4 ms·

I got the chance to peek behind the scenes once while assisting with the hiring for a startup. It was painful to see how many folks applied who had zero chance

I got the chance to peek behind the scenes once while assisting with the hiring for a startup. It was painful to see how many folks applied who had zero chance of making it. As in, they wouldn't be able to actually write a "Hello World" program, let alone FizzBuzz or the types of exams you're mentioning here. The number of those kinds of applications was up in the 80% range of all application submitted. And HR (when you have them) are not able to filter them out properly, since all it takes is dose of buzzwords and sufficient confidence to get past them. So, yeah, code tests are usually stupid and insulting to experienced developers. But that's because they're needed to filter out the stupid.

hajile 5y ago
Asking for fizzbuzz or a simple closure/curry add function (basically `a => b => a + b`) is far different than coding assignments. I did one "two-hour" coding assignment that took me an entire day (and I was by far the fastest according to the interviewer who later admitted they'd not done the task and it also took them an entire day when they tried). I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates.
- falcolas 5y ago
  > I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates. That's entirely fair, IMO. Once you're past the "prove you can code at all" step, being compensated for doing work is legitimate.
- shoppingaround 5y ago
  > I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates. Was having drinks with a friend and a recruiter friend of his, and the recruiter began bragging about how her no-name, average-wage firm had the HARDEST coding challenge in town (not even close to true...) because it took candidates as long as 16 hours to complete. She then began regaling us with a candidate who applied, was supplied the challenge (before any in-person, or even phone) interviews. They rebuffed his request to have at least a phone interview with the hiring manager prior-to committing to such time, and then were aghast at his asking if they would be willing to pay for his time given the extreme time commitment necessary. You know how hiring works for my chef friends? A paid shop-test, show up on an off-day and work some station(s) to demonstrate you can walk the walk. You know how hiring works for trade friends? A paid shop-test, they show up on an off-day and work on a discrete piece of work or some piece of a project. Suppose one can only assume that firm's operational principle is to hire the easily manipulated... Personally, I never ask for more than a 2-hour commitment and these days have lowered it to less than 1-hour, providing a scaffolded project from which one could reasonably extrapolate, and typically on their time. To follow up, discuss what they did, why they did it, any differing opinions or approaches. Perhaps I am lucky to not have an LA/NYC/SF sized hiring pool, though.
gyulai 5y ago
I've recently been doing a fair amount of reading about how craftsmanship worked in late medieval and renaissance Europe -- think crafts guilds of Florence, which were the societal context where the Medici happened and Leonardo da Vinci and many of those good things. One of the things that jumped out at me was that gatekeeping was institutionalized at the guild-level, rather than the level of the individual company. You only had to prove to the guild of wool once that you knew how to work with wool at the master craftsman level, and then the individual merchants and companies within the same guild would accept that more or less at face value. If there were repeated complaints about your craftsmanship, those, too, surfaced at the guild level rather than just the individual company level, and might put an end to your guild membership. It would be really cool if the ACM, BCS, IEEE, or any one of those professional associations, started doing something like that, i.e. you could just be an "IEEE-certified dude who friggin just knows what they're doing". Then companies could just say "people without IEEE-certification at the master craftsman level need not apply", instead of giving people exams of technical competence that are insulting to the people who will actually pass them. On the other end of the lifecycle, an employer who finds an employee repeatedly falling short on craftsmanship could report that person to the IEEE, and they would investigate the complaint and revoke certification if appropriate. Also: This is how it works for doctors & lawyers, and some other kinds of professionals. I don't understand why it wouldn't be equally useful in Software Engineering to have such a system.
- lbriner 5y ago
  Interesting idea but I think the arena of comp-sci is far more diverse than a traditional craftsman. I finished an engineering apprenticeship once and it said that I had reached a basic standard in engineering but that didn't mean I could work on anything after that. My skillset was very much railway traction and any deviation would have required significant training. Same with development. If you have done the same old crap for 20 years, that doesn't automatically put you on par with a genuine skilled senior dev (you might not even be good enough to be a junior). I do agree though that I think there should be trade qualifications for developers and although I would feel aggrevied about sitting exams for things I have done for 20 years, I couldn't argue that it would remove a lot of these screening exams and could be just "Required: Grade 5 .Net developer or something"
phendrenad2 5y ago
That doesn't make logical sense. We're talking about senior level here, and HR should certainly be able to filter out fishy SENIOR-level candidates based on job history. Maybe the problem is too many degree and fake job mills in Antarctica or something?

hajile 5y ago

Asking for fizzbuzz or a simple closure/curry add function (basically `a => b => a + b`) is far different than coding assignments. I did one "two-hour" coding assignment that took me an entire day (and I was by far the fastest according to the interviewer who later admitted they'd not done the task and it also took them an entire day when they tried). I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates.

falcolas 5y ago
> I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates. That's entirely fair, IMO. Once you're past the "prove you can code at all" step, being compensated for doing work is legitimate.
shoppingaround 5y ago
> I don't plan on doing such a thing again unless I'm compensated fair market rates. Was having drinks with a friend and a recruiter friend of his, and the recruiter began bragging about how her no-name, average-wage firm had the HARDEST coding challenge in town (not even close to true...) because it took candidates as long as 16 hours to complete. She then began regaling us with a candidate who applied, was supplied the challenge (before any in-person, or even phone) interviews. They rebuffed his request to have at least a phone interview with the hiring manager prior-to committing to such time, and then were aghast at his asking if they would be willing to pay for his time given the extreme time commitment necessary. You know how hiring works for my chef friends? A paid shop-test, show up on an off-day and work some station(s) to demonstrate you can walk the walk. You know how hiring works for trade friends? A paid shop-test, they show up on an off-day and work on a discrete piece of work or some piece of a project. Suppose one can only assume that firm's operational principle is to hire the easily manipulated... Personally, I never ask for more than a 2-hour commitment and these days have lowered it to less than 1-hour, providing a scaffolded project from which one could reasonably extrapolate, and typically on their time. To follow up, discuss what they did, why they did it, any differing opinions or approaches. Perhaps I am lucky to not have an LA/NYC/SF sized hiring pool, though.

gyulai 5y ago

I've recently been doing a fair amount of reading about how craftsmanship worked in late medieval and renaissance Europe -- think crafts guilds of Florence, which were the societal context where the Medici happened and Leonardo da Vinci and many of those good things. One of the things that jumped out at me was that gatekeeping was institutionalized at the guild-level, rather than the level of the individual company. You only had to prove to the guild of wool once that you knew how to work with wool at the master craftsman level, and then the individual merchants and companies within the same guild would accept that more or less at face value. If there were repeated complaints about your craftsmanship, those, too, surfaced at the guild level rather than just the individual company level, and might put an end to your guild membership. It would be really cool if the ACM, BCS, IEEE, or any one of those professional associations, started doing something like that, i.e. you could just be an "IEEE-certified dude who friggin just knows what they're doing". Then companies could just say "people without IEEE-certification at the master craftsman level need not apply", instead of giving people exams of technical competence that are insulting to the people who will actually pass them. On the other end of the lifecycle, an employer who finds an employee repeatedly falling short on craftsmanship could report that person to the IEEE, and they would investigate the complaint and revoke certification if appropriate. Also: This is how it works for doctors & lawyers, and some other kinds of professionals. I don't understand why it wouldn't be equally useful in Software Engineering to have such a system.

lbriner 5y ago
Interesting idea but I think the arena of comp-sci is far more diverse than a traditional craftsman. I finished an engineering apprenticeship once and it said that I had reached a basic standard in engineering but that didn't mean I could work on anything after that. My skillset was very much railway traction and any deviation would have required significant training. Same with development. If you have done the same old crap for 20 years, that doesn't automatically put you on par with a genuine skilled senior dev (you might not even be good enough to be a junior). I do agree though that I think there should be trade qualifications for developers and although I would feel aggrevied about sitting exams for things I have done for 20 years, I couldn't argue that it would remove a lot of these screening exams and could be just "Required: Grade 5 .Net developer or something"

phendrenad2 5y ago

That doesn't make logical sense. We're talking about senior level here, and HR should certainly be able to filter out fishy SENIOR-level candidates based on job history. Maybe the problem is too many degree and fake job mills in Antarctica or something?