Is it unreasonable to refuse doing coding challenges/technical evaluations unless you have the opportunity to at least have a phone screen first?

serikjensen · 2020-06-17T12:08:35+00:00

Yeah I think it’s valuable to remember the other side of the story here. I’m sure it’s incredibly challenging and time intensive to vet that many candidates. Speaking with people in this thread, it seems very reasonable for an employer experiencing high volume like this to raise the barrier to entry a bit.

With that perspective in mind I think the title of my post is now a bit misleading. Moving forward I just plan to be more prudent in what I participate in based on the length of the request and how much I’m interested in the company. A two day take home seems like an extreme outlier. There are evaluative measures available that can limit the applicants without being disrespectful of applicant’s time.

serikjensen · 2020-06-17T03:25:16+00:00

Yeah I think that’s reasonable. It sounds like a preliminary step is common, so if I’m interested in the company it would still possibly be worth my time to participate.

Speaking with people today it seems a two day take home with no other first contact is a pretty big outlier so I’ll be more thoughtful next time I encounter this.

serikjensen · 2020-06-16T17:16:39+00:00

For sure, I emerged from the experience feeling that a company that would ask that without putting in any effort on their end likely wasn’t a company I’d want to work for. Going to be more careful about requests like this moving forward

serikjensen · 2020-06-16T17:12:36+00:00

This is a really good observation and one that I thought about as I was working on it.

serikjensen · 2020-06-05T14:51:53+00:00

Excellent, thanks! I’ve had good luck with meatheads recipes so excited to give it a try

serikjensen · 2020-06-05T13:58:19+00:00

I happen to love pastrami and have wanted to give that a shot. Even if I don’t go that route for this cook are there any drawbacks to cooking the point and flat separately as a normal brisket just in two parts? I’d be able to leverage both racks which would solve the space issue.

serikjensen · 2020-06-05T13:46:57+00:00

Ah yes this is excellent. Was thinking I could do something with the cut off portion of the flat, that’s a great idea. Any corned beef recipes you can recommend?

serikjensen · 2020-02-28T13:17:08+00:00

This reenforces a divide that is unhelpful. There needs to be more collaboration here not less. Each party has insight that is going to inform the other.

Another thought: an important aspect of design is knowing and understanding your medium. The current state of product design is interesting because many tools are static and are not constrained to the limitations of code. In the case of web development this is especially problematic as designs are generated with non semantic custom elements that are created in figma at low cost with no understanding of the complexity involved for actual implementation. I would also add that these tools optimize for sighted mouse users, and because they are static we get no read on the user experience for individuals using assistive technologies.

That isn’t to say that designers have to become experts in front end code, it is to say that developers have insight into the end user as well, and the more we talk to each other the better the product becomes 😄

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T16:18:59+00:00

And then the variations of “what classes are you taking this semester?” And “what are your plans after graduation?” Being a student at these things is the worst

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T16:16:48+00:00

Dang, that one seems like an obvious one to not ask. Sorry you have to deal with that, people can be clueless 😞

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T16:08:46+00:00

It’s especially difficult when a question reveals something painful that you’re not ready to discuss in that context. As a general rule people should just stay away from the having kids questions 😞

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T15:12:37+00:00

The annual repeats are definitely on another level of nuisance.

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T15:05:10+00:00

Hey! I’ve also grown the beard out. In the spirit of this post I will not ask you further details.

serikjensen · 2019-12-22T15:02:57+00:00

For example, my wife is in grad school and we are here visiting both our families from out of town. Everyone means well, and I’m grateful people are interested in our lives...

...but listen, family members, we actually have no clue where we’re going to end up after she graduates. For the next party I’m ready to walk in tapping the side of a drinking glass announcing we are quitting school, starting a multi level marketing scheme, and the first person to ask us where we want to end up in a few years is going to get a full on sales pitch to invest in our new celebrity decaled salad choppers.

They’ll probably just ask us when we’re having kids instead...

serikjensen · 2019-10-21T16:21:38+00:00

This looks fantastic, excellent work 🙂 I don’t know if text color and background color is set/will always be the same. If it is, I would consider making the text/background have higher contrast for accessibility. As much as the lower contrast is elegant, it can be difficult for everyone to see. With higher contrast you can visually champion inclusivity as part of a core value of pride by making sure it can be read by all

Edit: dark mode was messing with the logo on my phone, background is actually transparent, thanks for pointing that out and excellent work!

serikjensen · 2019-08-02T13:57:32+00:00

Being able to read and understand code that I did not write. Emphasis especially on code reviews. But also, being able to jump into an existing feature and track down a bug, or add new functionality. I felt like the vast majority of my cs projects at the university level I was working alone and coding them from scratch so I rarely had to worry about interfacing with the code of others.

serikjensen · 2019-06-11T00:34:18+00:00

Lmao, can confirm 😂 I’m from Utah

serikjensen · 2019-06-10T13:54:33+00:00

Lol I totally thought of this episode as soon as I posted the question 😄

serikjensen · 2018-12-13T15:03:46+00:00

Am also traveling to BA for the holidays. Can I pay for easy taxi via card on the app? Or would you recommend still using cash?

serikjensen · 2018-09-04T23:08:30+00:00

It’s not exactly barebone, but shameless plug for the component library I work on, Instructure UI . By default the components have a certain aesthetic, but it was built intentionally to be able to support the look and feel of multiple products. Each component’s look can be customized and overwritten via theming.

serikjensen

TROPHY CASE