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I also don’t understand what the alternative is: just take people at their word they are great programmers? We've had great success giving candidates a week to

I also don’t understand what the alternative is: just take people at their word they are great programmers? We've had great success giving candidates a week to design and implement a small application from end to end. It really let's you see everything all at once. Can they design? Good comments? Good data structure selection? It's the best of all worlds. The candidate has time to really show off their ability, you'll get a much more holistic view of their skills and it puts them equal footing with the interviewer because they've had a lot time to think about the problem. We found that whiteboard coding questions tend to favor "geek jocks" that are really just good test takers.

alanh 16y ago
Doesn’t a little app seem like a lot of unpaid work to ask of prospective employees? I’m not so sure about "geek jock" but I do happen to be a good test-taker. (I assumed most nerds were, though.)
- cantastoria 16y ago
  Actually we've tried giving them a choice. Most chose to do the assignment rather have to go through a high pressure interview answering whiteboard questions. We're not asking them to solve problems that could possibly be used in any of our products so they don't feel taken advantage of and it's usually something fairly simple (e.g. design a parking lot management system). All in all they probably spend as much time writing the small sample app as they would in the typical all-day interview loop.