Computer science PHD is to professional programming what a food science degree is to being a head chef: the wrong credential to rely on, even though it sounds related and is somewhat transferrable.

It a small company not specialized in education and examinations can set a test and deduce if I am good enough to code, then this can be standardized. And there could be many certs: 1. can code, 2. can code c++, 3. understands multithreading … and so on.

I could see this being ok if the certs were retaken regularly. Passing a cert at one point in time doesn't mean you've retained all the knowledge that cert is suppose to assess after some time has passed. This is essentially what TripleByte does for its process to find good engineers for startups.

I think "can this person even code" certs can be like a driving license, and last a long time. More specific skills yes should be renewed.

These types can't usually think clearly under pressure. Besides, answering coding questions is very, very different from inventing those algorithms. It's a completely different way of thinking. That's why.

But does that mean they're bad programmers? I don't think so at all. As a young person, we grew up with the internet so we're conditioned to just know the "pointer" to the information and then have to google/search for it. Now I've learned all the algorithms and data structures at uni too and passed the exams but what remains are the names of them and roughly when they are needed. It may be unfortunate but that's what it is like to study nowadays. It's all about cramming everything into your head and passing. Distractions absolutely everywhere and anxiety that we won't live up to and have the lives our parents had.

Now i for one dislike leet code and coding challenge interviews. I think it's silly, plain and simple. What i would look for instead if i was an employer would be curiosity. Nothing is more important than insatiable curiosity. A curious employee will learn everything about your whole stack in the first week... just out of curiosity. And if they do hit a leet code like problem during day to day work you best believe their curiosity won't let them rest until they've solved it, be if with prior knowledge and experience or without.

Once at an hackaton a computer science phd student ended up in my team.

He was unable to execute a .py file.

Why didn't you help your teammate?

A PhD doesn't mean that a person knows everything. It means they made progress in understanding in a narrow area. Might not have included Python.

He was beyond help. That was far from being the only issue.

That's judgemental. Collaboration couldn't have hurt.

I could spend a day doing the hackaton project or I could spend it teaching basic computing to someone who thinks himself an expert and is unwilling to learn. But I can't stop time, so can't do both.

> this.

It's almost certain some of then (maybe most of them) would have fared just fine if they were left with the problem alone, not in a high pressure setting like a job interview.

I agree pressure can play a part, but thinking clearly under pressure can be a very important skill to assess in a candidate depending on your company. For a high growth startup, there is often a lot of pressure to deliver effective code quickly. I also think retention of knowledge plays a large part.

I'm currently working on an old cad sort of program, its a mess, 20 years of kludges. Working on it is hard - you have to keep all this stuff in your head and I keep saying why the f did he do that, as expected really. Recently I had to add a new bit and use some computational geometry algorithms, it was like a step into a clear dark pool, everything was ordered and nice, which is probably the world of the phd.

I don't know how you test for the ability to do real world stuff - I always think of doctors, they have a system of proctoring they've developed over the years, where you're judged by your peers and rated accordingly and even then its not 100%. I think this is the only way to do it in real life, but I don't know if programming will ever get to that point, it probably will be necessary sometime - when everything is driven by computers.

what about open source github repos that i maintain etc.? i think that's more valuable that a code challenge