Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do

Re:Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring M... by ahaferburg on Monday August 05, 2019 @09:18AM (#20613921)

The reason why I hate it is because of how disrespectful it is. I would be fine with a 20-30 minutes test, but if it says "Don't spend more than one day on this" I would walk.

Writing a resume is fine, because I can copy paste it. Interviewing is fine because it's me talking to another person. They invest time, I invest time. I would even be fine with "solve this thing, print it out, bring it to the interview so we can talk about it". That would be a good alternative to a whiteboard interview.

But doing a coding test for multiple hours without any compensation, and with the very real possibility of getting ghosted for whatever reason... That is just unacceptable.

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Re:Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring M... by pry86 on Monday August 05, 2019 @09:35AM (#20614043)

I agree, but what to do? In last 10 years I changed the job few times already, had many interviews, and 50-60 % of the companies have coding tests. Some even two (first some algorithms, then interview, and then "proper" business coding related challenge). Some are easy and require 2-4 hours, the longest ones were like 20-30 hours of coding (loads of requirements). I see this more and more (in Germany), especially in the companies which "import" developers from easter Europe, Asia or South America.

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Re:Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring M... by pry86 on Monday August 05, 2019 @09:38AM (#20614069)

And what I find the worst is that in some companies, somebody comes up with such great idea to change really complicated task, but if they would have tested their own developers, many of them wouldn't pass! I have seen this is two companies.

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