Re:Ask HN: Poor Codility performance, am I a bad programmer?
by rubberstamp on Sunday January 31, 2016 @10:47PM
(#11009625)
> passing or failing on codility means nothing. it just means the company trying to interview you through codility has no idea how to interview you.
I didn't say it was a fault with codility. Some companies, like your's, use it in a sensible way. But I think there are many companies which use this tool the wrong way. Anything except the easy level takes more time for someone who doesn't practice these kind of challenges every day. Moreover correct algorithm only scores 50%. 100% score can only be achieved upon perfect optimizing, which is very hard to do within 30 minutes. And your can't know which edge cases tests are failing until the solution is submitted after which its not possible to edit/correct it.
Re:Ask HN: Poor Codility performance, am I a bad programmer?
by seanwilson on Sunday January 31, 2016 @11:18PM
(#11009741)
Yeah, I'd always take the points you mentioned into account when reviewing a solution. Along with saving time I did find reviewing Codility submissions quite revealing. I've seen cases where the candidate couldn't get code to even compile, another where they didn't know Java includes map data structures existed (asked them in the follow up interview) and another where the implementation for an easy task was super slow when the nearly fastest approach should have been obvious (again, asked about in interview).
I'd say it's better for identifying really unsuitable candidates than it is for identifying who are the best ones.
It's a decent enough way to filter out obviously bad candidates without eating up your time (which is a big deal for small teams). I've used Codility for interviewing and being interviewed before and thought it was fine.
I would only reject a candidate if they got say less than 50% and the problems chosen weren't too difficult. If a company is going to be expecting 90% pass rates for super hard problems the rest of their interview process is probably faulty as well; that's not the fault of Codility.