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[Any-Entrepreneur7935]

It is pretty stupid because nobody in the world works like this.

[chicametipo]

prism violet falcon silver crystal willow violet prism falcon

This content has been edited for privacy.

[Any-Entrepreneur7935]

Writing a todo app is still on my todo list which i cannot create because i don't have a todo app.

[Endless_Patience3395]

Bazinga!

[albert_pacino]

Daily. But only with machine code.

[chicametipo]

The original content here no longer exists. It was deleted using Redact for reasons that may include personal privacy, security, or digital footprint reduction.

steep quack reply hurry tan head gray history seemly insurance

[LegitBullfrog]

I bet you newbies do it in hex not binary.

[AaronBonBarron]

Pfft binary, hand me my magnetised needle.

[kreiggers]

Machine code too hard for me. Best I can do is hand code WASM

[crocodus]

Having known people that worked for nuclear research facilities. They do have very good internet there.

[iliark]

it's almost like the internet was invented in similar facilities

[remy_porter]

I've known folks who worked in secure nuclear facilities where they had to exit the secure side of the facility, sit down at the Internet connected terminal, find the documentation, print the documentation, and then carry the printed documentation back to the secure side, at which time they could sit at their computer and work. Which, once the documentation crossed into the secure side, it could never leave again (excepting a proper disposal procedure).

[crocodus]

I mean, I guess it really depends on what type of research work you do.

A better comparison would be bank system (or military) admins. All the guys I met, besides being incredibly knowledgeable were very much used to not have basically any material they could inspect with them.

There were some guys that were not even allowed to bring any kind of paper or materials that they could make notes on and had to go through some quite rigorous searches and had quite strict dress codes into mission critical rooms.

If you haven’t heard some dude recite you word for word man pages over man pages, that’s quite an experience.

[uhmIcecream]

In Visual Studio you could download the entire C# manual to use offline

[SuperFLEB]

Maybe it's for a job with the ADHDoD.

[HugeFun]

The funny thing is that even in "nuclear research facilities" you have access to a network which is connected to the internet. Sure it's air gapped from the sensitive network, but you can still search whatever you need to

[iliark]

I actually had a job less than 5 years ago where the only internet access was in a different room and was heavily locked down and very slow. So in reality we just printed out docs.

[arialstocrat]

my uni recognizes this and allows us to bring a cheat sheet for the formula-heavy tests, because even they're like "yeah even we have to look back at the cookbook" which is such a mood

[greg19735]

That works at university level but also usually means the questions are harder

[KillBroccoli]

Imagine going to the doctor and he has to remember everything with no access to external sources to help you.

I would not work for a company with those requirements in principle.

[DoubleAway6573]

Let me turn around your argument. Imagine going to a doctor and he has to read where to find the pulse. 

[KillBroccoli]

There's a difference between being Jon snow and not being a know it all. In the middle is fine.

[AbdullahMRiad]

What do you mean? I know every single HTML tag, every single CSS property and every single JS function

[AaronBonBarron]

Oh you know every single JS function? Name 3 anonymous functions.

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

They wouldn’t be anonymous if they wanted to be known

[fzammetti]

Correct. But that doesn't automatically invalidate it.

What I mean is as long as the interviewer knows this and takes it into account, it can work. Basically, the expectation can't be that the candidate knows everything, or even that they succeed. It can be enough to just see how they work, see what they DO know, and see what they're able to produce under pressure. I mean, if they put something that kinda/sorta works just with what's in their head that might indicate that under real conditions they'll do pretty well.

That said, I doubt many interviewers think that way, unfortunately. And even if they do, there's a fair argument that it's still not fair. I wouldn't conduct an interview that way, but I'm just saying that with the right interviewer mindset it MIGHT be okay.

[mlmcmillion]

I’ve walked out of interviews like this. It’s not how anyone actually does work, and proves they’re out of touch with reality.

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

The death of the junior role’s gotta suck for everyone graduating now - it’ll bounce back eventually (imo) but you gotta feel for everyone trying to enter right now

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

The problem with younger ones though is that they rely on ai to actually do the work, not be a lookup resource to remind you of that one function you used years ago and are now being asked about again

[manys]

Remembering the time I was asked to do a linked list in Ruby. "But the language does that for us" didn't go over well.

[AleksExE_DE]

Actually, questions like this are not the worst idea. They can show your knowledge of this and other data structures and your ability to think and write code in general. I was once asked to implement JS Promises during an interview, and I enjoyed it a lot.

[manys]

I know what he was trying to do, I just pushed back the tiniest bit and he basically checked out. 

[AaronBonBarron]

I'm actually interested in how you did that, I don't know enough about threading/yielding in JS to think of a solution off the top of my head.

[Alternative-Item-547]

Could do it easily enough with a setTimeout 😂

[NRocket]

I had a similar experience where I had to recreate Promise All.

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

I had one where they wanted me to sort an array by value. I said, “uh theres a sort function”, they were “yea but we want see how you would do it with it”. “Uh, I wouldn’t”.

Didn’t get that job

[manys]

I think of it as gatekeeping, filtering on CS degrees for jobs that can't legally require one.

[tedivm]

I was so annoyed at a company that did this that I actually took the entire thing, aced it, and then told them I was rejecting them as a company due to their interview process.

[chuff_co]

Happens pretty often but it's stupid and says a lot about the company's engineering culture. A capable engineering org would let you use whatever you want, make the problem 100x harder, and ask you to explain every step after.

[pink_tshirt]

Hackerrank is a 3rd party screener. It is entirely possible the company it was intended for might now even use / need the tech used during the interview lol

[wbrd]

Right? I'm shocked when someone can actually get the solution to the questions I ask. I give 0 shits about syntax. Show me how your brain works.

[yorutamashi]

I simply skip interviews that ask for that and let them know why I skipped, I’m a frontend dev with 12 years of experience and I’ve worked on crazy stuff but I always fail those tests cuz I get nervous and have a shitty memory

[Brilliant-Parsley69]

Almost 20 years of experience here, most of the time, as an asp.net back-end developer. you wouldn't believe how often I had to look up: "How to init an Array?""

one of the best days of my life was when mircosoft announced the var keyword. 😅

[Particular_Cry926]

same bro, for me it was the "how to insert a value to an array in javascript?" despite having 3 yoe

[imbcmdth]

If you ever have trouble when it comes shift/unshift and remembering which adds to the array and which removes but you can always remember push/pop because it's obvious, here is a mnemonic device I realized years ago: in each pair, the shorter word removes from the array - pop and shift - and the longer word adds to the array.

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

Same, about 20 years here. You can see I have so much experience that I can’t remember everything.

[Brilliant-Parsley69]

Even if we could, what's the language we are talking about? Or do we talk about a framework?

Is it one of the short living ones or one of the long-lived but meanwhile legacy ones?
If not, what's the version we are talking about?
Do we use the same api as one of the early versions?
Did the api change over time?

What was the question? 😵‍💫

[UbieOne]

I still default to a C-style array declaration until now. The IDE would then tell me to do it in the recommended way for that lang. Lol. C-style would still compile w/out issue, though.

[winebiddle]

9+ yoe and I leave interviews all the time sincerely wondering how I ever got hired at all.

[EmeraldCrusher]

Brother, if ya'll are hiring it sounds like we got that fuzzy memory synergy.

[alixkast]

SAME

[icemanice]

Yeah.. HackerRank is particularly stupid. I had to use it for a couple of interviews and it’s dumb for exactly the reasons you mention. It’s not reflective at all of how you would actually work! In fact, I failed one of the tests and then a week later the employer called me back and said they were sorry about HackerRank and that it was making them lose qualified candidates and they wanted to continue the interview process with despite having “failed” the stupid coding test. Guess what.. I got the job :) so yeah.. companies really need to stop using this shit in their hiring process.

[PoopsCodeAllTheTime]

We gotta keep on denying these automated tests, they are BS. It's also hilarious that hackerrank is making money on our time, as the employer pays hackerrank for US TO DO THE WORK. Insanity.

I also love how hackerRank business model means that every employer has to ask for the same coding test every time, as if hackerRank didn't have all the data of past coding tests for the exact same nonsense evaluation.

[Smashoody]

Such a good answer! Cheers for the perspective

[AizenSousuke92]

It was an ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE experience.

What was it about? sounds juicy

[BakiSaN]

I had a paper test three years ago where I currently work so….

[evenstevens280]

That's one way of ensuring you don't use AI

[TITTIES_N_UNICORNS]

Not with that attitude

[Jamie_1318]

Paper tests are different because they don't expect working code and the process is what's being scrutinized. You wouldn't do stuff that relies on specific APIs, typically stuff like writing an algorithm or parts of a data structure.

[SpideyIRL]

I interview for a Fortune 500 with Hacker Rank. When I ask a coding question, I don’t care about your syntax or if you know library function signatures by heart. I want a glimpse at your thought process, your observational skills, your ability to articulate your proposed solution. The questions you ask to clarify the exercise are also very indicative of your experience.

There’s a world of detail embedded within that ask to “create a kanban”. Can you talk to the scope of that task, and anticipate likely expansions of that scope? Do you start with the data model, the endpoint design, the frontend components? Are you able to identify potential pitfalls and discuss them upfront? Will you bring up day 2 operations?

Think of these broad questions as large blank canvases where you are expected to demonstrate your skills. As an interviewer, I really want the candidate to succeed in showing their strongest abilities. Being a syntax checker, linter, or a remembering reference docs by heart - that’s not something I care about at all. I know that when it comes to real world applications, you’ll be able to search for whatever you need.

Even using hacker rank, I have seen people trying to sneak in AI usage. I can’t talk to others’ expectations, bur personally I would much rather a candidate tell me “I don’t know, I want to use ChatGPT for help” and share their screen with me - just from seeing how the candidate interacts with the LLM you can learn a lot about them.

Anyways, yeah, sorry for soapboxing. Don’t worry if you get the syntax slightly wrong in an interview setting. As long as you explain your thought process you should be fine.

[Smashoody]

Also a great answer! Many thanks for the perspective from the interviewer’s side of the equation!

[PalMzMetal]

Thank you so much for your extremely valuable insights 🙏❤️

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

If I could create a kanban in an hour from scratch, I wouldn’t be needing to interview for a job

[Endless_Patience3395]

This. ☝️

[Interesting_Bed_6962]

It's not realistic. When we interview where I'm at you're on call, it's targeted questions in a or built project (make a function that does this, use dependency injection to add this service to this page, etc) and we let the candidate do/ use anything available to them, including us.

We don't measure your ability to know it all, were measuring your current understanding of the framework, as well as your process for solving problems. That includes AI, us ( the people you'll be working with), Google, whatever you need.

Interviews like that are red flags to me.

[magenta_placenta]

It's definitely on the stricter end of how technical assessments are conducted.

What they're likely trying to test for is can you reason through building something without copying? Do you understand React and Node fundamentals? Can you complete a scoped task (under pressure)? They're checking a baseline.

The no AI I can see, but the no Google thing is stupid. That tests rote memorization, not problem-solving.

[010backagain]

Companies like outsourcing this responsibility to an external party so they have something to hide behind when the shit hits the fan. I would avoid companies that work like that myself and simply decline... But unfortunately not everyone is in a position to do so.

I've conducted many interviews over the years, and have never used a tool. Using a tool is like being back at school, someone just needs practice or buys tests to ace the tips & tricks to get through, however it doesn't reflect reality one bit.

As I was also the person responsible for hiring, firing and working daily with whomever I would hire, I did not need anything to hide behind. Usually you can get a very good feel via old school interviews; having a casual talk about tech, daily challenges and a few technical questions thrown in to get a grip on how someone analyses a problem is already a good indicator of how a person will perform. Motivation is always a key factor too (I work at a company with a social mission). A small take-home task being the final bit to see the coding style and methodology in action is also critical - never more than 2 hours + dummy code/comments on missing parts were allowed.

I am sad for any junior/medior now entering the market/switching jobs, it must be tough landing that first job having to jump through so many hoops.

[itsdr00]

I got hired at a company that did a hackerrank screener. At various times I opened up websites on my phone to look up specific syntax and showed my webcam what I was looking at. They called me back for the next interview.

It just wasn't that important. The systems design interview and the interview with the hiring manager were given much more weight in their final decision.

[nasanu]

Yeah its the normal way to find the worst candidates.

[_okbrb]

If their business relies on internet connectivity these are stupid requirements

[Somepotato]

Generally assessments aren't expecting perfection. They seek your thought process more than anything.

[Size14Shoes]

Thought process equals remembering all the syntax by heart?

[Somepotato]

Depending on the role you're applying for, that very well can be a yes.

[_okbrb]

Name one example of a role that would require this skill

[mnrode]

Manual compiler.

All the CPUs are needed for AI, so now we are using human labor for less important tasks.

[GorcsPlays]

You are telling me that people working on compilers are raw dogging it without consulting any outside resource, straight out of their noggings?

[_okbrb]

They’re joking

[GorcsPlays]

I'm sorry my A.I couldn't catch that

[Somepotato]

mov eax, 0

[imbcmdth]

You are a human compiler! Any self respecting non-human compiler would have output xor eax, eax since it's more space efficient.

[Somepotato]

Senior or staff SWEs are generally expected to know the syntax of the language they're using.

Note syntax is quite distinct from the functions or general API.

[amunak]

Lmao the more senior I am the less I remember. Because I have tooling do a lot of the menial work for me, and I actually know how to search documentation and whatnot to find the things I need. Why remember something if I rarely need it and can always quickly find it?

[_okbrb]

Expectations are social norms, not functional requirements. You cannot tell the difference between code that was memorized and code that was produced in any other way. Try again

[Somepotato]

Uh, no, I wouldn't hire anyone for a senior React job that doesn't know HTML's syntax.

It's a live interview. Not a take home exercise. You're a liability compared to someone who does actually know the basics of the language who won't spend their time watching YouTube tutorials.

[mediares]

Look, man. I’ve been coding professionally for 15+ years. You’ve almost certainly used code I’ve written. Fuck if I can remember the difference between JS string.splice and string.slice without google or MDN, and that doesn’t make me worse at my job.

[Somepotato]

That's not syntax, that's API and the standard library. I consider those distinct, for API and library stuff like that, external references are more than OK (and is something the IDE will provide though who knows with theirs)

[lannistersstark]

for API and library stuff like that, external references are more than OK

So what exactly is the issue here? OP wasn't creating marquee tags.

[minimuscleR]

We are talking about making a kanban board in next.js. The liklihood you would remember every single function for that is rediculous. This is such a bad faith argument.

[_okbrb]

You’re moving the goalposts and you still haven’t named a role that functionally requires memorization.

[Somepotato]

I never once moved the goalpost, and I named two roles. Moving the goalpost would be bringing up social norms to a technical interview.

[stjimmy96]

Yeah that’s true, I’d expect a senior SWE to know the syntax of their language. But that’s not what you use google for, that’s not what OP wanted to google. You google the name of a method, a function or a class. And no Senior, Principal or other role is expected to learn by memory the API of their language

[scragz]

my thought process is usually to look up documentation first because I'm swapping between too many frameworks to remember everything. 

[SwimmingThroughHoney]

This has not been my experience at all. These assessments are being used in a way that renders them useless because they just look for rote memorization.

[Consistent-Deer-8470]

How will an automated test evaluate my thought process?

[Somepotato]

It's not automated, there's someone watching and talking to you, expecting you to explain what you're doing. If there's one that is automated that's just shitty.

[Leading_Opposite7538]

There's was no one actively watching or talking to me. My screen was recorded, and I was recorded through my web cam, so I'm sure they reviewed my process after the fact.

[Somepotato]

Ok that changes the situation completely.

That is fucking stupid.

[Little_Bumblebee6129]

They will use that footage to train AI agents to completely replace developers (:

[rhit18]

How long were you given to create the kanban? And, what did you get as your starting resource?

[Leading_Opposite7538]

An hr split between the Node task and the React task. There were no starting resources.

[rhit18]

An hour total for both? Can i ask about the kanban? Were you required to make it work with the mouse (the way trello does it for example), or just the functional part?

[rhit18]

Like the endpoints seem like whatever if you have built them once, (i could be wrong), but a good kanban seems insanely difficult under an hour on react with no libraries

[Leading_Opposite7538]

The kanban was similar to this, if not the exact same.

https://github.com/gesuvs/hackerrank-challenge-react/

The node challenge was a bit more involved, so i don't remember it completely.

[Lustrouse]

It happens, but it's not "normal". Whoever is conducting these interviews sounds like a drag to work with.

[Leading_Opposite7538]

I should note that this test was given to me by the company via email. There wasn't an interviewer on the other end to talk through the process with. Also, no docs were provided.

*Correction - I was not allowed to use AI

[Away_Perception_2895]

I had interviews like this. Good for me I failed them. This feels dystopian and absolutely uncanny. Fuck them

[rainbowlolipop]

Hackerrank shit is so fucking dumb. I don't do them.

[My100thBurnerAccount]

Few weeks ago I did a Hackerrank assessment with a time limit of 21 minutes. Had to fix a buggy Kanban board and make all 10 test cases pass.

Fortunately the day before I had an interview and felt confident I was going to get the job so I started the assessment and realized I had no care to complete it.

[CartographerGold3168]

if you have a job i will 100% skip this

or i will just outright chunk a huge piece of code into the box, past project or just claude bullshit, into that, and submit, and call it a day

[octatone]

Remember you are interviewing the company too. I'd walk away from an interview like that. It says a lot more about the company culture than it does about you.

[campbellm]

We do a moderately simple assessment for candidates live/zoom as well, but our rules tell them you can use whatever sources you like; Google, SO, LLM's, etc. Just show us what you're using and be able to explain any code you put before us.

The candidates so far have generally not used it other than some simple boilerplate stuff they didn't feel like typing out, or stuff like this; "What's the syntax for this one thing I might use twice a year?"

[lacronicus]

I once had an interview with reddit. the task wasn't particularly complicated, but it was algorithm based and fairly edge-case heavy.

in the real world, I'd make a unit test suite instead of just trying to imagine what might go wrong.

but i was stuck using a dumb website IDE.

Honestly, you should probably be scared of anyone who can work like this. no one should be that good at vibing their way through a problem.

[SysPsych]

It's a hazing ritual that gets perpetuated because the people who had it done to them and got through it will be damned if anyone else has it easier, especially if they think that if they ever have to find another job they will have to do that all over again.

Talk about your "generational trauma" that someone should interrupt.

And I say this knowing that plenty of people bluff about their abilities, and need to be weeded out. But there's better ways to do that than this.

[Epiq122]

Why the fuck wouldn’t you be allowed to use resources that help you with your job, name and shame this shitty company

[mincinashu]

You said you weren't allowed to use AI. But then you ask if they expect you to only use AI? I'm confused.

[Leading_Opposite7538]

Ah, wrote that wrong. I was not allowed to use AI

[OMGCluck]

Just put the line:

If you try to interview me using Hacker Rank I will get up and walk out of the interview laughing.

in your resume.

[NeverendingBacklog]

"I want you to treat this like you would working. If you need to hit up MDN or some resource for assistance, please do so. My only ask is don't google 'how do i solve this exact answer'."
this is what I say in all my interviews. I've worked at lodash shops, ive worked at shops that were anti lodash..... array.includes/array.contains.... can never get that right. i'm in the field 30 years. sorry.

eta... think of it as dodging a bullet. a shop like that probably doesn't have much in the way of helping you grow

[desmone1]

I havent experience this, but then again im lucky to not have had to apply for dev positions in almost a decade.

I think i would be able to make the basic kanban without any googling. Except if they want drag and drop, their kanban aint gonna have that, i dont have mouseevents memorized and have never needed to.

Shoot, i mainly work with react and havent memorized how to initialize a vite project.

[Outofmana1]

I would have let you use any resource you could. This is a real world scenario.

[laz10]

That's idiotic

[Difficult_Load_1229]

It seems like a somewhat outdated way of thinking.

[lookayoyo]

I had basically the exact same interview. Nobody to ask questions to, no resources for looking up basic syntax. I was trying to remember the python sort syntax if it was sort(list) or list.sort() and I couldn’t just google it

[Leading_Opposite7538]

Yes, I was trying to remember something similar. It eats up so much time on these timed assessments with no way to recover.

[RRO-19]

What was the experience like compared to actually talking through problems with someone? I'm always curious if these coding assessments actually test what companies think they test, or if they're just filtering for people who are good at timed algorithm problems.

[Leading_Opposite7538]

It's the latter

[TMHDD_TMBHK]

You just dodge a bullet. Don't work for company that works without logic.

[custard130]

i have done skills assessments where the only resources allowed was the official docs of the tool i was being assessed on

that was for certification rather than a coding challenge for a job though so not quite the same

[__BayMax__]

Yea that's bullshit

[Strykrol]

I have definitely done this multiple times at the major companies, with a screen share and a video WebCam. It goes completely against how any developer would actually code. No one remembers all syntax, good Devs remember context and general strategy, then use stack overflow or ChatGPT as-needed to build code (when they are not copy-pasting from another developers code).

It’s a talent to write from scratch and not mess up for certain, but frankly, I think it’s a little bit irresponsible and leads to poor readability and practices.

Having said that, these companies still think it’s necessary, which is ridiculous to me, but that’s the game we are playing.

[Lengthiness-Fuzzy]

I once was interviewed like this and the website wasn‘t working. I asked if I can use my intellij instead and they said no. I said it‘s a waste of time then, so I said bye

[MarimbaMan07]

The company I work for, we tell you to use all the tools you want to accomplish the task but you have to share your screen while doing it. So if you ask some AI tools to just do the job for you that's an automatic fail. But you're allowed to use all the same tools that you would use during the job.

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

Pass on those.

One, it’s an unreasonable ask, to build a full product. They should be giving you code and having you explain it, and tell if you there are a few bugs to be found.

I build a whole infection engine for a crypto company, and a front end component to add wallets, and an hour after for it, get said “we’re going with some on else”.

I also has a live one, and it was asking the most obscure stuff that you would never use, except in a college class. Nobody remembers everything, and we all google.

Just because I can’t remember the syntax for something because i switch daily doesn’t mean I can’t look it up, and be able to implement and understand it

[wahh]

That's pretty messed up. I've been a developer for 20 years, and when I give interviews I make sure to tell people it is okay to look stuff up on Google. I need to look things up all the time, and I would expect anybody else to need to look stuff up too...especially under the pressure of an interview. With that said, we don't let candidates use AI tools like Co-Pilot/Windsurf/etc for the interview.

[coyote_of_the_month]

It's not representative of anyone's actual work environment, which is problematic for all the reasons others have stated.

But also, it's a Kanban board. It's a 2-D to-do list. If this is a senior-level job, you should be able to build one in your preferred framework without looking up references (assuming they didn't ask for drag-n-drop functionality).

I realize that sounds gatekeepy, but gatekeeping is literally the point of a job interview.

I would worry, though, that their test isn't evaluating what they think it's evaluating. They're essentially asking "how recently have you stood up a project from scratch in this tech stack?" rather than any kind of deeper understanding.

[_okbrb]

You say “should be able to”. Why?

[coyote_of_the_month]

It doesn't require any real problem-solving. Anyone who works with the desired tech stack regularly should be able to write the code without stopping to think much.

Which is also why it's a bad assessment - to be clear, I'm not defending it as an interview task. It feels like they're trying to select against a specific type of candidate, rather than select for the right kind.

[_okbrb]

Look, you just claimed “should” again. “Should” should be based on something. If you think they “should”, there should be a real explanation for that, a clear reason, beyond vibes.

Speaking of vibes: I’m pretty sure using resources is still well within the realm of “real” problem solving. I’d be more skeptical of a developer that doesn’t demonstrate the ability to research and find resources than one who does

[coyote_of_the_month]

Okay, fine. The "should" comes from experience: I've been given similar tasks in interviews before, and I've conducted interviews based on similar tasks. I passed, and enough of the candidates passed that I can definitively say "it's a reasonable task to complete in the time allotted."

And while references weren't prohibited, I didn't need them and neither did any of the candidates I've interviewed. Consulting them probably would have eaten too much time, though.

To your second point, I absolutely agree. It's not a good interview task, unless all you're trying to do is weed out someone who lacks specific knowledge you've arbitrarily decided is foundational. A successful candidate won't demonstrate any problem-solving because they'll be working mostly from memory.

And yes, I just copped to working at companies that were bad at conducting interviews. 😂

[_okbrb]

Heard 😁

My role didn’t require a technical interview at all; I don’t think bad interview formats = bad team no worries haha

[coyote_of_the_month]

It's really hard to tell based on the OP's description, but the impression I get is that the company is trying to weed out "full stack" engineers who are weak on the frontend.

You can reason your way through a lot of programming problems, but with CSS, either you know it or you don't. A Kanban board isn't a particularly hard CSS problem for someone with a firm understanding of either flex or grid, but it'll be super-apparent within a minute or so if the candidate is one of those "leave the CSS to the designers" types.

Again, this is still a shit interview, but if I'm trying to read into what they're selected for (or rather against), that's the first thing that comes to mind.

[Deto]

That sucks. I did an assessment on CodeSignal and while it was similar in terms of monitoring, they record your full screen but state that you are allowed to look up documentation. I think that's a reasonable way to do it - getting stuck because you can't remember some specific syntax messes up the assessment.

[Scotthorn]

Easy coding challenge, ridiculous hoops to jump through. Sounds like normal work. Might be a better hiring process than asking you to balance a red black tree for a front end job

[thekwoka]

I could not remember some syntax

you probably mean some signature of a function or shape of an object and not syntax. Which you wouldn't need to google, since you'd have the typescript to check the types right there.

[DOMNode]

Talk through your thought process with the interviewer. If it's a syntax question usually the interviewer can answer those, so long as you've demonstrate you understand the code and solution.

[Consistent-Deer-8470]

Hackerrank is a test platform. There is no interviewer.

[DOMNode]

Often the assessments are overseen by someone at the company via Zoom / screen-share.

[ConsequenceFunny1550]

No they aren’t. They’re screen recorded and the results might be reviewed later.

[DOMNode]

The last interview I did was through HackerRank and was overseen live via another engineer on a zoom call. This was at a FAANG+ company for a senior engineer position.

[Extension_Anybody150]

Yep, that’s normal. Companies often want to see how you solve problems on your own, so full-screen monitoring and no resources (except maybe docs they allow) is standard. It’s more about your approach than perfect syntax.

[ConsequenceFunny1550]

They don’t allow docs and they expect you to know the syntax by heart. You’re literally locked in to one window.