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0 pointsarethuza7y ago0 comments

I must admit that I wonder if part of the success of these types of tests is that they are bullshit and what is actually being tested is how compliant you are as an individual and not really anything to do with technical competence.

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13of407y ago

Not to say asking puzzle coding questions is an ideal approach, but I think the motivation is somewhat opposite: If you base your hiring decision on how awesome the applicant tells you they are, a certain number of the people you say "hire" for are going to be bullshit artists who can't code. When the interview is over, the interviewer is judged either explicitly or implicitly on how well they conducted the interview, and there's probably nothing worse they could do than say "hire" to someone and have the next interviewer find out they're lacking basic coding skills. So they have to ask some kind of coding question, and it has to be something with some meat to it, but you probably can't make it too OS or framework specific, so you're left asking about overlapping rectangles.

collyw7y ago

Why not just ask applicants to bring in some code they have written to discuss?

If they have written it they should be able to discuss it and answer questions easily.

If someone else wrote it and they have understood it enough to discuss it, you probably have an even better developer, especially if the job involves working with some legacy code.

wgerard7y ago

> Why not just ask applicants to bring in some code they have written to discuss?

That can be really difficult for a lot of candidates. It's predicated on the idea that they've written code they:

a) Feel comfortable sharing (not just a one-off weekend hack project)

b) Are allowed to share, legally. This is usually the real problem for most developers.

The truth about hiring: There really isn't any one-size-fits-all that works for everyone. Any hiring process you come up with is going to be an incredible obstacle for a sizable minority of people.

arethuzaOP7y ago

But why the fixation on algorithmic trivia questions - why not at least come up with examples that are relevant to the role?

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pytester7y ago

>If you base your hiring decision on how awesome the applicant tells you they are, a certain number of the people you say "hire" for are going to be bullshit artists who can't code.

If you base your hiring decision on how awesome they are at leetcode hackerrank style algorithm questions you're selecting for bullshit artists who memorized "cracking the coding interview".

There's a systematic industry-wide bias against realism in developer tests. It's depressing how many people think realism either isn't necessary or isn't possible within typical interview time constraints.

gaius7y ago

Compliant, with lots of “free” time...

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