> A candidate willing to put in the effort to game them is generally a good signal. That's not necessarily true. In my experience, the most competent people ar

> A candidate willing to put in the effort to game them is generally a good signal. That's not necessarily true. In my experience, the most competent people aren't inclined to waste valuable time on frivolous bullshit. Via this system, you may be selecting for drones that only know how to do what they're told, at the expense of selecting for leadership qualities. I've been spending my time unemployed to build an online store for a friend and a Raspberry Pi based sensor/control system for a non-profit organization. Everything I've learned doing this is far more demonstrative of the applicable skills, motivation, etc. a company should be looking for than if I had spent the time memorizing algorithms. I've been sending the source code for these projects to companies in my applications, although I'm not sure if anybody is even looking at it let alone using it to evaluate my skills. Serious question: would you suggest I just "play the game" and work on practicing the types of questions some companies use in their process? Related, would you prefer to hire a candidate who spends their spare time "playing the game", or one who works on real applications like I do? I think the correct answer is obviously the latter, and hiring managers should take responsibility for developing a process that rewards genuine productivity and hands-on-learning over ultimately frivolous game-playing. I recognize this is much easier said than done and respect that your job is difficult. But it is a problem and problems get solved by those who recognize them as such and purposefully try to engineer a solution... > Unfortunately, some graduates of code schools you've hard of can not code. Like at all. Hence I understand companies that resort to algo questions. This is undoubtedly true. I completed a "code bootcamp" and can personally attest to the fact that some people are qualified for junior level roles, and some should choose another career path. No coding school is selective enough in their admissions to build a brand around quality.