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> we know they've been programming as a profession getting paid to do it for 8+ years. We don't know that! We know they submitted a resume that says they've be

> we know they've been programming as a profession getting paid to do it for 8+ years. We don't know that! We know they submitted a resume that says they've been programming for 8+ years; we don't know whether that happened or not. I can't remember exactly what it was that gave me a "this guy is actually full of shit" feeling, but other things in the interview gave me that feeling, so I pivoted the interview to check. On that day and to this day, I have serious doubts that that particular candidate had ever held a professional software job for longer than a probationary period.

jjav 3y ago
> We don't know that! Sure we do. Or maybe you didn't that day, but it is easy to find out for sure. While companies (at least in the US) will never give a formal recommendation, they will always issue a statement that such and such person worked for them from date to date and the title(s) they held, if you ask. Sure, if they worked 8 years at Joe's Burger Shack as Senior IT, maybe that's not worth much. But if they worked multiple years with a senior/lead software engineer title at any recognizable company, you know they really did. As I said above we can't know if they did a great job or a mediocre job, but we do know for sure they held that job with that title for so many years and did at least a good enough job to not get fired from a software engineering role. Which in turn means they absolutely know how to write a loop over an array. Because even if they got rated "Just Barely Meets Expectations" for 8 years, that alone is enough to know they can loop over an array. Therefore, if your test indicates they can't do it, it is guaranteed that the test is flawed.