Because they sent us their resumes
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@CodeNinja said:
@CodeNinja said:
I hope that you got more than just 10 resumes in, and you just weeded out all the bad resumes and were left with 10.We recently opened up a position here for a second DB/C# person.
Ok, wow, just got notified that we have been getting new resumes. They make it through the first layer, and we fire off a simple test to them. Most of the work is done, we send them a simple SQL DB that actually works, an XML data dump, and tell them we need a C# program to import the XML into the DB, then a way to generate a report off it that opens in the C# form.
They pulled those of us on the DB team (ok, quick backstory, we have one dedicated DB/C# person and a 'team' that consists of 3 more programmers who help out but know jack-shit about SQL) into a conference room and handed us a stack of resumes to browse through and pick the best ones out of. Management heavily hinted that we should OK all of them.
So we started looking through them, couple of them were OK, but some were really out there... then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.
Yep. Instead of getting new resumes, they just dug all the ones they'd gotten a year and a half ago out of storage and had us going through them again. Needless to say, even though we OKed some of them, not a single one interviewed.
AFAIK the position is still open, and with what they want to pay, will likely remain so for some time until we get a desperate college graduate.
From my experience, HR is just a giant cluster of fail pretty much everywhere.
We've sent the test to 10 people, 2 have come back, neither completed. Several people said that it was either too hard, or that they didn't have the time to do it but they'd still love to fly down (on the company dime) to talk with us about their salary requirements. My personal favorite was the guy who said he had 15 years of experience, so the test was beneath him.
I'm sorry, this test is pretty indicative of what we'd need them to do. If they aren't willing to do it, I can't imagine why we'd want to discuss salary requirements. Not to mention I know this isn't a hard test, we passed it out to 3 different people in the company and they were all able to do it in a few hours, and none of them had much SQL experience to begin with. All the answers can be found in an 'SQL for dummies' book!<sarcasm>As far as the code is concerned, I know Oracle has many different import methods, and I am sure XML data dump is one of them. So first part of the solution is to use Oracle for your database. Assuming you are not trying to do anything fancy on the import you can skip generating any C# code for the import. As for the second part of the solution everyone knows you use a COTS product like Cognos for report generation. So you can do the whole thing without writing a single line of C# code.</ sarcasm>
If a company asked me to write that amount of code, I would be concerned that they are trying to get me to solve a coding issue they are having trouble with without paying me. And if the company is struggling with something that simple I don't want to know what their code base is like. The end result would be I would run away and look else where. So CodeNinja would my instict of fleeing in fear be correct?
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@Anketam said:
So CodeNinja would my instict of fleeing in fear be correct?
Nah - you'd be one of the majority who presumed that was the case regardless of the truth of the matter and didn't bother either returning the gratis code, nor asked about salary requirements.
I'm also of the mind that this sort of initial screen (that takes even current employees a 'few hours' to complete) is indicative of a company I'd probably not want to join and decline their kind offer of employment.
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@PJH said:
I'm also of the mind that this sort of initial screen (that takes even current employees a 'few hours' to complete) is indicative of a company I'd probably not want to join and decline their kind offer of employment.
Not sure about that meself. For one thing, it gives me an idea of the work expectations and a comparison of my skills against their requirements:
- it could take me half an hour from sketching out something to knocking up a bit of code that demonstrates normal workflow (but contains no real exception-handling other than a TODO) for a proof-of-concept code
- it could take me the best part of an evening and I'll still not have a working model unless I devote the most part of a weekend upon further research - so I know I'll flounder badly when up against other coders who could scribble out something so trivial in minutes.
I'm ambivalent about the thought that a company may do it just to gain free snippets. There's no chance that they'll get further code from me without hiring me, and they'll be potentially putting something into production that's unmaintainable by them (on the premise they have no capability of producing it themselves so relied upon the interview process to snag free code). Then again I don't code for a living and have given plenty of free time to volunteer projects so have a different outlook upon gratis code.
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Well, the import of the XML into the provided database is as simple as telling SQL to import the XML, since it was exported from that same database. I think it's something like one call to perform.
It's not hard, hell the hardest thing is making the C# wrapper application, and we all know how hard that is. We're talking 'hello world' level of difficulty here. It's got two buttons, 'Import from XML' and 'View Report'. Most of the actual work is in displaying the report, but it's a really small data-set compared to what we're working with in reality. We're a pretty small shop when it comes to software engineering considering what we do, I think there are around 20 people in various software-related roles. Most of us were hired in directly out of school, which is a problem, since we only have one person with any real SQL experience. The fact that it took people with no SQL experience a few hours to do seems to me to be a good indicator that it's not a hard test. However, you're right, it's also an indicator that we need more people in our SQL development teams... which is why we are hiring to begin with.
@Anketam said:So CodeNinja would my instict of fleeing in fear be correct?
Yes, but not for the reasons you expect. I like my coworkers, we do pretty good considering our levels of experience and the demands management likes to heap upon us. I don't think we've ever not succeeded, it just sometimes takes us right up to the line and requires us to put in huge hours, which isn't a problem for the company since we're all salary and don't get overtime or any compensation at all for anything over 40 hours.
I can't really recommend to anyone to work here if they are looking for a stable work environment with good compensation. If you're just looking for work and want to get along with your coworkers, it's great, but don't expect to be well paid or treated all that nicely most of the time. It's not uncommon for entire development teams to be called out in front of everyone by certain managers who love to scream and use curse words. That said, we've got a World of Beer nearby and I have a mile commute every morning.
