One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
To answer my own question, something I find super frustrating is those coding quizz where you are "evaluated" on how many trivia and syntax you know on the top of your head. If you open up a new tab to google or stack overflow things, they assume you are cheating. The company get a very detailed, but completly meaningless, evaluation of your skills.
That's excellent.
A company just made me pass a multiple choices quizz on codingame.com and it pisses me off how irrelevant it was. My gut told me "You are measuring the wrong things!! A senior developer is not someone who knows a lot of trivia by heart π¬π¬"
Working around this is not so simple. Maybe do not take the quizz. Probably try to educate the company what a senior developer really does.
I agree with you, most companies' coding tests ain't relevant anymore. Since it's a public secret that as an SWE, we must google things to do our work.
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
To answer my own question, something I find super frustrating is those coding quizz where you are "evaluated" on how many trivia and syntax you know on the top of your head. If you open up a new tab to google or stack overflow things, they assume you are cheating. The company get a very detailed, but completly meaningless, evaluation of your skills.
That's excellent.
A company just made me pass a multiple choices quizz on codingame.com and it pisses me off how irrelevant it was. My gut told me "You are measuring the wrong things!! A senior developer is not someone who knows a lot of trivia by heart π¬π¬"
Working around this is not so simple. Maybe do not take the quizz. Probably try to educate the company what a senior developer really does.
What is a Senior Developer *Really*?
Marc Backes γ» Oct 15 '20
Thanks @themarcba !
If I were on the hiring side with a magic want, I would
I agree with you, most companies' coding tests ain't relevant anymore. Since it's a public secret that as an SWE, we must google things to do our work.
I agree but how would you test if the new guy is capable for the job? Cause thats the real problem they are trying to solve with the quiz I think.
Send them a pull request full of gotchas and ask them to review it.
That's actually something important you do on the job.
And it's hard to fake that you good at it, especially showing you have empathy for the programmer who wrote this.