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But yet he "clearly knew his stuff". Perhaps he really was a very talented developer but your coding exercise was too stressful for him. Shame you missed out o

• edanm 8y ago
  Your interpretation does theoretically fit with the facts. But so do a few other (in my mind more plausible) stories, like: 1. He knows how to do extremely specialized things in an existing environment, but can't do things outside of that environment. 2. He was presenting work that he had only a partial hand in creating. 3. He is amazing at e.g. C++, but cannot learn even rudimentary new things in Javascript. ... Some of these stories make him a terrible programmer. Some of them make him an OK programmer for other positions, but weren't relevant for us. None of the stories make him a particularly great programmer. "Perhaps he really was a very talented developer but your coding exercise was too stressful for him" Yes, it's possible. A lot of things are possible. But I'm sorry - if someone can't copy-paste a 3 line program from the internet and get it to work, in their own field, for 2 hours, then... I don't know how I could ever design a test on which they won't fail. Including the actual job.