I was interviewing with companies last Fall and got a homework assignment project where I could pick from 3 different problems. I am not big on companies giving me 30 minutes and expecting hours of investment in return but I figured I would look into these problems to see if they were worth solving.
I literally copied the questions verbatim into a search and found the solution to all 3 all over GitHub in multiple languages. How is this an appropriate evaluation? Certainly a candidate could simply copy the answer in their chosen language, tweak the structure a bit and call it their answer.
I contacted their recruiter and told them I was no longer interested in interviewing. I told them I couldn't take them seriously since all they did to invest in the interview process was to steal questions from other hiring managers.
If a company wants an efficient, honest and quality interview process it needs to go both ways.
> I literally copied the questions verbatim into a search and found the solution to all 3 all over GitHub in multiple languages.
So what?
Let's say you know nothing and just copy somebody else's code. Good for you. The next step in the interview process is that you have to do a code walkthrough explaining what you did and why.
Do you really think someone can get past this stage with a code they just copied from github?
I can even imagine that someone finds this existing code, and then they copy it, then they improve upon it, and present it as such. If they are open about it, I'd have no problems from the interviewing side. In fact, it could even be better, because the more complex the code is, the easier it is to talk about it (and gather information about the candidate).
My cynical take is that this company views development as a combination of basic coding skills plus the ability to find solutions on stack overflow. Maybe it’s exactly what they were evaluating.
It’s the same situation with leetcode questions. The only difference with leetcode is that you don’t know the exact questions in advance but you roughly have the total set of questions that could be asked. Complete with solutions, YouTube tutorials, and discussion threads.
I literally copied the questions verbatim into a search and found the solution to all 3 all over GitHub in multiple languages. How is this an appropriate evaluation? Certainly a candidate could simply copy the answer in their chosen language, tweak the structure a bit and call it their answer.
I contacted their recruiter and told them I was no longer interested in interviewing. I told them I couldn't take them seriously since all they did to invest in the interview process was to steal questions from other hiring managers.
If a company wants an efficient, honest and quality interview process it needs to go both ways.