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Nothing against you, as I don't know you or your work, but "shipping product" does not equal doing good work. People ship crappy, buggy code every day. Just be

Nothing against you, as I don't know you or your work, but "shipping product" does not equal doing good work. People ship crappy, buggy code every day. Just because one "ships daily" doesn't mean that what they're shipping is worth anything or means they know what they're doing. I've seen people that have no clue how to write code copy and paste crap they find all over the internet into a file and ship it. It's a slow, buggy and ugly hack, but it shipped. It will come back days later as unexceptably bad by the customer. That's the purpose of these tests. To weed out the people that have no clue how to write proper software that deals with high loads, scalability and performance criticality.

sigsergv 13y ago
Software engineers make product, not code. I'd prefer talented developer with good practical experience in “releasing products” rather than an algo-geek who can only solve stupid hiring quizes. Slow buggy ugly WORKING RELEASED product is a much-much better than ideal clean and effective thing not yet ready for release for a few years in row.
- hackinsack 13y ago
  Not saying I disagree with that, except for releasing slow buggy code. Why not accept either of those people? There are efficient ways, as described in the article, to interview for people that are great at releasing quality code in a productive time frame. I was simply pointing out that releasing code daily doesn't mean you know what you're doing. If you can't answer at least some of the questions that were in this article, I'd question your ability to write productive code. That's not to say that only questions like that should be a determining factor for ones ability to produce.
  - nhangen 13y ago
    You're right that shipping !== good code, but I wouldn't be able to keep shipping the same product if it weren't somewhat valuable to my customers. The point isn't that I'm a unicorn, but that good developers can exist outside of code challenges. People like me, that are self-taught and work super hard in order to improve our craft...we're not appreciated enough. Everyone wants a rockstar, forgetting that drummers and bass players add a lot of value.
emddudley 13y ago
You're writing as if most companies care about "proper" software. Most don't. They care about shipping.
nhangen 13y ago
Just want to mention also that knowing the answers to these questions does not mean that you'll write bug-free code. Bugs are a product of shipping, and occur regardless of talent or ability to answer said questions.

sigsergv 13y ago

Software engineers make product, not code. I'd prefer talented developer with good practical experience in “releasing products” rather than an algo-geek who can only solve stupid hiring quizes. Slow buggy ugly WORKING RELEASED product is a much-much better than ideal clean and effective thing not yet ready for release for a few years in row.

hackinsack 13y ago
Not saying I disagree with that, except for releasing slow buggy code. Why not accept either of those people? There are efficient ways, as described in the article, to interview for people that are great at releasing quality code in a productive time frame. I was simply pointing out that releasing code daily doesn't mean you know what you're doing. If you can't answer at least some of the questions that were in this article, I'd question your ability to write productive code. That's not to say that only questions like that should be a determining factor for ones ability to produce.
- nhangen 13y ago
  You're right that shipping !== good code, but I wouldn't be able to keep shipping the same product if it weren't somewhat valuable to my customers. The point isn't that I'm a unicorn, but that good developers can exist outside of code challenges. People like me, that are self-taught and work super hard in order to improve our craft...we're not appreciated enough. Everyone wants a rockstar, forgetting that drummers and bass players add a lot of value.

emddudley 13y ago

You're writing as if most companies care about "proper" software. Most don't. They care about shipping.

nhangen 13y ago

Just want to mention also that knowing the answers to these questions does not mean that you'll write bug-free code. Bugs are a product of shipping, and occur regardless of talent or ability to answer said questions.