Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Are Timed Coding Tests Valuable?
First time accepted submitter xkrebstarx writes "A buddy of mine recently applied to a large tech company. Before setting up a phone interview with him, the unnamed company issued a timed coding test to gauge his coding prowess. He was allotted 45 minutes to complete an undergraduate level coding assignment. I would like to ask the Slashdotters of the world if they find value in these speed-programming tests. Does coding quickly really indicate a better programmer? A better employee?"
I dunno...but it will weed out the pretenders/bullshitters.
No sig today...
They are extremely valuable - they let you know which potential employers don't have a clue about programmer productivity / expertise.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
We use Fizzbuzz and a short SQL test that take a total of 30 minutes for the first part of the test. If they fail this, we can them and don't give them an interview.
A surprising number of people fail this test.
We then have a larger problem with much more time allotted. Here we're looking for style and quality of construction.
That said, even with this longer test, the people we hire tend to get the same distance through the test. They're at least within the same half of an order of magnitude.
At the end of the day, in a paid position you can and do have a deadline to work to. You can't take forever building something. You have to produce the goods!
I personally discard any applicant that thinks like this, it means they can't actually think about algorithms, data structures, and how to design something well, and in doing so will produce sloppy assed code.
If the people performing the test are any good.
First of all it will weed out the anti authority programmers. (There is a lot of people who will refuse to do this - the door is right there...)
Next, it will test if you can handle stress - quality of the code (should be) is irrelevant in these kind of tests. But you learn a lot about how people act under stress.
Personal experience, during an interview I was asked to implement a hash map on a whiteboard. What they where looking for was not an actual shiny working example (hands up, those who don't need to go look in a book to find a proper hashing function (or the interwebs)) - they wanted to see how I handled myself in a stressful situation.
If a job requires a skill that is easy to test, it should be obvious that you want to test it. Programming is such a skill. Sure there are tasks within programming that can't be tested in 45 minutes, but there are also tasks that can. I'd feel I knew more about a programmer's skills having seen a couple dozen lines of code she's written than for instance hearing her last employer's opinion, which may be biased by all sorts of interests, or reading the list of projects she'd worked on, where you don't know how she contributed. College grades in programming courses might provide the same kind of information, but courses may not be standardized and the candidate might have developed her skills since college.
You would be surprised at the (low) quality of some candidates whose resumes suggest they're qualified for a senior engineer position.
The thing is, you may not be hiring a worldwide known linux kernel expert. You may instead be thinking about hiring someone who's CV says he's done several impressive looking things. You need to verify what his level of involvement in those was, and a good first step is often "are you so retarded that you can't possibly be telling the truth on your CV".
I personally discard any company that tests undergraduate-level stuff.
This is one of the reasons for the test. It not only filters out the incompetent, but it also filters out the arrogant prima donnas, who will probably not be good at teamwork.
When I'm hiring for positions that are paying high salaries, I want to know the person is just as good (or better) in front of a computer as they are at interviewing and sounding smart. A simple programming exercise can confirm that the person is good with computers, not just as BS'ing their way through interviews.
It's disappointing how many applicants will fail such a simple demonstration of their claimed skills. Likewise, if someone thinks a short demonstration is beneath them, I don't want to work with them. Every job has some crap that just needs to be done, even if its a waste of everyone's time. If they haven't learned the "do it and move on" philosophy, they're going to be hard to work with. I've worked with people who will spend days arguing against doing 20 minutes of work - I'm definitely not going to hire people like that.
And I understand the pompous arrogance that motivates his feigned ignorance at the purpose of fizzbuzz tests. For every apocryphal story of "zomg they asked me to write quicksort from memory!" there are hundreds of actual examples of people with impressive credentials who can't even handle modulo arithmetic or linked lists or whatever trivial concept most competent programmers know reflexively. I know, early in my career I graded the damn things, and flunked several people with Masters degrees and many people with years of experience. Never failed a PhD's test, but I did witness one guy who stormed out of the interview when asked to take one. Buh-bye, cupcake!
No one is above this. Anyone who believes they are too special to take it is either so completely ignorant of the industry and the caliber of applicants that they won't perform well in a business setting, or, more likely, they are aware of their own shortcomings and are putting on a show to maintain face and self-esteem. Competent people use them as an opportunity to relax and maybe show off a little.
Seriously, refusing a fizzbuzz test for a programming job is like applying at the DEA and refusing the mandatory drug test. I don't care how you feel about it, you're a fucking a moron to think you could ever get around it.