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points by raincole 4 days ago | 0 comments

I honestly don't know what's so wrong about taking a test for a job, unless the job already requires some kind of certifications/licenses. I, personally, wish that my doctors and lawyers have passed some tests.

[–] steveBK123 3 days ago

More often than not the test is at best tangentially related to the role.

At worst it’s the biggest hardos on the team writing a bunch of brain teasers and gotchas as a hazing ritual.

[–] sgerenser 3 days ago

Hey, one day the fate of the company is going to hinge on getting an accurate estimate of how many ping pong balls can fit into a 747, and they'll be glad that they asked the right brainteasers.

[–] steveBK123 3 days ago

I had one recently that was like.. I'd be better at this test if I knew less / was less experienced.

An hour to implement a toy version of a component which, the last time I did it "in real life" blew everyone away that I had a prototype ready in 1 day. That real life prototype went through weeks and weeks of iteration before it was even useful, and everyone was happy with that. But yeah that's something to time box to 1 hour in an interview environment.

So turns into an exercise of - which of the 100 pitfalls/nuances do they want me to pretend don't exist in order to complete it in 1 hour. Opinions vary!

There were multiple questions of this form.

One could pass this test blindly as a new grad not knowing the 100 pitfalls of actually building one in real life.

[–] aleph_minus_one 4 days ago

> I honestly don't know what's so wrong about taking a test for a job, unless the job already requires some kind of certifications/licenses.

You already have a degree from some university, and you already worked in software development for quite some time. So it's very annoying to do some test over and over again for every job application.

[–] toast0 3 days ago

> You already have a degree from some university, and you already worked in software development for quite some time. So it's very annoying to do some test over and over again for every job application.

Ok, but there's no uniform grading in school or employment. We all know people who managed to get through university without learning anything and manage to hold a job in software development without knowing or doing anything. It'd be nice if a degree and a job history guaranteed competence, but it doesn't.

Lots of professions can bring a portfolio and/or a sample of their work, but most software developers can't because the work is often propriatary and a trade secret, and anyway would need a lot of specific setup to operate.

I've only taken test tests for government jobs, and they were laughably outdated; approximately nobody knew how much space was on a 5 1/4" floppy in 1998 when I took the test, but they were asking about 8" floppies, and I assume they still are, because the test had to go through some process and doing a new test would be expensive. But yeah, I expect a company to validate that I can both describe solutions to problems and turn that description into code.

[–] raincole 3 days ago

> You already have a degree from some university, and you already worked in software development for quite some time

Yep. Now substitute doctors/lawyers/accountants/civil engineers into the equation and see how you feel about it.

Surely they don't take a test for every client, but I'd consider the interview process more like a "workaround" for the lack of standardized tests for software engineers instead of the lack of respect.

[–] hnlmorg 3 days ago

They don’t take a test for every client. But they do get regularly monitored for their competency and instead of being fired when they fail, they have their professional license revoked.

Maybe IT professionals should be held to the same rigour. There’s a lot of deadweight in the profession that get paid too much and moan too loudly despite having a cushty job in a field they’re barely competent in.