Reddit is hiring. We're looking for 3 rockstar programmers.

http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fjgit/reddit_is_doubling_the_size_of_its_programming/

by jedberg • 15 years ago

67 105 15 years ago

reddit.com

bradfordw• 15 years ago

Of all the places; really? You went with the "rockstar" moniker for hires?

mrkurt• 15 years ago

I'm sure they're so giddy about being able to hire that they didn't think much about it.

mrspeaker• 15 years ago

I think that was just a bit of link bait for HN: notice that they didn't use that term in the actual post. Though maybe I'm attributing to malice... ;)

jedberg14• 15 years ago

I can be slightly malicing sometimes. ;) (Did I just make up a new word?)

randall• 15 years ago

I feel like there's gotta be a hint of irony in the title.

jedberg14• 15 years ago

jedberg is known to be ironic like that.

jedberg14• 15 years ago

Indeed I did. I admit, it was a little underhanded way to get you to click. But it worked, right?

We're just trying to get the very best people we can. Apologies for the ruse.

elxrr• 15 years ago

I clicked because I read "Reddit is hiring."

scottw• 15 years ago

Maybe "rockstar" is the new codeword for "confident junior".

abredow• 15 years ago

This adequately describes a sentiment that I hadn't previously figured out how to put to words!

jemfinch7• 15 years ago

More likely "confident junior willing to work for less remuneration but greater publicity".

droz2• 15 years ago

How would you decode "Guru", "Ninja" and "Pirate"?

jonathanjaeger• 15 years ago

I love the idea that you have to clone Reddit BEFORE you're worthy of sending in your resume. Brilliant.

dpritchett5• 15 years ago

I believe it's called "spec work".

jgv• 15 years ago

This post has what could possibly be my favorite TLDR.

"TLDR: Yes, it's a long post, but if you'd like to apply for a job at reddit, you'll just have to read it."

e1ven3• 15 years ago

Are you going to release tgrep after the contest is over? That'd be a very useful tool for lots of jumbo-logs, assuming the timestamp handling is anywhere near generic or customizable.

If not.. Hell, it'd still be useful for Apache logs. Please put it on Github? ;)

jedberg14• 15 years ago

Each applicant owns their code and will be free to post it. We've only asked that they keep it secret until March.

We will probably release our version as well at that time.

e1ven3• 15 years ago

The hardest part of this is not posting the version I made in 5 minutes ;) I have no interest in working for Reddit, but as a SysAdmin, I can't resist a challenge.

lbrandy• 15 years ago

Does this mean I can show off my reddit project from the last round of interviews?

mindcrime• 15 years ago

I was going to apply, but I'm an agile lean scrum six-sigma CMMI kanban kaizen customer-development ninja pirate samurai, not a rockstar. Sorry. :-(

look_lookatme• 15 years ago

I realize you are being funny, but please don't lump lean processes in with annoying titles.

NickPollard• 15 years ago

He's making a point about the buzzwords, not the actual processes.

gaustin2• 15 years ago

No separate challenge for the in-between folks, or did I just miss it?

jedberg14• 15 years ago

In between folks can choose either challenge. tgrep is probably going to be more suited.

deno2• 15 years ago

TGrep with HTML/JS UI.

kgtm2• 15 years ago

Perhaps an indication of how much time tgrep currently spends looking in a sample 70GB file would be of interest.

jemfinch7• 15 years ago

Is it really that hard to figure out? Imagine an implementation that does a binary search through the characters of a file; when it lands in the middle of the line, it seeks back by one character until it finds the beginning of the line, and then compares that line to the timestamp given.

70GB will require approximately 36 binary searches to find the line you want. Assuming the lines are around 200 characters long, each binary search will require on average 100 seeks backward to find the beginning of the line. From there you can read the characters you need for the timestamp.

So your total cost is going to be 36 * (1 seek to the character, 100 seeks to the beginning of the line, a read from that offset), disregarding the almost certainly irrelevant cost of comparison to the timestamp. Note that these seeks, while still calls to seek(2), are not actual random disk seeks, because disks return blocks to the OS in 16KB chunks or so. Most of those seeks will just be a quick roundtrip through the kernel.

So you'll do, on average, 36 reads and 3636 seeks. On most modern computers, that will take maybe 100ms, which agrees with my experience in writing a similar program for some of the logfiles I work with.

kgtm2• 15 years ago

The number of upvotes you get should be a good indication of the difficulty, perceived or otherwise.

e-dard3• 15 years ago

You're ignoring real-world aspects of the problem. For example, you're assuming that the data points are evenly distributed across time.

Reddit will most likely have regular busy and quiet periods, which will impact the density of the log at certain times.

Thus, one can tune the algorithm to work better on Reddit's specific visitor pattern, if you can learn it. As an example, you need to jump back further in the file to get from 8pm to 6pm than you do to jump back from 4am to 2am. <- assuming US time, which they don't.

mcantelon• 15 years ago

>We want you to build a reddit clone entirely in HTML, Javascript, and CSS. It will maintain its state entirely client-side (HTML5 localstorage, cookies, whatever), and it's fine for it to be single-user. In fact, we want to leave as much of this challenge open to interpretation as possible.

...

>For this challenge, reimplement tgrep.

...

>Some of you might be thinking, "I can't believe reddit is going to make all these poor applicants slave over a hot emacs for two weeks just for the privilege of being allowed to apply for a dumb old job." Well, first off, it's supposed to be fun. If you don't see the joy in either of these puzzles, please don't apply.

jemfinch7• 15 years ago

If it takes a candidate more than an hour to implement tgrep, he's not a rockstar.

kls3• 15 years ago

I may be in the minority here but I think that it is asking a lot of someone to build out a UI just for the prospect of getting hired. I think it borders on exploitation there are a lot of young individuals with wonder-lust that see a name like Reddit and will put in significant hours just for the possibility of maybe getting hired. In their mind that possibility is greatly inflated (after all who would not want to hire them).

Now as a person that hires and specifically hires technical personally and is technical himself, I am sensitive to the fact that it takes a trained eye to spot talent and that their are a lot of posers out there. But in my personal opinion you guys are offloading the task of being good at spotting talent onto the prospective employee which I am not totally in agreement with.

Personally, I would not ask an up front prospect to code anything other than a 10-15 minute exercise (in interview) and if I where to have someone build something, it would be the final 3 prospects, it would be a real business problem, and I would compensate them for their time. I think the practice of competitions for a job borders to close to exploitation for my comfort, further I have seen better talent selection from a skilled interviewer than I ever have from an arbitrary competition.

DanI-S2• 15 years ago

I think the point is that if you don't already do this stuff for the fun of it, you're not who they're looking for. I just spent a few minutes writing out some pseudocode, and I have a slight adrenaline rush. Even if I don't submit anything, I've got to play with a neat problem.

hessenwolf3• 15 years ago

I don't program for fun. I program for a goal, and I enjoy doing it.

My time is too important to me to waste on entering a competition for a job, so I am clearly not who they are looking for.

aprrrr• 15 years ago

There are sooo many interesting problems in the world, I never run out of stuff to do for fun.

If you want me to implement your spec that takes more than 15 minutes or so, then a) you are a great non-profit for a cause I care about, or b) you have to pay up.

But it's true, I'm not who they're looking for, and I don't want to work for reddit. I'm sure plenty of 21-year-old reddit fan(boy|girl)s will leap at the chance, and good for them.

jedsmith• 15 years ago

Near the end of the post, they responded to this:

> Well, first off, it's supposed to be fun. If you don't see the joy in either of these puzzles, please don't apply.

If you don't consider implementing something like tgrep fun, you're in the wrong line of work. I've actually thought of something like that before, for my own logs, but never gotten around to trying it out. They want people who consider what we do fun -- if you don't, they don't want you.

dpritchett5• 15 years ago

It is fun, but if you're the type of person who does this sort of thing for fun you should already have a nice portfolio to show them rather than needing to submit spec work.

hackinthebochs3• 15 years ago

>If you don't consider implementing something like tgrep fun, you're in the wrong line of work.

This is a silly statement to make, and honestly I'm tired of seeing this sentiment repeated.

Different people find different things fun. A big part of the fun in implementing some random project is yourself identifying the problem and coming up with a possible solution. Just trudging through someone else's spec is missing the fun aspect of problem solving.

Furthermore, for me at least, there is a tradeoff to when a project loses it's "fun" and just becomes grunt work. When there's a large creative aspect to it, that makes it fun. When the problem is fairly well-defined with an obvious solution but just needs to be fleshed out, that leans towards tedium.

For someone to assume that anyone that doesn't find their exact types of problems fun is in the "wrong line of work" is being a presumptuous prick.

aridiculous• 15 years ago

If they don't get hired at Reddit, it could be a good portfolio piece to show another employer. It's just a good reason to make something.

kls3• 15 years ago

If I had a dollar for every-time a potential client thought their app was so cool that I should be begging to work on it just to get a portfolio piece, well, I would have quite a few dollars.

To be quite honest I would look at some half implemented Reddit mock-up as a half implemented amateur example of someones work. I want to see fully working apps that a developer can explain to me what portions they built and why features where built.

To be honest I would be embarrassed to use a few hour throw together as an example of my work. When I have far better examples of applications that are professional and complete.

My intent is not to be arrogant about the matter but the reality is there are very few professions where asking someone to work for free to get a portfolio piece would be met with a straight face.

Lawyers do pro-bono to help the downtrodden doctors do research work to advance the state of the art but nether do routine work to get a portfolio piece. So unless you are asking someone to do state of the art groundbreaking research work or it is charity (open source) to ask someone to do it for portfolio work is akin to asking a lawyer to take your DUI case or a doctor to fix your problem to get some portfolio work.

ryandvm• 15 years ago

Agreed. Tgrep is a nice take home challenge, but a client-side Reddit clone is far too much to ask for. The only applicants they're going to get for the front-end position are Reddit mega-fans with too much spare time - though I suppose that may be what they're looking for.

Regardless, most real "rock star programmers" (as much as I hate the term) aren't going to be blowing a day or two on spec work.

jasonkester• 15 years ago

Funny, to me writing a quick and dirty frontend for a reddit clone seems like a fun mindless 3 hours. Building a replacement for grep and profiling it until it's fast sounds like the kind of pain I pay other people good money to avoid.

wccrawford4• 15 years ago

I think it's fine to ask someone to code something as a pre-interview so long as it's short (can be done in 48 hours by just about anyone) and it's something you're actually going to use on your system.

I was recently asked to write a simple CRUD page for contacts (name, address, etc) as a pre-interview test and that's well within the above.

You have to keep in mind that people can't apply for many jobs if they are all doing that, though. You're going to severely limit the number of applicants you get. It'll limit it to only people who really want to work there, but also to people who have enough free time to throw away to do the interview.

hessenwolf3• 15 years ago

48 hours meaning 5 days work; 48 hours meaning two full time days; or 48 hours meaning two evenings after a full time + usual overtime day, so about 4.5 hours with a beer?

trotsky• 15 years ago

As a hiring manager, I think it's inappropriate to ask a candidate to spend significantly more time in the iapplication process than you're willing to spend evaluating them. High end talent search where you or your board will spend days agonizing over every candidate? Totally OK to ask for a significant amount of their time. Asking for some time consuming unique delivery from people that you won't necessarily even interview? You're just being abusive.

When you're in a position of power, either because jobs are rare or yours are uniquely appealing it's very easy to fall in to this mode, but that doesn't make it right. Especially in a case like this where you'd expect a high number of applications you're likely to dismiss out of hand (ie, sorry, no high school students) - at the very minimum you should be willing to do that first screening before you request anything needing a time investment.

eurohacker• 15 years ago

agreed - the fact that they let candidates build the whole interface -

leaves the impression that the company is just looking for cheap young talent,

if you get hired and start to ask for more salary - they will hire new young talented people

Luyt• 15 years ago

It's their right to cultivate a company culture like that, should they wish so. Apparently a lot of young 'rockstar' programmers are attracted to that, being able to work and hang out with all the cool guys from a Web 3.0 company. Pay is probably less important than status (and a good looking entry on your résumè). I wonder whether the rockstar programmers are allowed to bring in their groupies to admire them during work? Like this guy observes: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7023615/

Edit: typos

jedberg14• 15 years ago

I understand your concerns, and we thought about it a lot ourselves. "Are we asking too much?"

We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking.

Also, it shouldn't take you more than a few joyful hours. If it does, you probably aren't the person we're looking for.

We gave the task to a couple of trusted folks beforehand, people who we would love to hire if they weren't already doing something they loved, and they said that the tasks were pretty straightforward and quick to do.

We already tried doing it the other way around, and we realized that it just didn't work. The guy that turned out to be the best was the one we almost rejected because he had a bad resume and cover letter.

We don't want to make that mistake again.

If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>

jpeterson2• 15 years ago

We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking.

... And something that you guys just so happen to benefit from. I understand what you're saying, but it still smacks of exploitation in my opinion.

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

you system is perfect to filter in people who don't value their time and ok to work in the company that doesn't respect their applicants (but supposedly starts to respect applicants the second they turn employees - some may believe that too). There is definitely a business sense in hiring such naive gullible people, no questions here.

pigbucket2• 15 years ago

>If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>

This response seems to me thoughtless, cliche-ridden, and inordinately smug--rockstaresque even.

That "I guess you just don't apply" really doesn't seem to be the product of the thinking you claim to have put into this. Obviously there are people who might apply even if they think it's too much to ask on spec. Obviously there are people who might apply even if they are motivated by something other than mere fun. Obviously there are people who might apply even if it takes them a lot more than "a few joyful hours." Saying such people probably aren't the ones you're looking for is beside the point--beside the ethical point--except insofar as it's a pretty clearcut instance of your shirking all responsibility (it's all their fault if they underestimate their chances, or ignore the injunction to do it for fun) with the kind of callous indifference to the work and time of others captured neatly in your closing shrug.

Tl;dr? That wouldn't surprise me.

kls3• 15 years ago

For the record, I was not casting stones just stating that I was not personally comfortable with the idea of asking people that have had little touch point with the company to write something as the opening touch point for an interview (i.e. I personally would not do it).

For me personally, portfolio would be the first filter. I would only engage people that I felt's portfolio reflected the qualities that I was looking for. If they don't have a portfolio then sure, they have to build something anyway just to prove that they can build something but that is a limited subset most that would be applying will have previous work that can be submitted.

As well I don't see how a few hours could provide anything beyond a very amateur quality mock-up. Sure a few hours and some jQuery UI elements could make something pretty, but I am assuming that you are looking for a little more depth than someone that can just throw some jQuery UI widgets on a page.

For me, I would be looking for someone that has deep dynamic language understanding, a deep understanding of event based programming and how events can be used to decouple UI elements and how that can create elements that can be dropped into a UI framework and auto wire itself up to data events. Someone that understands promises and it's relationship to asynchronous callback based programming constructs. I personally would be embarrassed to submit something that only had a few hours effort in it, because it most assuredly not going to cover all of those core aspects and the ones that are covered are not going to be fleshed out in a detailed level that one should be using to exemplify the state of their skill.

I wish you luck (i mean that with all sincerity), and I do hope the people that chose to engage in your interview do truly enjoy it. For me, it crosses to many personal boundaries to be comfortable with employing such recruiting tactics.

I would like to ask that you come back and give us a postmortem on how the exercise went and ask that any HN'rs that participate contribute to that conversation. I am generally interested in the outcome and the perception of the participants.

jemfinch7• 15 years ago

> I think it borders on exploitation there are a lot of young individuals with wonder-lust that see a name like Reddit and will put in significant hours just for the possibility of maybe getting hired.

First, it's not exploitation. It can't be. It could only be exploitation if reddit were somehow planning to benefit from their implementations--e.g., if it would actually deploy one in production.

Second, I think you're making a false assumption that "young individual with wonder-lust" putting in "significant hours" on a task like this is time wasted. I've spent far more time writing IRC bots just for the fun of it, but was that time wasted? Of course not. I learned new skills, gained new knowledge, and was able to approach the real world of software development with the confidence of having actually implemented my own project end-to-end.

Though I think the two projects differ substantially in their difficulty, either project would benefit implementor in itself even apart from any prospects of getting hired.

jpeterson2• 15 years ago

First, it's not exploitation. It can't be. It could only be exploitation if reddit were somehow planning to benefit from their implementations...

Did you miss the part where they're using this as a recruiting screen?

axod• 15 years ago

The other thing is that if working at Reddit, you'd effectively be doing the work of a founder, but for no upside.

Just how exciting is "standard benefits" to anyone here?

leon_2• 15 years ago

reddit is built around exploitation. they are owned by conde nast yet they have to beg their users for some "premium subscription" to upgrade their servers/hire new people.

khafra• 15 years ago

I think with the number of people Reddit currently employs, it's silly to expect them to have a good HR department.

wccrawford4• 15 years ago

If I spend the time to write a reddit clone, I'm going to launch it as a competitor, not submit it as a resume.

hcho• 15 years ago

Well, the hard part is not writing a clone. It's building a community, and a shinh new UI does not warrant a community these days.

hessenwolf3• 15 years ago

I expect the meme-spam detection software to take the most time.

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

That's easy. More than two words that are three characters or less in a row? Meme spam.

jedberg14• 15 years ago

http://code.reddit.com

The point is to show off your frontend skills, not make a fully working clone.

wccrawford4• 15 years ago

Actually, no. From the post:

"Frontend challenge We want you to build a reddit clone entirely in HTML, Javascript, and CSS. It will maintain its state entirely client-side (HTML5 localstorage, cookies, whatever), and it's fine for it to be single-user. In fact, we want to leave as much of this challenge open to interpretation as possible."

grammaton2• 15 years ago

"Well, first off, it's supposed to be fun. If you don't see the joy in either of these puzzles, please don't apply."

Sorry, but there are plenty of 'fun' things and problems I can work on without essentially doing spec work for someone who will then feel perfectly free to ignore it. That is to say, problems where I can be sure I'll see a reward for my work that is meaningful to me, instead of potentially wasting my time.

Also, "rockstar?" Really, reddit? Seriously?

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

I think that was tongue-in-cheek. The people behind Reddit are as silly as the people who use it. I know _I'm_ a silly Reddit user.

jedberg14• 15 years ago

rockstar was tounge-in-cheek.

And spec work is asking someone to do work and then paying them for that work if you like it.

This is not spec work. We already have the things we are asking for, so they are of no use to us. They are to demonstrate skill and determination.

It is not spec work.

orev• 15 years ago

You don't want "rockstar" anybodys. They are hard to deal with and think they are special. You want stable people who are good at what they do but don't think they are god.

MoreMoschops• 15 years ago

Rest assured, chums. Reddit doesn't mention "rockstar" anywhere in the job listing; it's just their Ops Manager and Senior Product Developer using the term.

jedberg14• 15 years ago

> it's just their Ops Manager and Senior Product Developer using the term.

Information Cowboy is my title, actually. :)

And I was using it as linkbait, just to be clear.

gaoshan• 15 years ago

Rockstar programmers, eh? What about ninja programmers... they are pretty cool too. Oh well, either way I'm not a rockstar... more of a guitar tech, so... best of luck to them.

djacobs• 15 years ago

For the backend task, is the file encoding UTF-8 with Unix line feeds?

Reddit is hiring. We're looking for 3 rockstar programmers.

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