Re: past experience, I agree, but this is harder for college hires. It's not unreasonable for a student to have only taken the standard courses and done nothing

Re: past experience, I agree, but this is harder for college hires. It's not unreasonable for a student to have only taken the standard courses and done nothing especially interesting. I could ask about his job writing PHP or what he thinks of Compilers, but really, there's not a huge amount of depth there. As for programming tests, I think you're playing into my bias about how everyone thinks the questions are stupid until they pass, at which point the questions become the arbiter of all intelligence and merit. ;) It's that sort of hazing ritual sociology that enshrines questions about moving Mt. Fuji or printing n to the power of 100 in decimal form.