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>We need an industry agreed-upon certification exam I'd be OK with this if all the answers were just shown to various companies so they could see strengths and

>We need an industry agreed-upon certification exam I'd be OK with this if all the answers were just shown to various companies so they could see strengths and weaknesses. If some company doesn't care about DP or low level OO design they can throw out those scores, etc. I certainly got annoyed in my last job hunt where I had to answer some basic whiteboard easy level LC questions over and over and over. Thank god I got to skip the Google screen. If one more person made me do basic BFS or something I was going to freak out. I understand why they asked it, but I had to keep coding it over and over and over...

jedberg 4y ago
Law and medical licensing both require showing basic proficiency in all areas. I don't see why we wouldn't do the same, and then let you get specialization afterwards.
- VirusNewbie 4y ago
  Sure basic proficiency is fine but how do you decide who is worth 150k and who is worth 400k?
  - jedberg 4y ago
    Experience. Ask them about previous situations and what they did in them, what they learned from them, what they built, etc. But it lets you skip the basic coding exams about data structures and OOP. Let's be honest, you're not choosing 150K vs 400K based on how well they can reverse a binary tree.
    - VirusNewbie 4y ago
      I wouldn’t hire anyone who couldn’t reverse a binary tree (with a bit of coaching is fine too). I can certainly understand why someone without white board experience would initially freak out and assume it’s difficult but I’m confident I could ease some panic and point them in a reasonable direction. We’re talking like 4 loc here… But there are absolutely people with the title of senior engineer who cannot understand the concept of swapping some pointers and recursion.
      - jedberg 4y ago
        Of course you wouldn't. But with a certification exam that included such things, you wouldn't have to ask. And more importantly, like I said, you aren't choosing their salary and job level based on those skills. You're choosing it based on their experience.

jedberg 4y ago

Law and medical licensing both require showing basic proficiency in all areas. I don't see why we wouldn't do the same, and then let you get specialization afterwards.

VirusNewbie 4y ago
Sure basic proficiency is fine but how do you decide who is worth 150k and who is worth 400k?
- jedberg 4y ago
  Experience. Ask them about previous situations and what they did in them, what they learned from them, what they built, etc. But it lets you skip the basic coding exams about data structures and OOP. Let's be honest, you're not choosing 150K vs 400K based on how well they can reverse a binary tree.
  - VirusNewbie 4y ago
    I wouldn’t hire anyone who couldn’t reverse a binary tree (with a bit of coaching is fine too). I can certainly understand why someone without white board experience would initially freak out and assume it’s difficult but I’m confident I could ease some panic and point them in a reasonable direction. We’re talking like 4 loc here… But there are absolutely people with the title of senior engineer who cannot understand the concept of swapping some pointers and recursion.
    - jedberg 4y ago
      Of course you wouldn't. But with a certification exam that included such things, you wouldn't have to ask. And more importantly, like I said, you aren't choosing their salary and job level based on those skills. You're choosing it based on their experience.