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Ask HN: Best way to have candidates share code for takehome evaluations?

by collectedparts on 8/8/22, 1:21 AM with 13 comments

I used to be against takehome evaluations (I thought companies showed the most respect to candidates by being present during the evaluation), but we've recently had a few candidates say they prefer it as they think it gives them a better chance to show their skills.

So we wrote up a short prompt for a project that should take a couple of hours.

What's the right way to have candidates share their solution code? My first thought was to instruct them to put it into a private github repo and share it with me. But that seems to present a few problems: 1) According to the accept invite dialog, Github apparently leaks my IP address to the repository owner whenever I access it? 2) No obvious workflow for me to share the code with other engineers on my team so that they can help evaluate. I tried Github forking but the candidate was included as a collaborator on that fork, so probably got awkward emails when I forked and then removed him.

So I'm trying to think of a solution that doesn't involve leaking my teams' IP addresses, or other teammates' Github usernames.

I don't need to run this stuff. I'm OK with only being able to review in a web UI (I prefer it, from a security perspective). That's also why I don't want them to try to use email attaching either, even if Gmail could be made to tolerate it.

So I want something like a web (lowercase D) dropbox for code. Any ideas, HNers? Thanks!

  • by OrangeMonkey on 8/8/22, 1:35 AM

    First, to answer your question: email works well for most people, its ubiquitous, and its been used long before other services were available.

    Second, you may want to rethink your choice.

    I've no tolerance for take home tests nowadays and I would politely thank you for the time in interviewing me, explain that I do not have time to do that, but that I would be more than willing to whiteboard a problem that you have today.

    If I could not successfully redirect them, then I would simply opt-out of the process at that point. I don't know how many people here would do take home tests but it can't be all that many. Maybe you are trying to hire folks that are not regulars here. Its something to consider.

  • by drakonka on 8/8/22, 8:06 AM

    Thank you for considering take-home evaluations. I much prefer them to any kind of whiteboarding scenario.

    Whenever I've done take home assignments, what's worked well for me was putting them into a "hidden" GitLab repo. One that is not publicly visible on my account, but is not gated behind auth and can be shared with the interviewer/relevant team with a link. It seems to have worked well enough.

    A temporary evaluation repo as someone suggested also sounds like a good idea I hadn't thought about before.

  • by t-3 on 8/8/22, 2:25 AM

    Could you set up a "evaluation" repo under your organization for each candidate, and just and hand out temporary credentials whenever you want to give a takehome?

  • by verdverm on 8/8/22, 2:03 AM

    git, it's how we all share our code, why would you use something else? I think you are over worrying about "leaks" and just need to set permissions appropriately. Create the repo for them and add them as a contributor

  • by yuppie_scum on 8/8/22, 2:20 AM

    Dropbox or a google drive are options. Or host a little SFTP for them

  • by b20000 on 8/8/22, 2:13 AM

    are you paying them for their work? if not, you should. i assume you are giving them something relevant to work on.

    if you don’t want to pay them, do not ask them to sign NDAs and understand they will keep ownership of their work.