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Yeah, the company I work for uses a coding test. It's a simple CLI program that is relevant to our product, business analytics, that we ask them to spend no mor

Yeah, the company I work for uses a coding test. It's a simple CLI program that is relevant to our product, business analytics, that we ask them to spend no more than 2-3 hours on. The test has several tasks to complete, we make it very clear that someone who completes only 1 task but has excellent code structure, unit tests etc etc is more likely to get the job than someone who just blitzes through all the tasks. The task avoids assuming any knowledge of algorithms / advanced maths / databases or web frameworks. We're only interested in their approach to solve a problem with code, not what libraries they've spent years learning, or what project euler problems they've committed to memory. I came up with the test after I was going round a job fair (for the free stuff) and was handed a coding test to produce a simple CLI twitter clone. I had no interest in applying for the job but I did the coding test anyway. It's only 2 hours of my time and I find coding / solving problems fun. It's really helped us distinguish developers who see work as a 9-5 job that they only do because they must and those developers who just love solving problems. Maybe the technical skills of those 2 developers are roughly equal, but one of them is going to be far more valuable long term than the other. So far we've only hired one candidate after introducing the test, and they've been the best hire we've made. As a side note, we always do a phone interview first so that we don't waste time (ours and theirs) giving the test to complete no-hopers.

wldlyinaccurate 11y ago
> It's really helped us distinguish developers who see work as a 9-5 job that they only do because they must and those developers who just love solving problems. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Many (most, even) of the best developers I know will come to work at 9am, be super-productive for 8 hours, and then completely switch out of Developer Mode at 5pm. It's entirely feasible for somebody to be extremely passionate about programming and learning and problem solving and all the other things that we associate with "good" developers without them doing any sort of work in their own time. Developers are people, too. They have families, friends, hobbies, and other things that are more important than your 2-3 hour coding test. You are alienating a large number of people by asserting that the ones who complete your coding test are "distinguished". You are also seriously reducing the size of your talent pool whenever you want to hire somebody.
- joncampbelldev 11y ago
  I think you have misunderstood me, or I wasn't clear enough. We're not looking for people who work endless overtime or spent every waking moment on open source projects. The text you quoted says "a 9-5 job that they only do because they must", which I believe would exclude anyone "extremely passionate about programming and learning and problem solving". I'm talking about people that have no passion for it, regardless of what their other passions are. Our new hire arrives at work at 9:30am and leaves at 5pm. With regards to hobbies, families etc. Thats understandable if they don't have time to complete the test even though they are job hunting. However, I'd rather miss out on a good hire than risk a bad hire. My company can more easily survive spending a bit longer recruiting in our reduced talent pool compared to living with several bad hires.

wldlyinaccurate 11y ago

> It's really helped us distinguish developers who see work as a 9-5 job that they only do because they must and those developers who just love solving problems. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Many (most, even) of the best developers I know will come to work at 9am, be super-productive for 8 hours, and then completely switch out of Developer Mode at 5pm. It's entirely feasible for somebody to be extremely passionate about programming and learning and problem solving and all the other things that we associate with "good" developers without them doing any sort of work in their own time. Developers are people, too. They have families, friends, hobbies, and other things that are more important than your 2-3 hour coding test. You are alienating a large number of people by asserting that the ones who complete your coding test are "distinguished". You are also seriously reducing the size of your talent pool whenever you want to hire somebody.

joncampbelldev 11y ago
I think you have misunderstood me, or I wasn't clear enough. We're not looking for people who work endless overtime or spent every waking moment on open source projects. The text you quoted says "a 9-5 job that they only do because they must", which I believe would exclude anyone "extremely passionate about programming and learning and problem solving". I'm talking about people that have no passion for it, regardless of what their other passions are. Our new hire arrives at work at 9:30am and leaves at 5pm. With regards to hobbies, families etc. Thats understandable if they don't have time to complete the test even though they are job hunting. However, I'd rather miss out on a good hire than risk a bad hire. My company can more easily survive spending a bit longer recruiting in our reduced talent pool compared to living with several bad hires.