Wow, I am very sorry to hear about that and thank you for letting us know. If a candidate's resume looks strong enough that we request a code sample, our policy is to always get back to them to let them know either way. As for what we're looking for, these days we tell them:
> - Submit a sample of any code you have written that is large and complete enough to judge your software engineering skills, and sufficiently interesting to discuss during a technical phone interview. Modern C++ is generally preferred but Java or Python or whatever you have is fine.
> - Or, if you have an appropriate code sample available on github or elsewhere, feel free to send us a link instead.
> - Or, complete a <= 1-hour online coding exercise.
We consciously request something that demonstrates "software engineering skills" rather than just "programming skills", since we're looking for concise, readable, maintainable, consistent code in which the author has made good software design decisions. While it doesn't have to be giant or complex, it needs to be more than say a homework problem. That said, we have received impressive code samples from new college graduates or even internship candidates, usually from significant course projects or something they have developed on the side.
Again I'm so sorry some folks didn't hear back from us after submitting a code sample. You or they can reach out to me at hackernews at stellar science dot com and I'll be happy to get them the feedback that we should have sent, and figure out why they didn't receive it sooner.
> - Submit a sample of any code you have written that is large and complete enough to judge your software engineering skills, and sufficiently interesting to discuss during a technical phone interview. Modern C++ is generally preferred but Java or Python or whatever you have is fine.
> - Or, if you have an appropriate code sample available on github or elsewhere, feel free to send us a link instead.
> - Or, complete a <= 1-hour online coding exercise.
We consciously request something that demonstrates "software engineering skills" rather than just "programming skills", since we're looking for concise, readable, maintainable, consistent code in which the author has made good software design decisions. While it doesn't have to be giant or complex, it needs to be more than say a homework problem. That said, we have received impressive code samples from new college graduates or even internship candidates, usually from significant course projects or something they have developed on the side.
Again I'm so sorry some folks didn't hear back from us after submitting a code sample. You or they can reach out to me at hackernews at stellar science dot com and I'll be happy to get them the feedback that we should have sent, and figure out why they didn't receive it sooner.