15 ms·

Job application asked for my SAT scores

• EgregiousCube 3mo ago
  "You're partly making your decision based on who someone was as a 17 year old." Sure, but IQ tests show a high degree of stability over a person's life. It's not unreasonable to be interested in it for sorting.
  • janalsncm 3mo ago
    Can you say the same for SAT tests, where the score is best of N and N is however many the person can afford and varies between candidates?
    • EgregiousCube 3mo ago
      Yes; though SAT is less prep-resistant and it'd be smart to apply a "+/- 100pts" fuzz to a score.
    • z2 3mo ago
      And the meaning of the score changes over the years based on the test itself changing. Same goes for the company's GPA requirements where there have clearly been shifts across schools on the amount of grade inflation allowed or even encouraged. As an aside, I'm not sure if I or the College Board can prove my score at this point.
    • Hax0r778 3mo ago
      Not only that, but the SAT is not an IQ test and you can definitely study for it. Students with wealthy or motivated parents can get study books or tutors which makes a huge difference in score. The Princeton Review promises a 200 point score improvement with some of their packages. And they can fairly-reliably achieve it too.
      • consensus1 3mo ago
        And I guarantee you that claim is based on an intentionally flawed experiment where they take students who have never seen the test before vs after completing the program. The actual control should be against students who have taken a couple of cheaply available practice tests.
      • aidenn0 3mo ago
        You can study for most IQ tests as well.
  • prpl 3mo ago
    SAT isn’t an IQ test, and probably all sorts of people took it before they had cultural awareness or a diagnosis that would have lead to different testing conditions had it been taken after diagnosis, let alone the fact that test scores are not comparable. GPAs similarly not comparable over large time ranges, schools, or degrees without normalization you can’t get.
    • porridgeraisin 3mo ago
      While edge cases may exist, for the most part, a test score / GPA / anything where the numerator is almost as big as the denominator is a good signal.
    • spullara 3mo ago
      SAT isn't an IQ test but IQ is very correlated with SAT scores.
    • patmcc 3mo ago
      SAT isn't a perfect IQ test but it's not bad for a first-pass filter. Nearly all who scored 1600 will be bright and nearly all who score 800 won't be. It's a bit like BMI. Yes, if you're Peter Dinklage or Arnold Schwarzenegger it will be pretty meaningless. But most people aren't and BMI works pretty well for them.
  • quux0r 3mo ago
    I dislike this argument. I think in some dimensions these types of tests can work, but I’ve never been the type of person who’s been able to score well, and I don’t test particularly well in general, yet I did my PhD work at <IVY LEAGUE> and have had a great career despite this. I think that testing is good for people who can be adequately evaluated, but for people like me it just leads to a lifetime of feeling like something’s wrong with you.
    • beambot 3mo ago
      Test-taking may only roughly correlate to intelligence, and is just one dimension of a human... but they likely care less about false negatives (like you) than they do about false positives in alternative assessments.
  • nephihaha 3mo ago
    I can't speak for others here and we don't have SATs in this country, but these things can be very unfair. When I was seventeen, I had a lot of things to deal with which were not of my own making, such as caring for a terminally ill relative and wondering if I would even have a roof over my head a few months down the line. That kind of thing tends to take your mind off school work. Several years later and I was in a much better place. I think it's fair enough to say teenagers in general have more instability in their life even without this.
    • sokoloff 3mo ago
      If you think it matters (I don’t) and think you scored unfairly low at 17, you can take (or retake) the SAT at any age.
      • nephihaha 3mo ago
        We don't have SATs in this country (like I said). Yes, we can retake the equivalent here, but retaken exams are valued less by both employers and universities. I spent much of that period visiting hospices and hospitals, and eventually ending up homeless for a while as a result of all this. I was more interested in being able to support myself financially for the next few years, and recovering psychologically. My qualifications after this consisted of diplomas and degrees.
  • sdevonoes 3mo ago
    I never done an iq test, but just curious, can’t one simply “rehearse/study” for such tests? I dunno, let’s say you do a few past IQ tests (with answers available), I guess one could get a higher score just by doing that
    • LPisGood 3mo ago
      You can. IQ scores are not stable throughout one’s life.
• gedy 3mo ago
  I'd rather that than leet code dancing around: "It's not an IQ test, since those are bad, but this is okay though!"
  • annzabelle 3mo ago
    My problem is it's self reported, so it ends up being a "are they smart or did they lie?" game. You can't easily verify it for anybody over 23 or so. Canonical has a job application where you are supposed to rank yourself on a percentile (up to like 1 in 10,000) on how good you were at math in high school. It's a very easy way to incentivize lying, and also to hire people with an excessively high appraisal of themselves. There are a lot of people who are reasonably good at math, and have avoided humbling environments like the Putnam, and have convinced themselves they are God's gift to math, when in reality they were just the brightest kid in a class of 100 high school students.
    • gedy 3mo ago
      Fair enough, but the vast majority companies that interview like this would be totally fine with the brightest 1 of 100, if not the top 20 of 100.
• amazingamazing 3mo ago
  Company is Alpha Vantage: https://beaverhand.com/apply/alpha-vantage-gtm-team-various-roles-available https://beaverhand.com/apply/alpha-vantage-gtm-team-various-...
  • OptionOfT 3mo ago
    > Please note that we will also rely significantly on both solicited references (where you introduce us) as well as unsolicited or "back-end" references (where we do our own). For the latter, please rest assured that we will never contact a current employer without first getting your permission. References already give me goosebumps. Having them reach out to people who haven't given you permission to be a reference sounds like a recipe for disaster.
    • mc32 3mo ago
      If they do sensitive work for the government, it'd make sense that they'd do those back-end references. Also if they are in high end finance where you want to weed out people who have demonstrated moral flexibility was well as total lack of it for certain things.
      • bayarearefugee 3mo ago
        > If they do sensitive work for the government, it'd make sense that they'd do those back-end references. If they do government work that requires clearances, the clearance process already covers this sort of investigation on its own. In any case, they are free to do whatever background checks they want within legal limits, but I'd never apply to a company with such ridiculous hiring processes.
    • jedberg 3mo ago
      Every job does that, whether they tell you or not.
      • lazyasciiart 3mo ago
        No they don't. Source: have hired people without doing that.
• annzabelle 3mo ago
  Canonical? Heard nothing but bad things about their hiring process.
  • monkpit 3mo ago
    wild to call out a random org like that…
    • annzabelle 3mo ago
      Look at any of their job applications, they're all like this: https://canonical.com/careers/3752633/application https://canonical.com/careers/3752633/application
    • samtheDamned 3mo ago
      They're known for asking odd questions like "how did you perform in math in high school" and "please justify your performance in math in high school". It was actually my guess as well before I read the post.
  • LtWorf 3mo ago
    They made me do an online, timed IQ test, stressing that I should take it in my native language to not waste precious seconds understanding it in english. It was horribly translated, every sentence was written like something this: "A and B are two broters/sisters. A gives B 3 apples and he/she/them eats one and returns one to he/she/them…" at some point one section had the instructions wrong so I did all the questions wrong. There was no way to change the language or re-read the instructions to try to understand what the original text might have actually been. That's when I closed the tab. I'm a Debian Developer.
• tb99 3mo ago
  Sneaky age filter? You must be young enough to remember your SAT scores.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • reaperducer 3mo ago
    Sneaky age filter? You must be young enough to remember your SAT scores. I can remember mine just fine. If you're really looking for smart people, use "Answer this word problem in two or more paragraphs. Write your answer on the sheet of paper provided. In cursive."
    • crooked-v 3mo ago
      "In cursive" is just filtering for people old enough to have been taught cursive.
      • spullara 3mo ago
        sadly my kids were just recently taught cursive in elementary school for some unknown reason
        • wavemode 3mo ago
          Learning it is mostly useful for being capable of reading it, esp. when encountering historical documents (or when encountering old people)
          • reaperducer 3mo ago
            Or encountering California license plates. Or finding Walgreens. Not wanting to learn cursive is like not wanting to know lower case just because caps lock exists.
          • boring_twenties 3mo ago
• alephnerd 3mo ago
  As I mentioned elsewhere on HN [0], younger generations are much more competitive now. Visit and talk with undergrads at a top CS program like Stanford, Cal, UIUC, MIT, etc. The culture is different because this is a much more competitive generation. When the acceptance rate into a top CS program is in the 1-5% range and laurels like being a Valedictorian, NHS member, JV or Varsity sports team member in HS, getting a 2100/1500+ on the SAT, and taking 6-7 APs are now table stakes, you get a degree of viciousness, competitiveness, and steel-eyed execution that a lot of older Americans just aren't used to. This mindset is the norm across Asia though - from the Gaokao to the JEE to SKY-or-bust. Honestly, I'm glad that younger generations are much more competitive now - pressure makes diamonds. And honestly, the top 40-50 STEM programs nationally graduate around 30-40k new grads a year. Add to that respected regional programs and Veteran-to-Employment pipelines and you have a self-sustaining talent pipeline. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506001
  • annzabelle 3mo ago
    I disagree with the increase in competitiveness being a good thing. Excessive filtering at all levels has meant that eccentrics or absent minded professor types are not making it into research roles, and creatives or mad geniuses are filtered out before they have the chance to make an impact. There are a lot of people who are extremely bright and creative, but just don't have it all together the whole time from ages 14-25, and these days they have no chance of making it into research positions. The system is rewarding conscientiousness and consistency over creativity.
    • alephnerd 3mo ago
      > The system is rewarding conscientiousness and consistency over creativity This assumes that you can get to the top via rote skills alone. Rote learning only gets you so far and most of those kinds flame out. It's hard to describe, but once you meet actually talented people what you end up seeing is that they're just extremely diligent and deeply passionate about a topic and will continuously execute. For example, when I was in HS I wrestled. Yes there were physical differences that could impact a sparring round, but technique and preparation was almost always able to outcompete base innate talent. Later, I ended up learning ballet the Russian style and it was the same - the truly creative types who were at Vaganova or Paris had already built strong fundamental and technical skills which allowed them to mix and match and create. You cannot be creative without also being diligent and understanding fundamentals. The "eccentrics" and "mad geniuses" are few and far between, and to find people with talent, you do need to use exclusionary tactics like scores and interview performance.
• caminanteblanco 3mo ago
  I just applied to Epic, the EHR company from Wisconsin, and I can confirm that they also ask for SAT scores. Thankfully I have my collegeboard credentials saved
  • LPisGood 3mo ago
    Their pre-screen test was awful. Brain teasers, including some infamous ones like “if you have two coins that make 15 cents and one is not a nickel, how is this possible,” and moderately involved programming questions like “parse phone numbers from a file and record those with any of these area codes OR every other digit is a 2 OR they have multiple pairs of consecutive digits” and you’re given a blank text box with no formatting, IDE, or even non-word processing style indentation help.
    • caminanteblanco 3mo ago
      Thankfully, the coding assessment does have syntax highlighting for plenty of languages, but in general I feel like face-to-face assessments are more productive. TFA seems to make a similar point
  • apparent 3mo ago
    Out of curiosity, did they require SATs, or just ask? And how many years out of HS are you? Seems like it would be crazy to ask for them once someone has finished college and has a UGPA to report.
  • bitwize 3mo ago
    I see we (as a society) are now full Primeagen: "Epic as in health records, not Epic as in Fortnite."
• OptionOfT 3mo ago
  This by default includes a whole bunch of people who didn't take any kind of standardized tests (most notably, immigrants). The (albeit small) country I'm from doesn't do any. Reasoning was that standardized tests create an environment where teaching is merely done to create good test scores, not to actually teach.
  • gmadsen 3mo ago
    The SAT doesn’t test course material. It is literally just applying middle school math and English proficiency.
    • aidenn0 3mo ago
      Starting in 2016 College Board said that they were aligning the test with Common Core, so this might not be true any more.
    • apparent 3mo ago
      It's not just middle school math. It covers geometry and algebra 2, which very few students complete in middle school.
• ogou 3mo ago
  I have seen company descriptions in job ads that list college achievements of founders. They are invariably young Asian men. I understand that it's a cultural signifier and don't judge them. But, I also understand that I will never hear back from them because I don't share that background. So, I never apply to any job listing that references college experience of either side, other than wanting a degree in general.
  • georgeecollins 3mo ago
    I think it is a positive for an employer to ask for an SAT because it tells me right away I don't want to work for them. Once (a long time ago) I tried to upload my resume to apply for a job. The web page started asking me very basic questions, like a basic aptitude test. I was out. Tell me you do not know how to find and evaluate talent!
    • apparent 3mo ago
      I think this is highly age-dependent. I took the SAT well over a decade ago and have significant work experience since then. It would be odd to require me to put down my SAT scores, which I don't even precisely remember. But if I were < 5 years out of college, and especially if I had gone to school during COVID times (when SATs were not required by many colleges), I would completely understand why an employer might ask. Basically, colleges used to act as a filter for SAT and other attributes. During the 2020-2025 period, they admitted students under fairly different standards, due in part to testing challenges and social movements. It makes sense for an employer to want to do a little more diligence to ensure that students who were admitted during this period are similar to students admitted during the prior several decades.
    • aprdm 3mo ago
      You basically described Canonical's hiring process !
      • AnotherGoodName 3mo ago
        No only sat scores but specifically they ask for the percentile band of your high school maths and hard sciences scores. Not even kidding. I’ve been in a staff level+ role at 3 of the 5 faang. Applied to canonical because their products are interesting. I’m ~30 years past high school and i get hit with ‘what are your high school maths scores’. I answered the online form honestly and got a rejection email immediately on send. Phew! Not at all kidding on that and there’s screenshots of the literally insane questions they ask online.
• delichon 3mo ago
  Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want to ensure that too, especially when college degrees don't anymore. The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic Senate’s 2020 Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) report, which warned that removing these tests would eliminate a vital predictor of college success and obscure the impact of severe high-school grade inflation. Unfortunately, the outcomes cautioned against in that report have now materialized in the data across our campuses. All other leading STEM institutions, including the UC’s primary peers, have resumed using SAT/ACT in their admissions to ensure foundational fluency. For the University of California to remain a global leader in STEM, it is essential to restore these objective benchmarks. -- https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/05/29/hundreds-math-professors-ask-uc-bring-back-satact https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessm...
  • doctorpangloss 3mo ago
    how many elected leaders are in STEM? would high SAT scores and grades exclude many US presidents and congressmen? (yes) winning elections seems kind of important to me. so if you were just like, selecting for leadership - and many of our leaders are brilliant people, just not in the sense of being good at taking tests - would that be good or bad? or... what is your real opinion? what are you actually mad about? obviously the UC system should give spots to the kids who will use those spots the best. but it is very hard to define what "using spots the best" means.
    • jimbokun 3mo ago
      In the US or China?
    • lern_too_spel 3mo ago
      We certainly don't want them to fail out, which is what is happening. Berkeley reported 10% failure rate in the intro CS course and 35% in the pre-intro course. https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...
• cm2012 3mo ago
  I would never ask for them since its so cringe. But SAT scores correlate to IQ at .81, and IQ is one of the few things that strongly correlates to knowledge work performance positively. There is probably a lot of alpha from knowing candidates SAT scores. Its more useful than knowing the college they went to.
  • doctorpangloss 3mo ago
    > and IQ is one of the few things that strongly correlates to knowledge work performance positively i think you mean that it correlates to pay. nobody knows what you mean by "knowledge work performance." reviews of your peers also correlated with pay. often it is not the smartest person who is the most popular. so... do you see how you said something kind of meaningless?
    • margalabargala 3mo ago
      > nobody knows what you mean by "knowledge work performance" I actually was pretty easily able to deduce what they meant by "knowledge work performance". It's understandable to be frustrated by not knowing something, but to claim "I don't understand that and therefore no one does and you're being nonsensical" is a bad look. Consider responding with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
    • cm2012 3mo ago
      Nope, I meant what I said. A very good metastudy is "The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology" (by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter). It summarizes 100 years of research on predicting job and training performance. It makes a very strong case that General Mental Ability (GMA, their word for IQ) is the single most valid predictor of employee success on the job, not just income.
      • tptacek 3mo ago
        That's not what that paper says. Work sample tests are more valid than GMAs; the paper just presumes they're too expensive. Meanwhile, we don't have to axiomatically derive any of this: we know that relying on general cognitive assessments to prospective software developers wouldn't work. That's why almost no firms use them. If you exclude work sample testing from your analysis, all this paper is really saying is that active examination of candidates beats subjective interviews and resume scans. Well, obviously.
• sdevonoes 3mo ago
  If you want the job, can’t you just lie? Or are SAT scores something that cannot be faked? I dunno, I also say I know Kotlin when I have more experience in Java (and honestly I couldn’t care less about specific tech stacks), or that I know about tcp/udp when all I have is read a couple of (good) books about it. I don’t feel bad lying about some stupid requirement
  • apparent 3mo ago
    > If you want the job, can’t you just lie? Or are SAT scores something that cannot be faked? I would assume that if you progress to the point of an offer, they would ask you to have the official scores sent by the College Board. Apparently they hang onto scores back to 2005 and can send them for a fee.
• burnte 3mo ago
  I like it. I also like it when companies ask for 10 years of [5 year old technology] experience, or say "there's more to working here than the salary!", or other red flags that make it easy to move to the next listing. If you think my decades old SAT score is relevant, then I know all I need to know about your company.
  • sokoloff 3mo ago
    I only had one company (D. E. Shaw & Co.) ask for my SAT scores. I was late-20s and had to have the recruiter repeat herself two more times before I understood what she was asking. It was also the single highest density of talent I’ve ever worked, by a long shot. Crazy talented coworkers.
    • jleyank 3mo ago
      I would think it an inappropriate question if you're asking a PhD (or MS). You could just ask for a copy of the paper(s) or the dissertation/thesis. Some people improve over the time in the uni environment. Some people don't test well when they're bored, etc. Some just grow up.
• buildsjets 3mo ago
  You cannot use the SAT as a metric to compare different cohorts. SAT scoring has been revised many times over the years. When I took it the highest possible score was 1600. From 2004 through 2016 the highest score was 2400. Now it is back to 1600 again. Plus, both the content and the format of the exam has changed many times over the years. At times, there was no essay requirement, at times the essay was required, and at times it was optional. Hence, each year the examination produces a different distribution/histogram of scores even if you normalize the 1600 vs 2400 difference.
  • DenverR 3mo ago
    You can look at historical percentile by year and score though.
    • giantrobot 3mo ago
      Which requires them to explicitly ask your age outside the bounds of qualification for a job (over 18 etc). Which ends up opening them to age discrimination lawsuits.
      • apparent 3mo ago
        It does not require them to ask about your age, just the year in which you took the SAT. As other commenters have pointed out, this can range from 12 to 17. Also, they could just ask for your SAT score and any relevant info (if you took it during COVID from your car, etc.) and then you could disclose whatever context you wanted.
        • ____tom____ 3mo ago
          That tells them everything they'd need to know to discriminate. If you took the SAT 40 years ago, it doesn't really matter if it was 42 or 47. People are biased 25 vs. 55 not 33 vs. 34.
          • apparent 3mo ago
• obviouslynotme 3mo ago
  They are obviously using the SAT as a safer alternative to the legally dubious practice of IQ testing which can lead to running afoul of the ADA and EEOC. I'm not sure it's much safer, but I am positive it's less safe than doing timed leetcode. At least leetcode problems can be painted as relating to the job. Additionally, the SAT is a shitty IQ test that is constantly crammed for and cheated on. I remember my SAT test. I was the only person in the room not openly cheating. The teacher proctor didn't care. Higher scores mean better students, more funds, higher home prices, bonuses, and a litany of secondary effects. That's not even including people that pay professional test-takers to do it for them. The software industry needs to let go of their obsession with finding 10X ROCKSTAR L33T programmers. They never will though. It has gotten worse every few years for decades, and the problems are almost entirely managerial.
  • slashdave 3mo ago
    > Higher scores mean better students, more funds, higher home prices, bonuses, and a litany of secondary effects. Sounds like an IQ test
  • tptacek 3mo ago
    IQ testing isn't legally dubious. The idea that it is is an Internet myth. There are a couple household-name corporations that administer general cognitive tests for candidates for some roles. More companies don't do it because it doesn't work well.
  • tjwebbnorfolk 3mo ago
    I hate to be the one to tell you this, but every job interview is a derivative IQ test. That includes leetcode.
  • LtWorf 3mo ago
    Canonical is doing IQ testing (with very crappy tests, see my other comment). Not sure if that is because SAT doesn't exist everywhere.
• nitwit005 3mo ago
  I'm surprised they didn't at least attempt to email them to ask why. Ignorance is always a possibility here, as it might be their first time hiring.
• jawns 3mo ago
  As a manager, there are several qualities that I value highly in an engineer, and they all happen to begin with the letter C: Competent, Consistent, Curious, Caring, and Clear Communicators. While SAT scores might act as a proxy for competency and possibly curiosity, they're not going to tell you much about whether the person is consistently reliable, whether they care about others and cooperate well, or whether their vocabulary or literary analysis skills have any correlation with their ability to read the room and tailor their communication to their audience. If I were giving these job posters the benefit of the doubt, I would guess they're including this requirement for the same reason that musicians request particular colors of M&Ms in their riders. They want to weed out people (or bots) who aren't paying attention. Nevertheless, there are better ways to do that than demanding (and presumably filtering by) teenage performance metrics.
  • analog31 3mo ago
    C = Competitiveness. I met an HR manager who had worked for a local but well known company with a reputation for caring about things like GPA and SAT scores. She told me that remembering your SAT scores after college was a sign of a competitive attitude.
    • jimbokun 3mo ago
      In the same sense that the high school quarterback continues to talk about the Big Game now that he’s an overweight retail employee making minimum wage years later.
  • WalterBright 3mo ago
    I've seen what happens in engineering with those with low SAT math scores. They need others to do the math for them, or they just wing it. I remember one who was trying to reduce the noise in an electronic amplifier. He spent days trying random things. Another engineer asked what he was doing, did a quick calculation, and put in an RC circuit that solved the problem.
    • boring_twenties 3mo ago
• buildsjets 3mo ago
  The SAT vs ACT preference map on Wikipedia is something I had not seen before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map.sv...
  • OkayPhysicist 3mo ago
    I took both (since I could just use whichever I scored better on for applications), and the ACT is a much less miserable format. The test is broken up into much larger time chunks, meaning I could take a more useful nap after finishing a 50 minute section in 20 minutes than I could finishing a 20 minute section in 8. Difficulty wise, the ACT was easier, but not by a lot. They seemed to have pretty similar predictive strengths, based on percentiles of people I knew lining up between the two, but obviously the ACT loses precision because of how coarsely it's scored.
  • tjwebbnorfolk 3mo ago
    In Virginia, I had never heard of the ACT until I got to college
• JohnMakin 3mo ago
  > Take-home projects or a trial period of some kind. This makes the most intuitive sense by far: having candidates do a representative slice of the job gives you a solid idea of whether they'd be any good at it. Combining this with structured interviews was (before AI) considered a gold standard; you'd get a sense of who they are and how they work by talking, have a way to compare them pretty objectively to other candidates because of the structured and consistent nature of the interview process, and then you'd get a sense of how they apply their attributes practically to the job via the work exercise. Unfortunately a lot of companies have over the last several years been using this to get candidates to do a project for free for them. If it's going to take more than a few hours of my time, I don't take project style interviews seriously unless compensation is added (which some companies do offer and is a big green flag). Definitely been tricked into working for free a time or two.
  • OkayPhysicist 3mo ago
    Best middle ground I ever had was an interview where they impose a strict 1 hour (maybe it was 90 minutes, idk) time limit between when I got the prompt and when I emailed them back. Then they spent some time looking over it, then I had an interview with an engineer who had read my code and we chatted about it. Why I had made certain decisions, what corners were cut because of the time limit, etc. Felt very fair. Not enough time to assign a valuable task, enough time and privacy that I wasn't under the gun like you are in a whiteboard interview, and it was pretty applicable to what I would be doing at the company. Solid interview. Didn't get the job, but respected the process.
    • JohnMakin 3mo ago
      This style works for me too. I don’t necessarily think the live coding interview is always the best presentation of what I know and some types of interviewers try to apply pressure in those situations I don’t feel is entirely fair, plus you’re often forced to use a third party webapp where it’s entirely out of the normal workstation flow I’d be more comfortable in (I use mostly text editors with plugins when allowed). there has been a proliferation of “take home” exercises that are them just trying to pick your brain for problems they’re struggling with. I have had a “take home” project that led to a trial contract employment that required me doing a ton of work for free I knew they had used later, because I saw the trial API key I had set up for the project used much later on down the line. Never got paid, clearly work was stolen, not much you can do about it and there’s a real power imbalance there that’s difficult to really do much about. Was a tough lesson. When done right I think it’s the best way to screen for good candidates that may not be good live coding interviewers. I do take the position that like, I get why you may have a culture where live pair programming in high pressure situations may be valued. But in most orgs the async nature of -> get requirement -> implement asynchronously -> seek feedback and adjustments -> iterate is far more realistic, but when you deliver something, never hear back, get hit with the whole “we’re going with another candidate” feedback feels like you just got ripped off.
• xantronix 3mo ago
  A lot of responses pointing out various flaws with this question, including the fact that it can be used as a proxy for ageism, the fact that the grading scale has not been consistent over time, or that most foreigners will not have gone through the US education system. However, is it really that uncommon for Americans to never have had reason to take the SAT/ACT, such as, simply not going to uni, or going straight to work after graduating high school?
  • pkaye 3mo ago
    You only need to SAT/ACT for going to get into an university. And these days it seems to matter less. I looked it up and less than 50% of high school students take the SAT/ACT. Personally I never had any employer ask for my SAT/ACT scores since the 90s.
• DANmode 3mo ago
  I’ll do you one better: I was denied a role with a major engineering firm based on my 3.something GPA! They needed a 3.4 or 3.5.
  • aidenn0 3mo ago
    Many years ago I was walking around a college job fair when a recruiter was yelling at a college student. His crime: "wasting everybody's time" by presenting a Resume with a 3.4 GPA when the company clearly listed a 3.5 GPA as the minimum they would accept. If this is how they treat people that don't yet work for them, it doesn't bode well for how they will treat people that work for them.
  • tjwebbnorfolk 3mo ago
    I remember the Cisco (!!) table was the most popular table at the campus job fair, and they turned away anyone without a 3.8+ GPA. I had a 2.42 (2.40 was minimum degree requirement). Dodged a bullet there. I've worked happily at a FAANG for many years now and somehow I've avoided living in a cardboard box by a dumpster.
• apparent 3mo ago
  > Why would you ask for a self-reported, unverifiable test score that could be decades old at this point? Because many colleges that used to reliably filter for them no longer do (or didn't during a several-year period). It's true that self-reported scores are not the most accurate, but if I were applying for a job I would report honestly, on the assumption that they could easily request for the scores to be sent by the College Board. The risk/reward of lying does not make sense, at least in my case.
  • dragonwriter 3mo ago
    > > Why would you ask for a self-reported, unverifiable test score that could be decades old at this point? > It's true that self-reported scores are not the most accurate, but if I were applying for a job I would report honestly, on the assumption that they could easily request for the scores to be sent by the College Board. No, they couldn't, except by going through you (the College Board doesn't take third-party score requests.) You might be able to request that if they are recent enough, but not if they are literally decades old (well, not if they are ~21 years old or older.) https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/sending-sat-scores/additional/sending-archived-scores https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/sending-sat-scores/...
    • apparent 3mo ago
      I am aware that third parties can't request scores. I was referring to the employer asking to have the scores sent, which the applicant would be compelled to do (or look like they fudged their original score reporting). I'm also aware that the College Board doesn't hang onto scores forever. I doubt there are any employers who require SAT scores for applicants who took it prior to 200% (the cutoff indicated in your linked article).
• assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
  When I graduated in the 1970s, and looked for my first job, it was expected that some company might ask for such scores and, iirc, one did.
• tamimio 3mo ago
  > One of the least effective predictors was unstructured interviews or 'chats’ Yeah those are the worst, one time I had an “interview” with a company that I really liked, the founder is also an awesome guy and we chatted few times and all is well. Then I got invited to their facility, great place and team, some of them were structured on how they evaluate, but most of them were an absolute mess, and some of them were hostile as if I would get hired it will get them fired the day after (the passive aggressive of trying to belittle your projects or work and not trying to understand your approach it but to attack it instead) and when I would ask them in a good faith about something they did, you would get a fake halo effect with “oh I can’t tell it’s secret! NDA bla bla” as if they did a patented work.. it was horrible method to hire people despite the great founder I knew. In my opinion, the best way is what I usually do, after initial screening, I give them an assignment that they can do in few days and then return the work, the quality of the output will determine that, and it’s exactly how you will do in real work anyway, and you get to measure their critical thinking and problem solving rather than how would they sell or articulate something on the spot (maybe they are overwhelmed and their head went blank), as I am looking for an engineer not a sales dude, and they would tale some time to build and solve it.
  • paradox460 3mo ago
    I've been talking to a few companies lately, and one just keeps stringing it along, having me talk to manager after manager. It's been 6 weeks, and still no end in sight
• jedberg 3mo ago
  Another thing making a comeback -- reference checks. I had to supply references for my first job in 1999. Then I wasn't asked for them again until 2024, and then for every job after that.
  • bitwize 3mo ago
    Whatchoo talkin about, Willis? I've had to supply references for every job I've had. Somehow it seems every other hackernews was living in a much better timeline, job-wise, than I during the ZIRP era.
• infamouscow 3mo ago
  If it's been 10+ years and an employer wants your SAT scores, 1600 is as good an answer as any. Anyone asking for that data point doesn't actually care about the accuracy, they just want to see if you'll compliantly jump through a pointless hoop. (Save the "but that's fraud!" replies. It's not material to the job, so it isn't).
  • apparent 3mo ago
    That cost-benefit analysis makes no sense if you had a pretty good scores. What's the point in fudging a few extra points if it means that diligence reveals you to be a liar? It would also be somewhat suspicious if you went to a so-so college but allegedly had a perfect SAT. It would only make sense to lie if your score was well under 1600, you went to a college that makes sense for someone with a perfect SAT, and you didn't think it was likely they would follow up with a request for the official score report.
    • infamouscow 3mo ago
      In service to the point, if you're _really_ smart—like definitely going to grad school smart—you apply to universities with the best faculty for your intended area of study. Often that is a sole professor at a university you've never heard of, but the researchers in that area of study regard as a top school.
• aidenn0 3mo ago
  I had a friend with an MS show up for first-day of work for a job that asked for SAT scores on the application. HR said "we never got documentation for your SAT scores, can you provide that?" He was on the phone with his mother, having her go through a filing cabinet when he realized that he didn't want to work for a company that was this serious about SAT scores when hiring someone with a post-graduate degree.
  • apparent 3mo ago
    That does seem wild. Out of curiosity, did he also have to submit GRE scores, which would be closer in time and more representative of his current knowledge/skills?
    • aidenn0 3mo ago
      I'll ask him. This was about 20 years ago.
    • jleyank 3mo ago
      Worker w/PhD was asked by Quebec during residency interview to produce High School grades. Bureaucrats will be bureaucrats independent of language I guess.
• tptacek 3mo ago
  It's weird that people think AI breaks the concept of work sample testing. Work sample testing isn't "about" programming, and predates the profession of programming. You can (and some companies do) work-sample test sales account managers, customer support, accountants, whatever. AI changes the underlying job you're testing for. So, obviously, the tests you might have been using pre-AI won't work anymore; they're testing something that isn't really the job anymore. Update your tests so they're about the real work again, that's all. For coding, that probably means assuming (or requiring) candidates use AI to do your assessment. What AI really does mess with is conversational/interactive interviewing. We do all our interactive scripted interview on Slack, but I can imagine us having to end that practice and return to face-to-face.
  • klausa 3mo ago
    I've seen you comment along those lines before, and I think you're both right, and terribly wrong. By all measures, the way you describe any hiring processes you've designed and had input on designing the metric and the work sample, probably is both high in signal, and not very arbitrary in scoring. They sound genuinely and refreshingly good. Maybe one day I'll interact with one :) But man, that is very much not how work sample tests work in _a lot_ of places out there. Places with actual, formalized rubrics for what constitutes a "pass" or a "good" score are very rare, it's almost always just based on vibes of whatever person is reading your code. If there _are_ formalized rubrics, then they have "suggested allowed time" that is incongruous with what the requirements for a "pass" actually are. All of that is downstream, fundamentally, from the design of the tests not being taken very seriously by the people doing that. And because they're not actually thinking about it very deeply (or they're not allowed to because of time constraints or whatever); "sit down and redesign this task from first principles thinking about what AI enables now" is just not something that happens, and you just get people increasing the scopes of the project blindly.
    • tptacek 3mo ago
      I agree that there aren't many places that are serious about work-sample testing and far too many that using them as a hiring hazing ritual, but that doesn't make me "terribly wrong", just more distinctively right. We've hired resume-blind at Fly.io for 6 years using work samples with fixed rubrics.
• mberning 3mo ago
  Soon people will be taking proctored IQ tests just to be allowed to submit a resume.
• deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
• aezell 3mo ago
  1600 and your GPA was 4.0. Any other answer proves you aren't trying hard enough to get the job.
  • apparent 3mo ago
    4.0, what no APs? Insta-rejected. /s
    • chasd00 3mo ago
      If I may rant. My oldest son will be a junior in HS next year at a STEM magnet (Townview SEM in Dallas). I think even one of his electives is an AP, It’s kind of ridiculous. APs in HS seem pointless if you can’t apply the credit to your college degree plan. As if a University is going to let a STEM major out of calculus because they took the AP in HS…
      • apparent 3mo ago
        Agreed. It seems like they're mostly for showcasing your ability in HS, not getting any actual credit in college.
      • Izkata 3mo ago
        At my highschol, "Honors" classes were the ones that didn't get college credit and "AP" classes allowed you to take a placement test at the end to get college credit.
        • apparent 3mo ago
          Same here, but selective universities will often not let students out of requirements with AP scores. They may let you get credit toward graduation, but if you have to start with all the base level prerequisites then you've not made much progress. Basically, universities are aware that APs have gotten easier and are not a substitute for college-level classes that selective universities offer.
• teeray 3mo ago
  I couldn’t even tell you my SAT scores. I took it and did reasonably well, but after college it just ceased to be information my brain retained. I don’t even know where my results are, so it’s completely lost information at this point.
• HumblyTossed 3mo ago
  Huh, I never took the SATs. What then?
• journal 3mo ago
  but that doesn't mean anything
• 59percentmore 3mo ago
  I wish I could find a position that would. My SAT scores, by far, outshine my CV.
• Ozzie-D 3mo ago
  [flagged]
• pmontra 3mo ago
  > similar-to-me bias (I like you because you're me!). My first boss in the 90s eventually told me why he hired me. "I assume that everybody at their first job with a CS degree have more or less the same level of technical competence [which is not much IMHO] so I ask which are the last books they have read. You told me a few, I usually get none, so I hired you because I hoped that talking with you would be interesting." At least a similar-to-me bias builds a pleasing work environment because of homogeneity.
  • TomasBM 3mo ago
    Isn't that bias just legitimized by having culture fitness criteria in hiring?
• goshx 3mo ago
  Interesting. Xfinity blocked this page as a "security threat." It's likely doing that solely based on the TLD.
• cognitiveinline 3mo ago
  Is SAT as good a preditcor as EQ, I wonder, in LLM based work. It seems clearer articulation is more important.
• duxup 3mo ago
  > Edison also subjected candidates to the 'salt test'. He'd serve candidates soup, and if they salted it before tasting it, he'd allegedly disqualify them. His theory here was that this proved they operated on assumptions. I really don’t want to eat soup in front of someone I’m interviewing with.
• mproud 3mo ago
  I don’t even remember my own GPA, for me college was a lifetime ago!
• boring_twenties 3mo ago
  > Since 2023 or so, I've noticed more and more tech companies and hyper-growth startups dropping bachelor's degree requirements. Those requirements were never real, anyway. I don't have any degree. The last time I was seriously questioned about it during an interview was 2004.
  • neogodless 3mo ago
    While it does not come up in interviews, it does seem to come up during resume filtering. (Plenty of jobs I'm otherwise easily qualified for that I didn't get contacted for, even back when basically having a pulse and knowing code could get you any job you wanted.)
• cik 3mo ago
  It's always odd to me when filters are applied, that arguably neither influence, nor impact outcomes. From what I can see, SAT scores have effectively changed over time, such that reading comprehension has dropped dramatically, with maths abilities increasing (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/11/for-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-sat-a-look-at-standardized-test-scores-over-time/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/11/for-the-1...). One (me) might argue that now, more then ever, reading matters. The age of AI, only increases the value of critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. Combine that with a (notable) 5-10% change in SAT scores, and it would appear that this practice is unlikely to unearth what factor is being filtered for. Mind you, no one has ever not accused our industry of tunnel vision, and confirmation bias.
• asimovDev 3mo ago
  Didn't even read the article, first thing I did was go to comments and Ctrl+F "Canonical". Seeing several results light up was really amusing and validating. What a truly awful hiring process
• p0w3n3d 3mo ago
  ``I'm a developer with 20 years of experience. I created systems from scratch.'' ``And what was your SAT score again?''
• morpheuskafka 3mo ago
  YC's application asks for test scores if under 25, although it doesn't specify which ones.
• Dilettante_ 3mo ago
  >Each applicant took the test under unknown conditions. You don't know [...] whether they walked in cold or worked with a tutor for months, or whether they came from a perfectly stable home life or found out the night before that their dog died/parents are getting divorced/worked the night shift at a grocery store to help pay rent. Maybe they struggled with addiction and rebellion in their youth. I'm pretty sure this is (part of) what's being filtered for quite intentionally.
• socratic_weeb 3mo ago
  Tech companies more and more delusional every time, thinking they are special and that their product is so critical for society, and possibly more complex than operating a particle accelerator. So, you basically have to be an outstanding genius in order to have the "honor" to work for them. Then you go in and it's just a glorified vibecoded spaghetti CRUD. Not surprised.
• economistbob 3mo ago
  Age and socioeconomic discrimination. They want only younger people who took the SAT from yuppy societal bastions. Kind of like how Handshake was full of jobs where the firms wanted only recent graduates. Clearly they will pay a lot of money but be badly run. They want to avoid wokeism beneficiary kids and old folks. An actual job related aptitude test would be better. Half the nation didn't even use the SAT at that age. They used the ACT. They want young coastal yuppies who were not wokeism beneficiaries at the DEI universities. Those universities broke signaling so making all their alumni show SAT scores instead of relying on the brand will mitigate the fallout. ACT takers were from lame red states anyway. They want the young blue state brains without the old blue state baggage.
• alun 3mo ago
  Aside from the fact that they're judging you based on who you were as a minor, it's interesting how it was a startup that asked for this and not a large corporation, given that modern US public schooling is more optimized towards getting you to work in an large institution than a startup. Same schedule every single day, you get a lunch break, exams are designed in a way that there's only one single correct answer, outside of the box thinking is wrong, and you'll get at least a B+ if you just do your homework everyday.
• mensetmanusman 3mo ago
  Will humans ever replace these tests with discussions with a super intelligence that creates a hypergraph projection of our understanding?
• ryannnq 3mo ago
  [dead]