Andrey Sitnik

I don't like US' style of hiding everything because of possible risks.

People should discuss the hiring process more, it will cure the broken hiring of our industry.

By talking I want to explain the big reasoning model behind our model, see people feedback (even in complex case like here).

I believe that it is professional to be open and “offer private feedback to OP and move on” is corporate bullshit (nobody will do anything and average hiring is broken as hell) and not really professional thing.

Again, we have a different service when we do not expect user to do everything for us. It is real use cases in our practices.

Yes, there are clients which will stop conversation after you spend their time with irrelevant possible use cases. Yes, there are clients who tired so much so they prefer you to do the communication job. If you didn't have it in your practice, it doesn’t mean that there is no such case sin real word.

Yes, there is a special skill to ask right question. Without it, you would not get answers.

If you are not like to do this type of work, and it is not a good fit, why you are complaining about some “mind games”?

Why candidate need to “reading between the lines” and “not be prepared for” it was explicitly the task, and we explained it before?

If you are interesting, the test project is developing color picker for blind user (candidate is doing it at home in async mode and can use any LLM or Google).

Here is my answers to his questions from second attempt (on the first attempt he didn't make any open question):

>> What is the actual product or context this multi-color picker is being built for?
> We have a course for blind developer where we need a tool for some lesson.
> But also we want to use it as marketing tool to get some retweets and media coverage.
>> What specific frustrations are you trying to solve with it?
> Right now there is no simple tool for blind users to change colors based on OKLCH math. All other tools are not covered all cases. Like giving feedback of color readability during you change the color.
>> What are the absolute core requirements for me not to miss?
> It should be accessible.

On this answer he suggested using our existed oklch.com website which didn't pass the clear client's requirement of having advanced a11y (oklch.com has only basic a11y) and since it was his second attempt we stopped the process.

> Unless you implicitly wanted the candidate to take the risk of telling the client off for being useless and shitty

No, we want from the candidate to suggest UI which will fill the client's needs (color picker with advanced a11y tech to be used by blind users from “client's courses”). It can be done without asking any question BTW (we evaluate only the UI idea), but I personally would be able to make good UI only after asking about exact product's users (for instance, there are different cases of a11y), about few golden paths (it will explain what data feedback user will need during working with the data), etc.

Candidates who passed this test by sending us good UI are often asking much more questions that Gyen asked.

Again, suggesting us our existed oklch.com is definitely not a case to have the best tool for blind user.

It was said upfront with clear explanation that you need to be proactive to find all information “You need to interview the client to find out the true background and goals for the project.”