4 ms·

Because it separates out those who went to Uni from those who learned to code in their basements.

piracy1 9y ago
What's so great about going to uni to learn to solve the same problems in the same way as everyone else? That doesn't seem like a way to achieve anything new or interesting. Also, tons of people graduate without even being able to really code. I'd much rather hire someone who, on their own volition spent 4 years teaching themselves programming, doing their own projects, making things that are interesting, learning about new tech, etc than someone who just showed up to school and did their homework. I also think that self-taught people have a much greater ability to teach themselves new things when they have to. (Your prof won't always be there to tell you exactly how to solve the problem.)
jeffmcmahan 9y ago
Many excellent developers earned degrees in areas other than CS, or are self-taught and have demonstrably first-rate minds, well worth the salaries on offer.
- sunstone 9y ago
  Don't interpret my statement as a value judgement about the candidates, it's not. A guy who just got a phd in physics would probably have problems with these "programming as math" problems. I was just stating why these types of problems are being used. It's like a secret handshake.
  - hpcjoe 9y ago
    Yeah, some of us (phd) physicists do have these problems. More interestingly, some of the problems on places like hackerrank, which are expressed as math problems have fundamental problems in that the answers they posit as being correct are not. I dealt with one such failure, where one could write down an closed form solution for a problem in complex analysis that the author mistakenly assumed was a number theory problem. They did not comprehend that their answer was nonsensical.
    - sunstone 9y ago
      Well it's true that the ignorance of some of these company's (hiring process) is in fact pretty insulting to the kind of people they really want to hire. Compare that poor souls experience with Elon Musk's interview question for a tech hiring position, "So, tell me about a time you had a really hard technical problem to solve and how you did it?" The difference is night and day.

What's so great about going to uni to learn to solve the same problems in the same way as everyone else? That doesn't seem like a way to achieve anything new or interesting. Also, tons of people graduate without even being able to really code. I'd much rather hire someone who, on their own volition spent 4 years teaching themselves programming, doing their own projects, making things that are interesting, learning about new tech, etc than someone who just showed up to school and did their homework. I also think that self-taught people have a much greater ability to teach themselves new things when they have to. (Your prof won't always be there to tell you exactly how to solve the problem.)

jeffmcmahan 9y ago

Many excellent developers earned degrees in areas other than CS, or are self-taught and have demonstrably first-rate minds, well worth the salaries on offer.

sunstone 9y ago
Don't interpret my statement as a value judgement about the candidates, it's not. A guy who just got a phd in physics would probably have problems with these "programming as math" problems. I was just stating why these types of problems are being used. It's like a secret handshake.
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  Yeah, some of us (phd) physicists do have these problems. More interestingly, some of the problems on places like hackerrank, which are expressed as math problems have fundamental problems in that the answers they posit as being correct are not. I dealt with one such failure, where one could write down an closed form solution for a problem in complex analysis that the author mistakenly assumed was a number theory problem. They did not comprehend that their answer was nonsensical.
  - sunstone 9y ago
    Well it's true that the ignorance of some of these company's (hiring process) is in fact pretty insulting to the kind of people they really want to hire. Compare that poor souls experience with Elon Musk's interview question for a tech hiring position, "So, tell me about a time you had a really hard technical problem to solve and how you did it?" The difference is night and day.