Had an initial call and then a hackerank test.
Let me preface this by saying that I understand there’s high competition for such a great company but using hackerank is a joke of a process, especially now in the age of AI and how the test makes it difficult for no reason.
Hackerank HAS been a staple in testing prospective candidates but not anymore to a point where it’s a detriment to the company using it. The change? The locking down of your ability to use your own IDE to do the question and then paste your answer in the browser. If you paste anything in the browser it counts as a fail as they immediately assume you used AI and cheated. You can’t even copy code or text from the question. What’s more is that if you decide that you’ll type out the answer again once you’re confident, you have to be careful not to leave the browser for too long as inactivity kicks you out with no way to get back in. You might be thinking: Well this is all to prevent cheating so deal with it! But no it doesn’t. If I really wanted to cheat I could have done. I have another computer, phone, hell I could have even dictated it to someone else to give me the answer or to help me out, but I decided to give this a fair shot as everyone should.
But what about just using the browser! Surely it couldn’t be that bad. Yes it is that bad. Maybe this would work for simple questions, but for the level of difficulty Goodnotes gives you, which is a medium level difficulty, you need all the help you can get when you debug your solution in the time given, whether that’s test data or print statements. Even the most basic compilation issues that would immediately be flagged up in a playground before you hit play. With the browser you have to spend time working it out which could have gone to getting all the test cases to pass.
This was such a frustrating experience, next time I’m going to avoid companies who do this.