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Software developers huh! What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with

Software developers huh! What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with no syllabus. No 'past papers' etc. I think this should stop. In it's place, developers can have a pet open-source project, which they submit with their application. The point is that the same project can be submitted for a hundred applications if needed, saving the candidate dozens or hundreds of hours of wasted time. They could put that time into the project instead and even if they don't get a single offer, the open source community benefits, and the candidate got to do something interesting rather than convert roman numerals or aggregate an array. I seriously wonder if we should all boycott dev tests. If they give a test, just give them a github link and say "Please review this as a good example of my work.". If they can't review code that isn't tied to a silly question maybe they are not worth working for. I say this having done some such tests recently myself. (To be fair one of them said a Github submission is OK, I just didn't feel my Github was good enough at the time.). I kind of feel bad contributing to the madness!

ngkabra 11y ago
Sounds good in theory. But if enough companies started doing this, I can guarantee you that Indian companies will spring that will offer to create an open source project for you for $100 to $1000 depending on complexity of project, and amount of activity the github profile would show. I wish I was kidding.
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  Same could be said of a take home test. You can outsource it for $100. I doubt it would get you anywhere at a company worth it's salt.
  - ngkabra 11y ago
    While that is sort of true for a take-home test, there is still value in giving candidates an online or in-person programming task that needs to be completed in a small amount of time (e.g. 1 hour)
chc 11y ago
Many other fields require competency tests. What other field requires you to do a potentially unbounded amount of free work in the open and give it away to everybody? Not everybody has any major projects on Github. The lack thereof does not signal lack of programming aptitude. If somebody has done a lot of great work, but it was all for employers and clients, that doesn't mean they would do poor work for you if you were their employer or client. I find that suggestion much more distasteful than having relevant work-sample tests.
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  Licensing should be up to the candidate, and it could be commercially licensed and not available to everybody. You shouldn't have to write a OS Kernel or a modern browser in your spare time either. I'd say it would be about 4-8 hours work that shows off your skills. But if you prefer to spend that same time on some inane made-up problem for one employer and code something that you will wont enjoy writing and never use again, then as I said in another reply that there should be the option for that too. > Many other fields require competency tests Is there a field that requires 4-8hr competency tests where each test is wildly different from the previous, with completely opaque criteria. At least with the provide your own project idea, if the employer has fucked up criteria the candidate has only wasted a few seconds of their time in sending the zip file. Kind of analogous to 'show me your portfolio' for a photographer. The portfolio should be enough. Unfortunately this is not possible as a developer as the source from your previous jobs is likely to be closed, hence the need for a personal project.
  - chc 11y ago
    > Licensing should be up to the candidate, and it could be commercially licensed and not available to everybody. > You shouldn't have to write a OS Kernel or a modern browser in your spare time either. I'd say it would be about 4-8 hours work that shows off your skills. Well, this is a different suggestion. Now we're only talking about a few hours of work rather than a pet project. I don't think the licensing makes much of a difference since I probably couldn't monetize four hours of randomly dorking around. I'm still not a huge fan of the idea, though, because it sounds hard to me to show off (adequately) skills I've spent decades acquiring with less than a day's worth of aimless work. I don't feel like it would be very impressive. > Is there a field that requires 4-8hr competency tests where each test is wildly different from the previous, with completely opaque criteria. Nobody is advocating for eight-hour tests. The OP said they expected their test to take less than half that. And most fields that require competency tests (e.g. cooking, acting, music) will expect you to do it live, on the spot. Take-home tests are being suggested in the case of programming specifically because programmers hate being expected to perform on the spot. > At least with the provide your own project idea, if the employer has fucked up criteria the candidate has only wasted a few seconds of their time in sending the zip file. Not all criteria that someone might test for are "fucked up." If I'm looking for, say, somebody to do a math-heavy machine learning job, and your pet open-source project is a jQuery plugin that makes web page backgrounds sparkly, the mismatch between those two is not the fault of my criteria.
VLM 11y ago
Software devs have extremely low social status, despite pretty good pay. Honestly I'm glad they don't watch "Survivor" and make us eat bugs or do weird obstacle courses. Seriously. You treat people like dirt, they're gonna resent it and complain on HN and some Stockholm Syndrome victims will back up the abusers. Another example of the low social status is those horrible open offices, like a call center. Ugh. Another example of immensely low social status is crazy work hours.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- richmarr 11y ago
  > Another example of the low social status is those horrible open offices, like a call center. Ugh. So, where you work software devs are in an open-plan space and other roles have their own office?
Nacraile 11y ago
> What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with no syllabus. No 'past papers' etc As far as I can tell, essentially all of them. Of course, many of them have no practical way to even attempt to assess competence, so they fall back on "situational" and "culture fit" bullshit. > I think this should stop. In it's place, developers can have a pet open-source project, which they submit with their application. Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work? Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time. There are many competent programmers who have a long list of things they must / would rather do when they get home from sitting at a computer programming all day. It's only more efficient if you send out 100s of applications, but as far as I can tell, competent programmers rarely spam 100s of applications. If you're just putting your toe in the water from time to time, taking a day off to do a traditional tech interview grill fest is a much more effective use of your time. Problem the 3rd: evaluating a large, unfamiliar codebase is actually really hard. All unfamiliar code looks shitty, because you don't have the full context to explain the choices made. Very few people have GitHub pages that actually look good. > I seriously wonder if we should all boycott dev tests. Good luck with that co-ordination problem. Tech interviews suck, for everyone involved. I still haven't heard a proposal for an alternative that isn't fatally flawed. (I consider "take home interviews" to be an incremental improvement on the basic whiteboard problem-solving test)
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  > Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work? Get them to talk about it in the interview > Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time... Not really - in one weekend you probably can create something interesting and good enough for showing off to an employer. Also it will probably draw you in and you spend more time (for the fun of it) making it better. But you don't have to. For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code. > Good luck with that co-ordination problem. A first stage could be that we say "no tests until at least an interview has occurred and the candidate has progressed to the next stage". That is in any candidates own interests regardless of other's actions - so wouldn't require coordination, just communication of the idea. It is in his own interests because the time spent on the speculative work could be better yielded doing something else, such as attending a meetup and generating more opportunities. Looking at it from a sales perspective of how to spend your time - lead qualification, lead generation etc. Why spend a lot of effort on an unqualified lead?
monksy 11y ago
> What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). I know of a place in Chicago that does that for a dev job.
perlgeek 11y ago
FWIW most of the other high-payed jobs have some kind of entrance barrier too, usually in the form of having absolved a Univerity-level course and passed the exams. Anybody can legally claim to be a programmer, so it makes sense for the companies to do some basic checking that a University would have done for them in other cases.

ngkabra 11y ago

Sounds good in theory. But if enough companies started doing this, I can guarantee you that Indian companies will spring that will offer to create an open source project for you for $100 to $1000 depending on complexity of project, and amount of activity the github profile would show. I wish I was kidding.

bbcbasic 11y ago
Same could be said of a take home test. You can outsource it for $100. I doubt it would get you anywhere at a company worth it's salt.
- ngkabra 11y ago
  While that is sort of true for a take-home test, there is still value in giving candidates an online or in-person programming task that needs to be completed in a small amount of time (e.g. 1 hour)

chc 11y ago

Many other fields require competency tests. What other field requires you to do a potentially unbounded amount of free work in the open and give it away to everybody? Not everybody has any major projects on Github. The lack thereof does not signal lack of programming aptitude. If somebody has done a lot of great work, but it was all for employers and clients, that doesn't mean they would do poor work for you if you were their employer or client. I find that suggestion much more distasteful than having relevant work-sample tests.

bbcbasic 11y ago
Licensing should be up to the candidate, and it could be commercially licensed and not available to everybody. You shouldn't have to write a OS Kernel or a modern browser in your spare time either. I'd say it would be about 4-8 hours work that shows off your skills. But if you prefer to spend that same time on some inane made-up problem for one employer and code something that you will wont enjoy writing and never use again, then as I said in another reply that there should be the option for that too. > Many other fields require competency tests Is there a field that requires 4-8hr competency tests where each test is wildly different from the previous, with completely opaque criteria. At least with the provide your own project idea, if the employer has fucked up criteria the candidate has only wasted a few seconds of their time in sending the zip file. Kind of analogous to 'show me your portfolio' for a photographer. The portfolio should be enough. Unfortunately this is not possible as a developer as the source from your previous jobs is likely to be closed, hence the need for a personal project.
- chc 11y ago
  > Licensing should be up to the candidate, and it could be commercially licensed and not available to everybody. > You shouldn't have to write a OS Kernel or a modern browser in your spare time either. I'd say it would be about 4-8 hours work that shows off your skills. Well, this is a different suggestion. Now we're only talking about a few hours of work rather than a pet project. I don't think the licensing makes much of a difference since I probably couldn't monetize four hours of randomly dorking around. I'm still not a huge fan of the idea, though, because it sounds hard to me to show off (adequately) skills I've spent decades acquiring with less than a day's worth of aimless work. I don't feel like it would be very impressive. > Is there a field that requires 4-8hr competency tests where each test is wildly different from the previous, with completely opaque criteria. Nobody is advocating for eight-hour tests. The OP said they expected their test to take less than half that. And most fields that require competency tests (e.g. cooking, acting, music) will expect you to do it live, on the spot. Take-home tests are being suggested in the case of programming specifically because programmers hate being expected to perform on the spot. > At least with the provide your own project idea, if the employer has fucked up criteria the candidate has only wasted a few seconds of their time in sending the zip file. Not all criteria that someone might test for are "fucked up." If I'm looking for, say, somebody to do a math-heavy machine learning job, and your pet open-source project is a jQuery plugin that makes web page backgrounds sparkly, the mismatch between those two is not the fault of my criteria.

VLM 11y ago

Software devs have extremely low social status, despite pretty good pay. Honestly I'm glad they don't watch "Survivor" and make us eat bugs or do weird obstacle courses. Seriously. You treat people like dirt, they're gonna resent it and complain on HN and some Stockholm Syndrome victims will back up the abusers. Another example of the low social status is those horrible open offices, like a call center. Ugh. Another example of immensely low social status is crazy work hours.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
richmarr 11y ago
> Another example of the low social status is those horrible open offices, like a call center. Ugh. So, where you work software devs are in an open-plan space and other roles have their own office?

Nacraile 11y ago

> What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). Moreover a 4-8 hour exam with no syllabus. No 'past papers' etc As far as I can tell, essentially all of them. Of course, many of them have no practical way to even attempt to assess competence, so they fall back on "situational" and "culture fit" bullshit. > I think this should stop. In it's place, developers can have a pet open-source project, which they submit with their application. Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work? Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time. There are many competent programmers who have a long list of things they must / would rather do when they get home from sitting at a computer programming all day. It's only more efficient if you send out 100s of applications, but as far as I can tell, competent programmers rarely spam 100s of applications. If you're just putting your toe in the water from time to time, taking a day off to do a traditional tech interview grill fest is a much more effective use of your time. Problem the 3rd: evaluating a large, unfamiliar codebase is actually really hard. All unfamiliar code looks shitty, because you don't have the full context to explain the choices made. Very few people have GitHub pages that actually look good. > I seriously wonder if we should all boycott dev tests. Good luck with that co-ordination problem. Tech interviews suck, for everyone involved. I still haven't heard a proposal for an alternative that isn't fatally flawed. (I consider "take home interviews" to be an incremental improvement on the basic whiteboard problem-solving test)

bbcbasic 11y ago
> Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work? Get them to talk about it in the interview > Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time... Not really - in one weekend you probably can create something interesting and good enough for showing off to an employer. Also it will probably draw you in and you spend more time (for the fun of it) making it better. But you don't have to. For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code. > Good luck with that co-ordination problem. A first stage could be that we say "no tests until at least an interview has occurred and the candidate has progressed to the next stage". That is in any candidates own interests regardless of other's actions - so wouldn't require coordination, just communication of the idea. It is in his own interests because the time spent on the speculative work could be better yielded doing something else, such as attending a meetup and generating more opportunities. Looking at it from a sales perspective of how to spend your time - lead qualification, lead generation etc. Why spend a lot of effort on an unqualified lead?

monksy 11y ago

> What other role requires you to complete an exam to be considered for a job (or even just an interview). I know of a place in Chicago that does that for a dev job.

perlgeek 11y ago

FWIW most of the other high-payed jobs have some kind of entrance barrier too, usually in the form of having absolved a Univerity-level course and passed the exams. Anybody can legally claim to be a programmer, so it makes sense for the companies to do some basic checking that a University would have done for them in other cases.