<story><title>Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams?</title><text>After an invitation to apply for a job with a YC company yesterday (an email from the CEO offering to &amp;quot;have a conversation&amp;quot;) I got a generic invite to take an online coding test in Javascript.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve written JS and shipped numerous apps in it over the last 20 years and let me tell ya, if anyone worked for me and wrote code like I saw on those tests, I&amp;#x27;d fire them.&lt;p&gt;My favorite was a sort question that had an obvious bug. Both sides of the sort had the same test (so no sorting would happen). But the question wasn&amp;#x27;t about that... it was about which input would tell you the code was wrong. This is most ridiculous way to diagnose or fix a bug that I&amp;#x27;ve heard of.&lt;p&gt;Nobody who really works on software works on these kind of bugs. And this diagnostic technique of arbitrarily working backwards to force a multiple choice solution is probably the worst method of programming that I&amp;#x27;ve ever come across. No wonder so many companies are hiring shitty programmers and writing garbage code.&lt;p&gt;Without an actual problem and an understanding of the problem domain, no programmer is going to write anything useful for you. Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m frustrated by this method of interviewing and selecting candidates. It makes me not want to work at places that do this.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else have a similar experience? Also, hiring managers... Do you find these kind of tests useful? Why? How?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>juancn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve interviewed hundreds of programmers, and really, you cannot trust pretty much anyone.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s so many people that think they can code, or just say they do that really don&amp;#x27;t, that some sort of basic coding test is necessary if the job requires it.&lt;p&gt;Our hiring rate for some roles is 200:1, but we pay handsomely for those.&lt;p&gt;Think it the other way around, interviews are a two way process, you&amp;#x27;re also interviewing the company, and the way they conduct the interviews, in many ways also tells you what they value. What they&amp;#x27;re like.&lt;p&gt;Take it as an opportunity to get to know each other. Bring this up in a constructive manner. It may make all the difference and provide a stronger signal to both of you, you learn how do they react to feedback and at the same time you show that you&amp;#x27;re capable of critical thinking and care enough about your craft to call bullshit when you see it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>commandlinefan</author><text>If those tests actually filtered out incompetent programmers, I&amp;#x27;d say they were great, but my experience is that they all test very shallow knowledge that doesn&amp;#x27;t relate to ability to produce software that performs under load.&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; come up with such a test, it ought to just be used as a standard for everybody to take.&lt;p&gt;And yes, as unpopular an opinion as it is around here, I&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; to see a &amp;quot;bar exam&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;licensing board for software developers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams?</title><text>After an invitation to apply for a job with a YC company yesterday (an email from the CEO offering to &amp;quot;have a conversation&amp;quot;) I got a generic invite to take an online coding test in Javascript.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve written JS and shipped numerous apps in it over the last 20 years and let me tell ya, if anyone worked for me and wrote code like I saw on those tests, I&amp;#x27;d fire them.&lt;p&gt;My favorite was a sort question that had an obvious bug. Both sides of the sort had the same test (so no sorting would happen). But the question wasn&amp;#x27;t about that... it was about which input would tell you the code was wrong. This is most ridiculous way to diagnose or fix a bug that I&amp;#x27;ve heard of.&lt;p&gt;Nobody who really works on software works on these kind of bugs. And this diagnostic technique of arbitrarily working backwards to force a multiple choice solution is probably the worst method of programming that I&amp;#x27;ve ever come across. No wonder so many companies are hiring shitty programmers and writing garbage code.&lt;p&gt;Without an actual problem and an understanding of the problem domain, no programmer is going to write anything useful for you. Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m frustrated by this method of interviewing and selecting candidates. It makes me not want to work at places that do this.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else have a similar experience? Also, hiring managers... Do you find these kind of tests useful? Why? How?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>juancn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve interviewed hundreds of programmers, and really, you cannot trust pretty much anyone.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s so many people that think they can code, or just say they do that really don&amp;#x27;t, that some sort of basic coding test is necessary if the job requires it.&lt;p&gt;Our hiring rate for some roles is 200:1, but we pay handsomely for those.&lt;p&gt;Think it the other way around, interviews are a two way process, you&amp;#x27;re also interviewing the company, and the way they conduct the interviews, in many ways also tells you what they value. What they&amp;#x27;re like.&lt;p&gt;Take it as an opportunity to get to know each other. Bring this up in a constructive manner. It may make all the difference and provide a stronger signal to both of you, you learn how do they react to feedback and at the same time you show that you&amp;#x27;re capable of critical thinking and care enough about your craft to call bullshit when you see it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>starlust2</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve recently had multiple candidates recently with inflated resumes. Not mere embellishments, but claiming advanced degrees in computer science when they can&amp;#x27;t solve a simple algorithmic problem (something that can be coded in &amp;lt;10 mins).&lt;p&gt;I dislike most take home problems, especially longer ones. But there&amp;#x27;s few exceptions where I could move forward with a candidate who refuses a technical interview. In almost all cases it&amp;#x27;s egotistical and a glaring red flag.</text></comment>