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Will the Solve-the-Riddle Hiring Trend Affect IT?
An anonymous reader wonders: "It's probably harder to find a good developer, than for a developer to find a job. Seems to be a Google-riddle trend; rather than caring about references/diplomas/resumes, employers are using solve-this-and-you-have-a-job approach, not even caring about any usual information. Does that give decent graduates/talented unexperienced devs/homegrown coders a chance at the corporate job, or does it alienate potential matches?"
Is your hiring policy so brain-dead that any blot on a criminal background check is an automatic disqualifier? Or is a potential candidate given a chance to explain? We live in times when it seems that everything is illegal. No one gets through a day without doing something illegal. No one gets through a month without committing a serious crime. (Well, at least that's true if you have a half-way fun sex life.) Is your requirement for a negative background check absolute? If so, why?
Out here in Orange County, IGN Entertainment is infamous for their tests. I went in and nailed the interview. The next level to advance to was a test. The test was to implement a small web server (GET/HEAD commands basically) in C++ using *no external libraries of any kind*. They stated the test should take 3 - 4 hours. The specs were extremely vague and any attempt I made to get clarification was met with "do what you think is best".
They also mailed me the test late on a thursday evening, and were calling asking where it was the following monday morning. Problem being I was currently working 50/60 hours a week as well, and it just happened to be the weekend I was moving :(
I ask you then, how is anyone who currently *has* a job and perhaps a family supposed to complete a test like this? It seems like the most talented candidates would *HAVE* jobs and therefore find it much more difficult to complete the test. I rushed the program together because -- what choice did I have? It did not represent me well.
Looking back, the only appropriate response on my part would have been to say "Your requirements suck, and this is not a 3 to 4 hour job. Thanks but no thanks." The entire thing was a waste of their time, waste of my time. Maybe that was the test, to see if I'd tell them to fuck off.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I was taken to a conference room, given a hardcopy chunk of code, and told to figure out what it did. On the way out one guy said, "Oh there might be an error in there too". So I did my 'Russell Nash' thing and ran the program step by step in my head and figured the program out. I ran a few more calculations, and I determined there was a problem given a certain numeric precision. The guys came back in about 30 minutes after they left. First they asked to see any scrap paper I used determining the solution. I told them I didn't have any, except for a couple of numbers I wrote on the code pages. They were stunned, but I explained exactly what the program did, which one of them confirmed. Then I explained the error I found. At this point they got very defensive. It seems this piece of code was pulled from their production systems, and "didn't have any errors". I explained what I found to them, and one of them wandered off.
Oddly I didn't get the job. They said I lacked the ability to document. Funny since I graduated with a degree in technical writing. Maybe they just wanted people to come in an debug for them in interviews.
Amen, brother.
I once had an interview where they handed me a few lines of abberent C code and asked what's the output. I answered that it didn't matter, because C code should never be written like that. Production C code should never look like an entry in the Obfuscated C contest.
That was the wrong answer, of course, and I didn't get an offer, but I figured a sysadmin job at a place that wanted me to be able to read obfuscated C entries probably wasn't the place I wanted to work anyway.
Geoff
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso