Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams?

Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by riskable on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @11:22AM (#30616275)

> Guy can't code? Fire him, hire another and take it as a risk of the process.

There's a couple of "problems with this idea in reality" I feel I should point out:

  * The process of firing and hiring someone is often a *very* bureaucratic thing that requires many people to sign off on it.  It can often take weeks or *months*.  That's a lot of wasted time when you actually need someone to fill a role.
  * Some countries just plain don't let you do this (e.g. France).  Once you hire someone you're basically stuck with them unless you can prove they did something really, really bad.
  * It can be downright evil to just up and fire people shortly after hiring them just because they're not as efficient as you'd hoped.  You'd *think* that having a process like you suggest would only get rid of people that lied on their resume (good riddance) but in reality it'll be abused by managers to shape their reports in ways that are beneficial to them but not necessarily the business overall (zero-consequence firing).
  * There's something to be said for letting people through your hiring process that aren't qualified...  It's downright dangerous from an operational stability and information security perspective.

IMHO the real problem is HR: They suck at filtering out IT candidates. They're so bad that you'd be better off throwing darts and sending those resumes off to the hiring managers. They filter out perfectly qualified candidates that could be the best thing that ever happened to your organization and then they let through people who's only useful skill in life seems to be making a good-looking resume.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by bradlys on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @11:41AM (#30616570)

These are all excuses. You can fire someone whenever you want in the US. It can be the same day you hired them and you can even not give them severance.

I’ve seen this happen plenty enough even in SV. If someone wants you fired - they’ll do it asap.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by jaredklewis on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @02:27PM (#30618908)

Sure, but turnover has a strong effect on employee morale and the company’s reputation

So even if it surfaced the best candidates, hiring anyone that applied and then firing 90% of them after a week would result in a depressing work environment and an ever shrinking pool of qualified candidates (who wants to upend their life to take a job they only have a 10% chance of keeping?). Not to mention the cost of onboarding.

This is how we get to the status quo: do as much filtering as you can before you hire.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by TheCoelacanth on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @01:56PM (#30618574)

Just because you are legally allowed to do it, doesn't mean you should do it at the drop of a hat.

Slacking off during the hiring process with the intention of firing a large portion of the people you hire is a violation of the social contract and a huge asshole move.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by nopenopenopeno on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @12:12PM (#30617070)

This is true. Workers in the US have effectively zero rights to employment until they’ve been employed for at least a year, and even then you can still fire them and just make up a reason. Corporations spend a lot of lobbying dollars to make sure the US remains a corporate authoritarian state.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by shagie on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @11:39AM (#30616537)

> IMHO the real problem is HR: They suck at filtering out IT candidates.

HR is really only qualified to filter out based on the qualifications on paper. These are sometimes misleading and occasionally outright fabrications. Those can really only be verified by someone with the appropriate technical skill to separate bullshit from an accurate representation of the abilities of the candidate.

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by soco on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @12:18PM (#30617188)

Then why putting them in the hiring process?

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Re:Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by coding exams? by shagie on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @12:30PM (#30617402)

They are typically the owners of the application tracking software and schedulers of interviews.

If the hiring manager wants the firehose of the "everyone who clicked quick apply" on LinkedIn or Indeed, then fair 'nuff. However, my reading of the comment that I replied to was the issue that HR wasn't filtering out unqualified applicants. Removing HR from the hiring process won't improve on that issue.

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