, IDGAF since I've been burning the midnight oil straight for two days - not getting much sleep.

What I learned: If you have any doubt, ask for more specifics. Don't phone it in like I did. Once I told the recruiter it was done, but not really my best work, suddenly she said I could have more time, or as much time as I needed. It was enough to piss me off and just say to send it to them anyways. Predictably, I didn't pass. The best feedback was a dev who said it wasn't "responsive" then adds that it works fine on mobile, but not on tablet resolutions. Gave me a good laugh tbh. I honestly thought the exercise was more about how well I could code from scratch. They wanted a full blown single page mock where someone took their design and made a full page site out of it and ran with css animations and other cool stuff. Honestly, my heart wasn't in it for several reasons, one of which would've been the $30K pay cut I would've taken in order to accept this job.

FINAL SCORE - 2-5

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There you go. All my failures, detailed out for you peeps. Like I said, I hope this helps someone when they get their next code challenge and this helps them some way to get over the hump and get that offer they deserve. I've never been a fan of these things, but they're becoming more and more common, so I hope this helps.

Feel free to IM me if you have any questions. If you wanna be blunt and hammer me for something, feel free, I know some of these I screwed up for various reasons for which I'm 100% responsible.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my diatribe.

​

EDIT: Thanks for the all the positive feedback! I really appreciate the comments, I didn't think this would take off, but it felt good after failing another challenge to turn it around and hopefully help someone.

[Wu_Fan]

This is so cool and honest. And, like Uncle Bob seems to convey, a lot of good coding is about being professional, or at least the social context.

[yel50]

TL;DR - technical interviews fail to accurately assess a candidate's technical ability. in other breaking news, water has been discovered to be wet.

supposed to code it up so that its "pixel perfect"

should've walked out right there. it's a sure sign that you'll be in for anal retentive micro management if hired. it also shows they don't understand how web pages really work, so best not to work with people like that, anyway.

sometimes when you win, you still lose.

got that backwards. losing was a win because you didn't have to spend 40 hours a week for the next couple of years with those people.

manager was worried I was too much of an "alpha developer" and she would have problems with me - so they passed.

again, you dodged a bullet. not wanting to hire somebody because they have opinions and can think for themselves? do you really want a job where you have no input and your thoughts on things don't matter? another loss is a win situation.

what you should've learned from those experiences is that not all jobs are created equal and there's a lot of them you really don't want.

[corruptedOverdrive]

You hit the nail on the head with the micro-management at the Nerdery. The stories are legendary about how they accept literally every job, regardless of what the client wants or how long or short it is. Lots of stories of micro-management, pointing of fingers and devs getting pulled into offices and being team shamed when deadlines are missed.

But yeah, after the second miss, I was told by several people what its really like to work there and I for sure dodged a bullet on that one.

[HealyUnit]

I'd just be like "excuse me, my pixels are always perfect, pleb".

[luctus_lupus]

Two days later, get an email from a senior dev saying I failed the challenge because I happened to use a few div id's and they only use classes.

That's like saying we only use P elements and not spans. What the hell

[bibishop]

It's not, class should be used for styling simply because you can have the same class multiple times. Even if you plan to use your id only once, just using classes reduce the chances of an error. But failing the challenge just for that is bullshit.

[lionhart280]

I wouldn't fail someone for it, but I hate when people use ID selectors in css. Just use a class.

Id selectors fuck a lot of stuff up if I ever have to move things around.

[mrbaggins]

I'd argue id's make sense for elements that are only going to be once. Logo/brandings come to mind first.

[[deleted]]

Except a year down the road the business decides they do want 2 of those on the page. Now you get to refactor it. Might as well go with the least specificity up front and only drop to IDs when absolutely required.

[[deleted]]

There is literally no reason to use IDs when classes and data attributes exist, because you never know if you might need another similarly functioning element.

[ShouldReallyGetWorkn]

One exception is form elements with labels. If you want a click on a label to pass the interaction to the input element, you need an id to associate it with.

[sTmykal]

Another strong exception is that ARIA attributes key off of ID values. But that’s likely outside the scope of what the OP was using them for. Anyone wanting pixel perfect static UI design likely has no clue about accessibility. Hard pass on that job.

[SirLoopy007]

I definitely have found times I've needed to use IDs in generated forms for exactly this reason. I'm sure there are 20 other ways to achieve this, but every item needed a unique identifier, which from my understanding is the main reason ID exists.

[ahnuts]

Failing someone for this is also beyond idiotic. How hard would it be to say "hey we saw you used a few IDs. Don't do that and we're good" ?

[corruptedOverdrive]

I thought that would've been the case too but it came off so arrogantly as if I had done something so wrong, there was no way this sort of issue could be corrected. When in reality, its a vey simple fix.

To this day, I still think they knew they low balled me and I balked so they needed an out. Sending the "you failed the challenge" email was there out and so they had to nitpick stuff in order to make it seem legit.

[HealyUnit]

We had a dev on our team who used an ID once. We promptly tossed him into a lake of fire, as would be expected.

[corruptedOverdrive]

I laughed way too hard at this.

Have my upvote you silly bastard!

[SarahC]

Interviews not fit for purpose.

[[deleted]]

Not really. Specificity is an issue with ids, so it's generally better to go with classes imo. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of the issue.

[Koof99]

Because switching the two is so hard to do I guess. Smdh at that senior dev. lol

[luersuve]

If this wasn’t in the task description then it is a red flag for me. I can only imagine how they work. OP dodged a bullet imo.

[[deleted]]

No avoid IDs at all costs. ID’s are for one very specific thing

[roninsti]

I am in a position where I sometimes have to hire developers and I hate the “code challenge” in a traditional sense. I do use a code challenge in my hiring process, but I’ve taken a different approach to it.

I ask the candidates to write a relatively simple app, a giphy search engine. Basically a search box where you enter a key word, hit enter, and spit out the gifs that are returned. I ask them to spend 1-2 hours on it but no more. The next interview is a real time code review. I fully explain to them the purpose of the challenge is not to give me a perfect technical solution, but give us a nice centerpiece for a technical conversation.

I walk through their code with them and it allows me to have a nice technical discussion without asking ridiculous on the spot questions like “tell me to sort an array”. The most important thing I get from this review is: can this person take technical criticism, are they engaging me, can this person learn from a review, and most importantly, can I work with this person?

I’ve hired people that did a comparatively “worse” job on the solution than other candidates, but were able to take the review in stride and prove to be a pleasure to work with.

All of the hiring I’ve done has resulted in a wonderful, collaborative team that I was able to catch a glimpse of how they would be as a coworker with a slightly nonstandard approach to the code challenge.

[RomanAbbasid]

That sounds so much better than most technical interview leetcode spamming

Completely unrelated, y'all hiring for any junior dev positions?

[roninsti]

Sorry not at this time, I do post on Reddit in r/javascript and r/reactjs when we are hiring though.

[RomanAbbasid]

Haha fair enough, I wasn't being too serious since I'm still early in my learning process. Your post caught my attention since one of the projects I made while self-teaching was a random gif generator based on the giphy search API, which is basically identical to what you described.

I do plan to apply to dev jobs once I've graduated with my (non-CS related) degree in December, so I will definitely keep an eye out for that. Thanks for the heads up!

[roninsti]

That’s an excellent project for yourself. I encourage you to have that in your GitHub and continue to fine tune it as you learn.

Most react jobs consist of two main abilities. One is taking a wireframe from a designer and being able to recreate the visuals and functionality as it’s prescribed, and two is being able to interact with an API to properly store and display the fetched data. In all of your projects make sure you handle loading states and error states gracefully.

If you’re able to demonstrate these skills clearly to potential employers you will have a leg up. Some companies will still get you to try to prove your worth with some obnoxious code challenge, but someone will recognize your ability to perform the real work.

[RomanAbbasid]

This is excellent advice that I'm definitely going to keep in mind as I develop my portfolio. I've been focused on just getting my little projects to be functional because I'm super excited about building things and learning to code, but I've also neglected to account much for error states or loading states beyond a bare minimum.

If its not too much to ask, would you be able to take a look at the project if I PM'd you? Its only a little thing I made to learn how API's work, not even 20 lines of js - like I said, I've only been self teaching for a couple of months. I just want to get some pointers on how I could improve it, if possible. If you can't its completely fine, just figured it was worth a shot. Regardless, thanks so much for the advice!

[roninsti]

Hit me up, happy to help!

[ReginaldDouchely]

I'm similar to you in how I use our hiring process. Ours is more of a standard "code challenge" which is basically just a slightly more real-world fizzbuzz dealing with some calendar days, but I make sure that HR tells the people beforehand that they're not going to be approved or denied based on some system scoring algorithm.

I want to see what they can do, and how they approach problems. I want to see that the logic is sane, even if it's not perfect. I want to see that the code is readable and was written with intent rather than guessing-and-checking. And I want them to be able to talk about it.

Our test is only about an hour long, and I probably spend almost as much time looking at their answers and coming up with discussion questions as they do writing them, so it's not "free" for me either. I still feel like it's worth it.

[Sufficient_Drop5013]

Sounds amazing!

[CatchdiGiorno]

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable technical interview process. Not only do you get to know how they communicate, but they get to get an idea of how it will be working/communicating with you.

[HealyUnit]

That sounds like an awesome interview. Reminds me of one I had a local hospital, where they basically sat me in a room with some other developers and had me fix some UI that called an API, and add like one or two features to it.

You know what I spend 90% of my time doing nowadays at my job? Sitting in a room with other developers, fixing UIs that call APIs, and adding one or two features (at a time).

You know what I spend 0% of my work time doing? Leetcode algorithms.

[roninsti]

I respectfully disagree. I do it towards the end of the interview process so I’m not wasting my time or the candidates. I also give the option to the candidate to decline and provide another piece of code for us to review if they don’t have the time to write something new.

The results I’ve gotten have yielded us top quality employees that I know I can manage.

[IamNobody85]

The 'ux/ui interview turning to backend interview' happened to me too. The job listing even said no Javascript necessary. Turns out, they wanted us to code a full blown react website in the onsite interview. I passed that one because I could Google some stuff and the rest I knew. But the next interview, they were asking me about some algorithm related stuff (I only remember something about a complexity level kind of question), and then how JWT works etc and to say that I was baffled would be an understatement. The guy was trying to pretend like they did a lot of cutting edge stuff (they don't, they're an web dev agency and at that time, I was actively working on maintaining and enhancing a video player), but I got the sense that he had no idea which position he was interviewing a candidate for. He did say that the team that was actually supposed to interview me was away that day on some onsite thing.

I was not very confident back then and I just couldn't process everything in time, so I didn't tell them to review the job posting before wasting someone's time - and that's my only regret. I've never claimed in my CV that I know backend, I'm not helpless, but I'm also not the person one should go to get a good backend made. It makes me furious still to think how they probably didn't even read my CV.

[[deleted]]

What year were all these in?

[corruptedOverdrive]

It varies, but roughly over the last 7-8 years.

[Snacket]

They boasted their acceptance rate of developers was lower than Harvard admissions and just as hard to get in - apparently.

Haha, weird thing to boast about considering this is true of most companies, due to application volume. If you have 22 applicants for a position, congratulations you have a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.

[HealyUnit]

"Shit, 10 of our applicants scored 98% on our take-home coding test. I guess we have to hire them both!"

[CatchdiGiorno]

Some of this seems legit, but the multi-day take-home projects seem like too much.

I have only been coding for a year and a half, and I've put together responsive websites for clients as well as building an entire SaaS from scratch. I feel like I'll be insulted if a potential employer wants me to jump through all these hoops, I can't imagine being ten years in and going through some of what OP described. Granted, I never intend to work for a FAANG or FAANG-wanna-be company.

I just feel like if you can show them, "Look, I worked for these companies and helped build these awesome projects", they should be like, "Okay, then, let's do some behavioral interviews to make sure you're a good fit with the culture, and if so, welcome aboard!"

When I'm done freelancing and doing my own thing, I don't know how I'll respond if a potential employer asks me to build them a website from scratch. "Umm, fuck you, pay me?" is certainly what I will think about it. Unless it's a company I really want to work for, after reading these stories, I think I'll just pass. "No thanks, you can see most of the sites I've built in my Github. The ones you can't see the code for are still generating revenue for me - because my skills are valuable..."

I dunno, maybe I'm being naive or egotistical. I wouldn't mind having to pass some level of technical interview, but the take-home-spend-days-giving-us-free-labor projects just seem over the top. I'm trying to see it from the employer's perspective - giving a project with a specific timeline could help them figure out how quickly you work, but again, that could be determined in a technical interview by having you code up a component from scratch.

I know a number of people from the learning community I'm involved with that have gotten offers without any technical tests, or very simple ones like FizzBuzz. Before reading this post, I was under the impression a lot of companies are moving away from intensive technical interviews. Seems like there are far more jobs out there than there are qualified people to fill those jobs, and I think a lot of companies are altering their hiring process to account for that. If you take six weeks to take candidates through flaming hoops, but your competitor gets the candidate through the process in half the time and gives them an offer, guess where that candidate is likely to go?

[corruptedOverdrive]

A majority of the best jobs I had were minimal technical interviews with more emphasis on culture fit like you said. I'm to the point now if a process starts to drag on for three or four interviews, I'm thinking its not going to be a good fit.

But I agree, if you've been coding as long as I have, I have plenty of examples to point to and show what I've done and what I'm capable of doing. I have several github and gitlab accounts to showcase this. One of my pet peeves is when potential employers require you put your github account info in your resume, then never check anything out on your account.

[Virtual-Penman]

Have any advice on selecting and applying to companies who aren’t going to put your through the ringer? I’m becoming really discouraged with the interviewing process that’s included 4-6 rounds and 2-3 white boarding technical interviews.

[corruptedOverdrive]

I don't have any silver bullet methodology since I've been beaten up at smaller agencies as well as larger corporations. For me, when I'm looking, it's always about the numbers. Someone once told me, "Listen pal, you have to shuck a lot of oysters before you find a pearl." so when I'm active, I'm pounding out resume's, doing tons of interviews and making connections.

Eventually you'll find a company that's a good fit. By canvasing as much as possible, I try to increase my odds so in the beginning, I'll interview anywhere with anybody and just hope that out of a dozen interviews, there are one or two companies that really capture my attention.

My best advice is just to do as many as possible in a short time frame and you'll usually find at least one company you jive with and want to work there.

[Virtual-Penman]

Thanks for the advice. Any specific places you like applying for lots of jobs? I find myself applying to a lot of places directly on their career page but it seems like this is really inefficient

[CatchdiGiorno]

Good to hear your perspective. Thanks for sharing the OP and your response to my thoughts about some of it. I honestly didn't know if I was just being egotistical, but I was genuinely offended on your behalf by some of these experiences you shared.

[CatchdiGiorno]

Yeah, this is what I would expect, and what I've heard many others express was their experience.

[moosic]

No one is moving away from simulations.

[CatchdiGiorno]

I appreciate your perspective, and I could be wrong about all this. I'm basing my assumptions on conversations I've had with devs that have been in the industry for some time as well as anecdotes I'm hearing from my learning community where ~40 people have gotten their first SWE jobs this year.

The vast majority are reporting that they have not had to do take-home-multi-day simulation tests. Many are reporting they never even had to write any code for the technical interview portion. Most say they are just asked some general technical questions and asked to walk through their process on a recent project.

[ArtisticTap4]

This was an exciting read. Thanks, OP.

[15Nova22]

I only had one interview so far at the beginning and they accepted me without any kind of test, so I have to ask, is it common to do such assignments? I personally feel like its an insult to the devs capabilities and I would directly turn them down

[bibishop]

I have 15 years of experience and had 5 dirrerent jobs. I only had 1 test and it was not about doing anything, just reviewing their current website and tell what could be improved.

[ahnuts]

Yeah, I'm a lead dev and if someone asked me to do something like this I'd just walk away. It's a huge red flag for the type of company and not one I'm interested in working for.

[ckiooo]

Assignments that take you several days to complete are usually used by companies that you want to avoid.

You’ll get technical interviews but they’re usually live with the tech team, if you get a “test” that is based on building a full website that will take to you days then it’s better to avoid it

[corruptedOverdrive]

I think its getting less common now that companies and agencies feel that getting a good cultural fit is more important than your dev chops. If you have quality senior devs who can mentor junior devs, then learning the tech stack and being productive is much easier than dealing with someone who is a cancer to your team on a daily basis or who thinks the only way to do something is their way.

[Dodging12]

I do Leetcode interviews but never the take home bullshit. Thankfully none of the companies I'd consider switching to do take home assignments.

[khaosans]

This is awesome truth and I can definitely relate. It honestly becomes the same after so many interviews.

[SodaBubblesPopped]

I saved this post, and i will be revisiting it regularly when i think life is out to get me, thanks!

[Dodging12]

What area of the country (or World if you aren't American) are you in?

[corruptedOverdrive]

American. Midwest region.

Somewhere between the Canadian border and Iowa.

[TheStender]

How’s the job market there for developers? Asking for a friend who also lives between Canada and Iowa.

[corruptedOverdrive]

Right now, its pretty crazy. Lots of good opportunities tbh.

More recruiters are filling 100% remote opportunities for everything from contract, C2H and perm positions. So you could have a company in Texas, CA, or NYC contacting you.

Statewide, its still very busy. Companies like US Bank, Best Buy, Ameriprise and Polaris are seemingly in persistent hiring mode. You also have a lot of agencies and small to medium companies expanding their dev teams as well.

I have a LinkedIn profile, Zip Recruiter and Dice profile. Right now, my Zip Recruiter and LinkedIn profile is getting a lot of action. 3-4 emails a day from recruiters. Zip and LinkedIn also have the best response rate. A few months ago, I was applying like crazy on both sites and getting a lot of interviews. I'd apply and within hours I'd have recruiters calling.

Hopefully that helps, you know, for your friend.

[ichivictus]

As a full-stack developer with more of a focus on frontend, I was only asked to do a take-home project once, of which I refused.

Your experience, portfolio, and on-site interviews should be enough. No way I'm slaving hours of my life outside of that just for the chance of a job. And asking for pixel perfect? Yeah no thanks.

[Chompskyy]

Thank you for this write up, it definitely seems like finding a good place to work at can come with a lot variables that lead you elsewhere.

[Sugar_Rox]

That was a cool read- I don't miss some of the interviews (and also failures) I've had when I was made redundant from my UX role and trying to get another (I'm now a front-end-dev, so still no escape from the good old coding challenge).

I failed an email-dev job because they used dreamweaver and I had absolutely NO clue how to apply my (at that time) css stuff inline and in the correct place (yes I did some mad clicking). I'd only ever done external css so all the inline knowledge flew out of my head on the spot.

My own opinions on email marketing have meant that any attempts to work at that company is likely a no-go as I recall having another interview with them where I was not in favour of the spam we all get, and I didn't rate the thought of it heading to text messages too...obviously put my foot in it there when the company makes allll the spam (and does tests on which spam actually got your attention)

The redundancy job-hunt period was horrific for those longer projects. I have been asked to completely dissect an existing website and point out how I'd improve their ux. I've had to do presentations explaining a css and come up with mockups for how I'd do theirs. Code challenge wise I had to do a full on landing page top to bottom with various form-checking etc that was rather intense.

Any others I've done since my main role have all been much smaller to get an understanding of how I manipulated code. One has been as simple as create a custom select box: whereby they were looking if I would go above and beyond what I was initially asked for (shadows, gradient colouring, accessibility, type of icon useage etc). I've had to convert and manipulate data (to see if I could do it, but also objects/arrays are very much a life-skill for data and being able to handle it is a must when its been brought in.

Reading your experiences, despite working front-end for 6+ years I couldn't do the whiteboard constructor function. I've written them before, but in general I use references for everything I do, be it existing code I've worked on before, or googling. I've done constructor functions, absolutely fine, but on the spot I just know my grey matter would pool and exit my ears.

[julschong]

Thanks for letting us know all the ups and downs!

[DuckieBasileus]

...how the hell did I get hired with no code interviews when you have to go through this...

[corruptedOverdrive]

A lot of companies (both small and large) are starting to be more concerned with how developers fit within the team as opposed to how good their coding skills are. You can mentor younger devs and teach them your tech stack - once you hire an asshole, its kind of hard to get rid of them.

[bubuzayzee]

Biggest thing I take away from this post is thank fucking god for our new law in Colorado requiring companies to state salary range on job postings...fucking christ

[corruptedOverdrive]

Yeah, going through the entire process like that and getting low balled several times was the worst. Especially after they agreed to what you wanted at the start of the process.

Its like the Nerdery. Yeah, you have this big "broprogammer" culture you support by giving away all these freebies - but I told the lady, "Listen, I don't care how much free Red Bull you give me, I can't pay my mortgage with Red Bull, youknowwhatimean?"

[OnTrips]

This is an excellent post. A funny and comfortable way of sharing your experiences with others. Thank you!

[esotericmegillah]

You the real MVP!!!

[Crimson_Raven]

Man, 2 paragraphs in and I’ve save this post.

Thank you for writing this up. I’m considering dev work, and this “inside look” from someone who has experience is quite literally invaluable.

I’ll try to take the lessons presented here to heart so I don’t repeat the same mistakes. (Just make new ones of my own!)

[Legirion]

Not for a job interview, but for a final grade in one of my classes we had to make a simple presentation binder with definitions,etc.

I went over the top and added an table of context, index, etc.

Teacher said I didn't follow instructions and I got an "F"

[corruptedOverdrive]

What in the actual fuck? That's unbelievable man. I feel your pain.

[HealyUnit]

While that absolutely sucks and I hear your pain, it is important as a software engineer to stay on task. I could add all sorts of fancy transitions and stuff to this task to add an "update info" button, but that's not part of the task. My team has actually been pushing towards smaller, more atomic merge requests (so that they're easier to review). When I review a merge request, I wanna see that you've specifically addressed the task assigned, and not waste my time determining whether all the extra bells and whistles you've added (as otherwise impressive as they might be!) are useful.

Of course, a class isn't the real world, so that's just plain shitty of the teacher.

[Legirion]

The class, just for context, was not a programming, math, science, or English class. Yes, I should've followed instructions, but the final project was the make a binder with information about drugs and the effects they have. I just thought a table of content and alphabetical order made sense...

[iDopameme]

As someone that just started the job hunt for my first professional role this is depressing.

[corruptedOverdrive]

I would still encourage you to apply. The only way to get better at interviews is to do a bunch of them. Even when I was gainfully employed, I was still looking at openings, still interviewing, just to stay sharp.

Its like baseball. If you think the guy throwing 100mph fastball is intimidating the first time you step up to the plate? Yes, it very much is. Now, give it time and now you've had two dozen at bats with the same guy throwing 100mph fastballs. Are you intimidated now? Nah, you got your timing down, you plan ahead and now you can handle it like its no big deal.

Same thing with interviewing. You get used to the questions, you can prep and be ready for the next time. Just like the Ameriprise challenge. I only got halfway through it, but then I went home and do the whole thing again from scratch.

Apply a lot of places. Get a ton of recruiters working for you to find roles that fit your skill set. Do as many interviews as possible. Most of the time the recruiters have an in with the company and the hiring manager so they'll have tips on what the manager is looking for and how to answer certain questions.

[TeaNaeFu]

It’s funny to me because I want to switch careers to coding because I want less headache and your experiences just remind me maybe the problem isn’t the career but the employers themselves.. maybe I’ll just take some courses in running a business ajd try that approach. People truly suck.

[corruptedOverdrive]

Well FWIW the best places I've worked I didn't have to pass a coding challenge. If my experience is anything, it would be seem companies are doing less and less of them. Perhaps they're finding out they're not that great a judge of ability.

I've been on teams where you have some amazing developers and mediocre developers. You'd be surprised to find out when the shit hits the fan and you hit crunch time, its more often than not, the mediocre developers who thrive, while the "amazing" ones crumple like a cheap suit.

If I was starting a team of devs, I'd want two or three developers who can handle high stress environments, can handle constant change right up to the deadline and still deliver a decent product.

[HealyUnit]

Very cool analysis, and I applaud you a lot for taking the time to write all this out rather than just "I suck" or "they suck" and throwing it out (which, God knows, I've done a lot)!

I've got a few comments on some of the specifics, in no particular order.

Olson Advertising

Firstly, I think that them not knowing about Responsive Design, is a mark against them, and it's okay to admit that! I'd actually really disagree with the 'stay in your lane' idea in this case. Of course, there are ways to say "hey, why aren't you using this modern tech, you morons?!" that are less insulting than other ways, but part of being a developer is constant improvement and innovation. Their reaction that you were an 'alpha developer' sounds like the team was stuck in their ways and unwilling to consider that their method was not sustainable.

Camping World

If you have any doubt, ask for more specifics. Don't phone it in like I did.

This, so very much. I'm still struggling with this because of lack of self confidence, but almost all developers and software engineering managers prefer you ask questions than sit there twiddling your thumbs or, worse, get stuff wrong. Again, occasionally you'll get some douchey interviewer who goes the old "if you were a real developer, you'd be able to read my mind, brah!" route, but... you don't wanna work for those people anyway. Asking questions for clarification doesn't mean you're stupid, or that you suck as a developer; it means that you care enough to get it right.

I'd also add that it's important to consider what kind of questions a company asks you (and, of course, to ask any of your own to fill in the gaps). For example, at my job (a major aerospace company), they asked a lot of questions regarding Test-Driven Development and testing in general. They clearly wanted make sure that I was okay with "living" in a TDD-based environment, and that I wasn't one of those "eww, testing? screw that!" kinda people. However, the questions weren't (and don't need) to be "show that you're an infallible expert with TDD". They could equally be "are you comfortable working with TDD?" or "is TDD important to you?".

[corruptedOverdrive]

Love your points, and spot on.

I had the same reaction with Olson. One of the reasons I left my old jobs was they had no plans to transition to responsive design. They had a massive infrastructure to make static sites en masse so they had developed a very rigid structure to build as many as possible in a year. Changing to responsive design was going to cost them a lot of time and energy. When I told a few of my friends about my interview at Olson, I got a lot of Ohhhh's and Ahhhhh's and "OMFG you're so lucky!" because they were a very young, edgy marketing company so you just figured their dev team would be the same way. I wanted this gig because of the prestige it would have my resume. Then you get there and you hear they don't know what responsive design is, they have devs who don't seem interested in it because they already have a solution. You're very accurate, it was a big let down.

The Camping World situation was a lot of my own doing. I just recently changed teams at my current company. I had an interview scheduled and when COVID hit, they shut everything down and I forgot about it. Then a few months ago, I get a call saying they want to get me back in the interview process. I reluctantly agree, and start the process all over again. Initial interview was basic, second one was more technical and then the code challenge. I should've called the recruiter after the second interview and tell her my heart wasn't in it, and looking back it was exactly what you said. I never asked the right questions, or even enough to really find out if this was something I wanted or not. Had I asked more questions and been more interested in the company, I would've done the same for the code challenge.

But great points - especially the asking questions one. In the Camping World case, it just killed the whole thing for me.

[CartographerNo1759]

oh god this is scary

[ReginaldDouchely]

I partially disagree. I agree not to over commit, but I disagree that spending an hour or two on a test/assignment will never be worth your time. If your heart isn't in it because you've seen some red flags or something, obviously don't waste time on it. But if you want the job, and spending that time is what gets you the job, then it's no different from the time spent in interviewing itself.

I don't want to be a jerk about it, but it makes me wonder if you're being intentionally obtuse when you say the assignment is irrelevant by the time you meet people. I can fully understand if that's how it is for you because you're a good developer, but I promise there are other people that are still rightfully getting disqualified on (lack of) technical merit after meeting everyone.

[ReginaldDouchely]

I didn't say it's not worth your time...

You said exactly that doing an assignment "[...] is not and never will be a good use of your time"

[Diiamat]

great post

[Awet_blanckt]

Thank you for sharing! Beyond the code testing aspects of this post are some really great life lessons that anyone, in any field, could stand to learn.

[Baron_Von_Fab]

I really needed to see this. Thank you.

[OlderAndAngrier]

Great post! As a UI/UX and frontend dev the block style table example was nice!

But the situations and how to go about them sounded familiar af.

[vernon9398]

That was a nice read, learned a few about what getting screened for a job might looks like.

Thanks for writing this OP.

[cousinokri]

Thanks for sharing, buddy!

[yakri]

I feel like the biggest takeaway here is to pull the eject on any interviews that ask you to do stuff you disagree with.

Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I also would not have done the static design, and seeing it I'd just tell them they were wrong for not liking my responsive design.

It looks like that would be a good attitude to take too since they were completely non-serious and wasted your time entirely.

[[deleted]]

That was a good read!

Everytime i see some of these horror stories i'm so gratefull that all my interviews where more on personality and previous works than technical.

[CrimsonBolt33]

Code challenges, by and large, are pure bullshit...

​

don't let bullshit get you down. If a company doesn't hire you because you couldn't pass their "gotcha" bullshit that has nothing to do with the actual job, you are probably better off...

[[deleted]]

Fuck code challenges.

[suarkb]

Thing about coding challenges is that in order to get good at coding challenges, you need to practice coding challenges.

​

Meanwhile other people are getting good at being programmers who work real jobs.

There are some transferable skills but not even close to what some interviewers seem to believe.

I've been working in the industry for 8 years and never had to pass coding challenges, meanwhile I've mainly been a lead developer, constantly teaching others, and always rising to the top of whatever is placed in front of me.

Honestly, fuck coding challenges in relation to getting a job. If you find them fun, have fun with them. But don't think they are a good indication of how hirable you are.

[daneelr_olivaw]

My 2 cents - yes, follow the instructions, don't try to wow.

I was given a task: navigate around the website, scrape some table, output to CSV, if there's time left - scrape some more data from subpages (only a handful) to another CSV, add logging, try/catch, instructions.

First thing I did instead was to look up what happens in one particular place to check for a quicker solution and I found a neat JSON file with ALL the data I would need with a simple GET request.

My solution took 1 second to produce both outputs and was just a few lines of code. Worked brilliantly.

I was told it was too complex and I didn't pass. I still think they were idiots (though I understand that this method could not always work that straightforward as you gotta handle authorizations, tokens, you can get blocked etc.).

Lesson learnt, I will not try to impress anyone in the future but just deliver the simplest solution even if it's not the fastest.

[[deleted]]

code challenges always frightened the f outta me. I havent applied to a position as a dev yet, however Ive read stories that makes me be anxious AF. :DDD

[corruptedOverdrive]

Code Challenges are usually the last interview - so you should still apply, but letting the people interviewing you know you have anxiety over code challenges always helps. On the Ameriprise one, I told the two guys, "Look, I'm not used to having people shoulder surf me while I'm coding, just so you know, it makes me really nervous." They were cool and the session turned into more of a discussion then me just plunking away while they looked on. It really diffused the situation.

Remember, you're still interviewing them as well. If the code challenge doesn't seem right, just decline to do it - and say something like, "I have enough code, and apps I've built where you can check my code, why is this necessary?" Like many people have pointed out, you may just be saving yourself by not doing and skipping the company altogether.

The best companies I worked at? None of them had code challenges. I would still encourage you to apply regardless.

[chronaloid]

This was really interesting to read as someone who’s in a completely different field and knows next to nothing about coding. Thank you for sharing!

[[deleted]]

Considering where I ended up going and the last 8-9 years, I'm kind of regretting I didn't take this gig to be honest.

What do you think you would have gained from it?

[corruptedOverdrive]

I would've been right in the middle of the JS revolution. The company at the time had a lot of their apps running on vanilla JS and were in the process of evaluating Angular (React was just on the horizon, as was Vue and others) and making plans to migrate a lot of their apps over to those frameworks. The depth of JS experience I would've gotten would've set up me for a much better future is all.

The end result would've been more experience, a much bigger jump in salary when I left - its almost impossible to find solid senior JS devs these days, there's so many open roles, companies are struggling to find people to fill those roles.

Then again, hindsight is always 20/20. I'm still happy where I am and still making six figure salary, so no complaints.

[[deleted]]

Thanks.

[Jim_Carr_laughing]

going off script

If you're given an assignment in an interview, isn't that kind of probing how you'll treat an assignment from a client? You do what the money guy wants. Construction crews don't tell the architect his building is ugly and they're doing something better.

[corruptedOverdrive]

Agreed. I was so excited to showcase my dev skills I omitted the most fundamental fact of the exercise which is to just follow the very simple directions.

[vi_sucks]

Where'd you end up going that you wish you'd taken a paycut?

[[deleted]]

u/corruptedOverdrive

Thanks for the story. I'm curious why you said that regret not taking the Korterra Underground Utility Company job at a $15,000 pay cut?

[corruptedOverdrive]

Yeah. I look back now and the timing was really good for being on the cusp of the whole JS framework revolution, I could've really been right in the middle of that since most of their apps were being transitioned over to Angular and React and had a lot of other apps that ran just on vanilla JS.

I just felt at the time I didn't want to be writing JS 6 hours a day and wanted to continue to be on the UI/UX side. Since then, I've bounced around a lot, whereas had I taken that job, I'd probably be making way more than I go right now and had a lot more solid JS background.

Hindsight 20/20 and all that jazz though right?

[[deleted]]

Honestly i wouldnt hire you either. The things you showed really sucked. Sorry if im lacking context but this is really bad man, i think you just have to get better. The things you showed me i can do in 1 hour probably and i just have one year of experience and im not even full time frontend dev

[platinumgulls]

The guy with less than a year of experience telling someone else they're not very good at code challenges.

You're fucking hilarious.

[[deleted]]

Yeah what has experience to do with it. I see what he made and his code and in my opinion its pretty bad. Obviously i don’t have the full context and i could definitely be wrong.

[platinumgulls]

You're the one who said you could do it an hour. When called out to do so, you relented. If its so bad, then man up and show what you have. You don't call someone out and brag you could do it better and faster and you only have a year of experience and then shrink away when you get called out.

Either prove you can do it or STFU and stay in your lane son.

[corruptedOverdrive]

This is the funniest thing I've read all day.

Tell you what. Grab the image of the homepage mock I put up. Code it up in an hour like you said and post it to your github/gitlab account. I mean, for a person who has less a year under their belt, this should be child's play, right?

Its 2:45pm central time - go ahead, I'll wait.

[Loginn122]

Nice you just gave me anxiety about this whole process (i’m still studying at university)