The thing I dislike, but not surprised about, is how so many dev teams will engage in this circus. The dev management guy is definitely okaying the 5th toy test thing. Which can probably be summarized by the stereotype of which devs seek management, if they are devs at all.
Anyway, I doubt FedEx is doing interesting programming work anyway. They'll get the quality and output they deserve.
First, the website gets a ton of traffic. Granted, it’s not google scale but it’s still significant enough to be interesting.
The more interesting bits are behind the scenes. The operations research challenges are enormous, routing millions of packages across thousands of trucks and airplanes. The sorting hubs are highly automated and frankly terrifying in their scale and speed.
I worked in fraud detection and infosec, and I can’t say much detailed about that. Suffice it to say that stealing packages is a sufficiently good motivation for criminals to develop some interesting strategies.
All that to say that it’s deeply disappointing that fedex is using dumb shit like this to screen talent.
I've never understood why large companies do such long gruelling interviews. I always assumed it's because big companies get lots of low quality applicants at high volume but thats just a huge investment for both sides.
From my limited experience hiring you can spot the talented ones pretty quickly and the real test comes a few months down the road when you're working together and you see their output and ability to learn and adapt quickly to the team.
Work background and experience is usually plenty of information. Not sure what some toy tests in a remote call is going to tell you other than their ability to manage nerves and operate under public pressure.