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Comment by justboxing | Hacker News Reader

> instead you get dance-like-a-monkey "coding tests" (unpaid, of course) that are nonportable from employer to employer.

This - the non-portable aspect - is what irks me the most.

Especially for enterprise developers. Since most of the software we develop is under NDA, we cannot put any of it online to showcase our skills.

I've had to do 3 different take-home "coding exercises" over the last 10 days. 1 was for a Hedge Fund, another for a Real Estate company and a 3rd for an Accounting SaaS company.

I'm in the process of publishing these coding exercise solutions after polishing it up a bit more onto my github profile. Still, I feel like this will also be a waste, because like OP says, most companies have their own specific "Coding tests" and wouldn't take an already coded solution to accept skills and experience of the candidate.

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If you asked a musicians to perform an audition before you hired them, would you accept the response, "Sorry, I don't work for free."

Would you expect a musician to practice their instrument in their free time or only play their instrument during paid gigs?

That is a bad analogy. Supply/demand ratio of musicians is way higher then for developers.

I agree that it is a bad analogy, but I think it goes far beyond supply and demand differences: Music is performed mostly by muscle memory, "system 1", while code is developed mostly by ratiocination, "system 2".

Supply of wannabe developers is quite high.

Isn't that the case in all skilled professions that pay well?

I don't think so. Development seems easy just like singing you can do it at home, have some results on your own computer. But look at talent shows, there are people who can sing and win but still do not have what it takes to build career after winning talent show. Secondly there is whole bunch of occupations that pay well like dentist but how do you even practice that without buying expensive tools.

That's not the only reason it's a terrible analogy; Musicians are artists, developers are tradespeople. If an interview method doesn't make sense for a carpenter or an electrician, it probably doesn't make sense for a developer. That being said, I don't think there are any good proxies for whether a hire will be a good fit, so I understand the problem employers are facing.

The music industry is exploitative precisely because it has this dynamic. I would like the developers lifestyle to be more like that of surgeons than like that of musicians.

This is becoming a real problem IMHO. Asking me to do 3 to 4 hours of work on a "test" just to get to a real interview is a big ask. I do it because I have to; but as my time has gotten more valuable I've started just politely refusing and thanking the recruiter for reaching out. I have a ton of stuff on github that I'd much rather talk about.

We generally offer candidates who made it through the 15 minute phone screen to bring along some code to an interview. Quite honestly, it can be their own project or we can supply a simple "test" so that they have something to bring. We make it clear that we're not looking for perfect code samples, or even great ones, just something for the candidate to talk about. This seems to work pretty well, makes sure they're not doing any free work for us, and doesn't ask for much in the way of their free time.

I've had too many "tests" that were a giant waste of my time to ask it of others.

That's because they want to gauge you against other candidates and the only way to do that fairly is with a standardized test.

I see the point, but some of these tests can take several hours or longer to complete. I think they shoot themselvess in the foot a bit because many of the really good devs won't waste their time with that. My evidence is all purely anecdotal, however.

If all you've got is a foot-gun, everything looks like a foot.

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