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Next blog post from the hiring company "why we continue to moan that we can't find devs despite having a shitty coding test". I am with the blog poster here -

Next blog post from the hiring company "why we continue to moan that we can't find devs despite having a shitty coding test". I am with the blog poster here - fuck you and your coding test. I lowered myself to do one recently, we walked through it in the next stage interview, where it became apparent the " tech leads" were incompetent muppets, who were intimidated when they saw a better solution then they had as their "approved" answer. Walking through slowly with them why their solution had poorer performance at both low and high volume, I was left with the distinct impression that the vast majority of the incompetent devs who would fail fizzbuzz are somehow doing the hiring. Scary times!

ntietz 11y ago
That's another advantage! If they hadn't given you the code test, maybe you wouldn't have found out you didn't want to work with them as quickly :-)
- falcolas 11y ago
  Nah, 10 minutes in a room doing live coding would have found that out faster than 3 hours of coding and 10 minutes in the room.
danpalmer 11y ago
"screw you and your interviews" "I lowered myself to doing an interview recently with some tech leads who were incompetent muppets who were intimidated when they heard better answers than they were expecting to their questions"... I don't mean to be facetious, but "coding tests can be bad, so I won't do one" isn't a particularly useful stance to take, and I think you'll rule yourself out of a great many good jobs at companies that are very good. I would even say that you might be biasing towards companies where the hiring managers are non-technical (generally not a good sign), or towards companies that lack a solid technical foundation.
fit2rule 11y ago
I took a few interviews recently and one particular coding test had me really questioning my involvement in the industry - not due to my own competence, but because maybe I really, really do not want to have to go through so much psychological screening and blah before I can get some work done. To be honest, it felt a lot like joining a scary cult ..
danielrhodes 11y ago
Not the company for you, obviously. What you described sounds like amateur hour on their part, and here's why: if you ask a question which has a single sought after answer, it doesn't give you any data except the binary did they solve it or not. What you want are coding challenges whose answer tells you about that person and how they compare in thinking to others, so there must be a range of valid solutions.
dang 11y ago
Please don't rant like this on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio. Instead, express your view civilly and substantively. There are plenty of examples in this very thread of people doing so. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but then please don't post here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11420938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11420938 and marked it off-topic.

ntietz 11y ago

That's another advantage! If they hadn't given you the code test, maybe you wouldn't have found out you didn't want to work with them as quickly :-)

falcolas 11y ago
Nah, 10 minutes in a room doing live coding would have found that out faster than 3 hours of coding and 10 minutes in the room.

danpalmer 11y ago

"screw you and your interviews" "I lowered myself to doing an interview recently with some tech leads who were incompetent muppets who were intimidated when they heard better answers than they were expecting to their questions"... I don't mean to be facetious, but "coding tests can be bad, so I won't do one" isn't a particularly useful stance to take, and I think you'll rule yourself out of a great many good jobs at companies that are very good. I would even say that you might be biasing towards companies where the hiring managers are non-technical (generally not a good sign), or towards companies that lack a solid technical foundation.

fit2rule 11y ago

I took a few interviews recently and one particular coding test had me really questioning my involvement in the industry - not due to my own competence, but because maybe I really, really do not want to have to go through so much psychological screening and blah before I can get some work done. To be honest, it felt a lot like joining a scary cult ..

danielrhodes 11y ago

Not the company for you, obviously. What you described sounds like amateur hour on their part, and here's why: if you ask a question which has a single sought after answer, it doesn't give you any data except the binary did they solve it or not. What you want are coding challenges whose answer tells you about that person and how they compare in thinking to others, so there must be a range of valid solutions.

dang 11y ago

Please don't rant like this on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio. Instead, express your view civilly and substantively. There are plenty of examples in this very thread of people doing so. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but then please don't post here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11420938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11420938 and marked it off-topic.