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> Competitive programming is great. But why hold it in direct proportion to ability to build products? Because it's quick to test how good someone is at compet

> Competitive programming is great. But why hold it in direct proportion to ability to build products? Because it's quick to test how good someone is at competitive programming, it's easy to grade everyone consistenty, and it (somewhat) correlates with actual programming ability. Compare it to other interview techniques. A programming project/trial period is time consuming. And it's hard to grade everyone consistently when going off of their resume/github.

lewisjoe 10y ago
> Because it's quick to test how good someone is at competitive programming, it's easy to grade everyone consistently, and it (somewhat) correlates with actual programming ability. I'd agree. Competitive programming does correlate with actual coding ability. The category of people who find it satisfying, earning ranks from a website - that's what bothers me. Young talents who've got all the time needed to earn score, they do it. What about the rest of our veterans? How fair is it to keep a website rank as a baseline for job in the real world. I don't know many who find competitive programming fascinating, after 5 years solving real problems for real people. I may be wrong here. Please disapprove/acknowledge me in the comments. It's a deep problem. Not a lot of organizations can afford the short-term contracting method. I agree. But I consider the cumulative star counts of their github projects, way better a metric than a rank from a website. There's no one right solution to this. But competitive programming score is IMO a very wrong direction to go. We are very much capable of coming up with better solutions. That's what we are good at :)
- poikniok 10y ago
  http://codeforces.com/profile/Petr http://codeforces.com/profile/Petr
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ubernostrum 10y ago
Does your correlation go both ways, though? If you think you have evidence that competitive programming is correlated with higher ability, do you have evidence that higher ability is correlated with competitive programming? Or do you not think about that part, or conclude that anyone qualified you pass on is a fair cost to pay?

lewisjoe 10y ago

> Because it's quick to test how good someone is at competitive programming, it's easy to grade everyone consistently, and it (somewhat) correlates with actual programming ability. I'd agree. Competitive programming does correlate with actual coding ability. The category of people who find it satisfying, earning ranks from a website - that's what bothers me. Young talents who've got all the time needed to earn score, they do it. What about the rest of our veterans? How fair is it to keep a website rank as a baseline for job in the real world. I don't know many who find competitive programming fascinating, after 5 years solving real problems for real people. I may be wrong here. Please disapprove/acknowledge me in the comments. It's a deep problem. Not a lot of organizations can afford the short-term contracting method. I agree. But I consider the cumulative star counts of their github projects, way better a metric than a rank from a website. There's no one right solution to this. But competitive programming score is IMO a very wrong direction to go. We are very much capable of coming up with better solutions. That's what we are good at :)

poikniok 10y ago
http://codeforces.com/profile/Petr http://codeforces.com/profile/Petr

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ubernostrum 10y ago

Does your correlation go both ways, though? If you think you have evidence that competitive programming is correlated with higher ability, do you have evidence that higher ability is correlated with competitive programming? Or do you not think about that part, or conclude that anyone qualified you pass on is a fair cost to pay?