Enough with the Programming Puzzles

Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by m0nty on Monday June 06, 2016 @03:57AM (#11845266)

Do people applying for other roles get treated to tests like this? Seems peculiar to IT afaict. Having worked in IT for > 25 years, I would have thought my track record would speak for itself, but still I'm treated as though I've been lying and cheating my way through my career. It's not like just asking questions, either: it's a test of basic aptitude and (like the author) I'm at the stage of refusing to do them.

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Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by kriro on Monday June 06, 2016 @04:22AM (#11845335)

There's assessment centers for most decent entry level management jobs which usually involve grouping tasks by importance and team oriented tasks. They can last a day, sometimes two. Typical consulting gigs have case studies and market size guesstimating (the dreaded how many lawnmowers in NYC etc.)

Typical office secretary jobs here require a work sample so you'll get a typical task for the job and have to do it on the spot (write a letter to someone, translate a text). My current job (academia) required a somewhat simple test to see if I have a decent understanding of method/statistics and the programming test was answering a couple of questions :P

In logistics you usually have to reason through a couple of typical work situations.

After entry level...it's usually just an interview and references.

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Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by m0nty on Monday June 06, 2016 @04:53AM (#11845426)

I guess that's encouraging, kind of. I've always felt like this whole thing was just an extension of "don't trust the IT guy", a viewpoint a one-time employer was happy to articulate loud and often ... in front of the IT guys.

I once had an agent almost freak out over the phone because he'd seen my open-source project and couldn't believe I'd created it myself. "It had to come from somewhere", I told him. "Why shouldn't it be me as much as any other random stranger on the phone?" Seems like even when I presented them with impressive, real-life work, they still didn't want to trust me :)

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Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by gaius on Monday June 06, 2016 @04:55AM (#11845429)

After entry level...it's usually just an interview and references.

Except it's not, that's the problem. But this is not a matter of incompetence on the part of the employer, but of deliberate and calculated policy.

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Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by kriro on Monday June 06, 2016 @05:54AM (#11845592)

Just to clarify. I was referring to the non-programming jobs. So for an entry level management job you'll do the assessment center and jump through all sorts of hoops. For your next job it's usually a basic discussion. It'll get more rigid again higher up as there will be a vetting process etc. But beyond entry level there's usually no skill tests in the domains I know outside of IT. I think that's the main point. Most people could accept all sorts of programming and possibly even logic tests for entry level IT jobs but after you've shipped software it becomes a bit ridiculous in many cases.

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Re:Enough with the Programming Puzzles by corecoder on Monday June 06, 2016 @05:47AM (#11845575)

A friend of mine is a seller in a big firm and was asked to guess how many golf balls exist in the world and other such questions.

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