The first couple months tell us whether they can write good code or not. We're not going to get a good sense of their coding skill from how well they can spout

The first couple months tell us whether they can write good code or not. We're not going to get a good sense of their coding skill from how well they can spout off buzzwords, or even from a code test. Only by giving them tasks we'd expect one of our devs to do and seeing how they interact with other devs, use information-gathering tools (Google, books, coworkers, etc.), and solve complex problems in a social scenario (no dev is an island) do we really get a sense for whether they can write good software.