5 ms·

That's only at a later stage when you get an interview - with a company that looks good. Coding tests are just an early stage filter for experienced people -

That's only at a later stage when you get an interview - with a company that looks good. Coding tests are just an early stage filter for experienced people - so those companies get dropped early on.

mcv 8y ago
I have the exact opposite opinion: a coding test is for a candidate you already want to hire and introduce to your development team, to have a look at their coding style. You don't want to get your developers together for any random loser who'd never want in your team anyway. So the coding is a late stage filter. At least for me it's always been.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  But if experienced candidates go "meh" life's to short you might have missed a better candidate. And Martin any professional should adapt to the systems in place - and I wouldn't use terms like "random luser" might have some blowback.
  - mcv 8y ago
    If life's too short to continue with the final stages of an interview process, I don't know what to say. The whole idea, if you do it right, at least, is that you only give this test to developers that you already know you want. That means that for those developers, this is not one of dozens of tests they need to do, it's the one test; or one of a few, if they're that lucky. And if they're not interested in putting any time or effort into a new job, it seems to me they're probably not that interested in that new job in the first place. But it seems weird to me that so many people here consider a whole day of interviews to be totally acceptable, while some actual coding is not. Compared to some of the interview horror stories I often read here, this seems vastly preferable. I actually get to show what I can do in a realistic setting, and I get to explain why I do what I do. I get to meet the other developers and talk to them. And with the best programming tests, I actually get to learn something new. For the best one, I had to learn React (which I had no experience in), build a game board on which you can put obstacles, and write an algorithm to find the shortest part through the resulting maze. (I ended up rejecting that job because it was too far away and not enough pay, but I'm still really happy I did that coding challenge.)
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      Depends for many people there is not a shortage of jobs to apply for, so coding a path through a maze which is just regurgitation rote memorised algos is a filter for us. I do agree about a daylong set of interviews with 4 or 5 people that's also a filter id use.
      - mcv 8y ago
        I guess it's also an issue of what you want. Are you fine with just any job, or do you want something specific, or something challenging? Do you want to be the smartest person in the room or do you want competent co-workers? In my experience, these sort of tests do often seem to be used by the more interesting, more competent kind of companies. The first company where I encountered this (14 years ago), had only highly competent developers, many of them committers to various open source projects. About the recent one where I wrote a customised version of A* (because of the presence of wormholes, which made it not remotely rote for me or for most people, I'd expect), I of course don't know how it would have turned out had I taken the job, but if they select for this kind of thinking, I see that as a very positive signal about the kind of work they do and the kind of people they hire. At companies that didn't have this kind of test, the quality of their developers was a lot more hit-and-miss. At least for permanent employees; I've never encountered this for freelancers.
        C1sc0cat 8y ago
        Really? do CERN, JPL NASA the various "interesting TLAs" do this for non New grads. I certainly didn't get asked coding Questions when I went to BHRA (ranked 1 or 2 in its field) research organisation. I was told in my first week "oh there is a book on Fortran in the library" teach yourself it
        mcv 8y ago
        Yes, really. This is exactly my experience. I don't know whether CERN, JPL or NASA do this; they are not part of my experience. But it's very likely different for research institutes. I'm talking about companies.

That's only at a later stage when you get an interview - with a company that looks good. Coding tests are just an early stage filter for experienced people - so those companies get dropped early on.

mcv 8y ago

I have the exact opposite opinion: a coding test is for a candidate you already want to hire and introduce to your development team, to have a look at their coding style. You don't want to get your developers together for any random loser who'd never want in your team anyway. So the coding is a late stage filter. At least for me it's always been.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
But if experienced candidates go "meh" life's to short you might have missed a better candidate. And Martin any professional should adapt to the systems in place - and I wouldn't use terms like "random luser" might have some blowback.
- mcv 8y ago
  If life's too short to continue with the final stages of an interview process, I don't know what to say. The whole idea, if you do it right, at least, is that you only give this test to developers that you already know you want. That means that for those developers, this is not one of dozens of tests they need to do, it's the one test; or one of a few, if they're that lucky. And if they're not interested in putting any time or effort into a new job, it seems to me they're probably not that interested in that new job in the first place. But it seems weird to me that so many people here consider a whole day of interviews to be totally acceptable, while some actual coding is not. Compared to some of the interview horror stories I often read here, this seems vastly preferable. I actually get to show what I can do in a realistic setting, and I get to explain why I do what I do. I get to meet the other developers and talk to them. And with the best programming tests, I actually get to learn something new. For the best one, I had to learn React (which I had no experience in), build a game board on which you can put obstacles, and write an algorithm to find the shortest part through the resulting maze. (I ended up rejecting that job because it was too far away and not enough pay, but I'm still really happy I did that coding challenge.)
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Depends for many people there is not a shortage of jobs to apply for, so coding a path through a maze which is just regurgitation rote memorised algos is a filter for us. I do agree about a daylong set of interviews with 4 or 5 people that's also a filter id use.
    - mcv 8y ago
      I guess it's also an issue of what you want. Are you fine with just any job, or do you want something specific, or something challenging? Do you want to be the smartest person in the room or do you want competent co-workers? In my experience, these sort of tests do often seem to be used by the more interesting, more competent kind of companies. The first company where I encountered this (14 years ago), had only highly competent developers, many of them committers to various open source projects. About the recent one where I wrote a customised version of A* (because of the presence of wormholes, which made it not remotely rote for me or for most people, I'd expect), I of course don't know how it would have turned out had I taken the job, but if they select for this kind of thinking, I see that as a very positive signal about the kind of work they do and the kind of people they hire. At companies that didn't have this kind of test, the quality of their developers was a lot more hit-and-miss. At least for permanent employees; I've never encountered this for freelancers.
      - C1sc0cat 8y ago
        Really? do CERN, JPL NASA the various "interesting TLAs" do this for non New grads. I certainly didn't get asked coding Questions when I went to BHRA (ranked 1 or 2 in its field) research organisation. I was told in my first week "oh there is a book on Fortran in the library" teach yourself it
        mcv 8y ago
        Yes, really. This is exactly my experience. I don't know whether CERN, JPL or NASA do this; they are not part of my experience. But it's very likely different for research institutes. I'm talking about companies.