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Comment by account2 | Hacker News Reader

Is this why these companies have such intensive leet coding interview processes? In other professions a degree + exams alone is enough.

I can't imagine an interview where a doctor has to perform surgery "as a take home interview" without pay or be able to solve obscure problems from chemistry, biology, etc.

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I've interviewed a lot of people at this point and I just can't rely on a CS degree as a guarantee of competence. I've interviewed (and worked with) people with degrees from excellent CS programs who were bad engineers. Some of them must have cheated in their CS courses because they were outright incompetent -- but they were able to get degrees.

It's a serious problem that we don't have a good way to tell if someone is good at software engineering. Unfortunately degrees don't guarantee anything. So we use whiteboarding, which isn't great either.

I'm not really sure we should want degrees to be a guarantee of competence anyway. If the industry relied on them it could lead to a culture of credentialism that would make it more difficult for good engineers without CS degrees to get jobs. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have degrees in other subjects.

One can say this about any other profession, can't one?

The notary I met while buying my last apartment was a sham, he probably cheated while studying. Guess what? My acquaintance rubber-stamps papers like no one else, one of the best paper rubber-stamping guys I know.

> Some of them must have cheated in their CS courses because they were outright incompetent

I suspect they just didn't want to be software peeps. I suck at anything I don't wanna do, and I find a way to get better at anything I'm really interested in.

Agreed. Considering how important this problem is, you'd think there would be a generally accepted solution that was both effective at finding the right candidate and efficient with resources (both the candidate's and the company's). As far as I know, there isn't one.

Medical schools are still rigorous (presumably). Undergrad degrees are glorified participation trophies.

So are many CS MS programs, provided you can pass the math classes.

The same ones complaining about struggling to find talent in my experience. As if anyone who knows the value of their work wants to work for free.

And yet, too many times people undervalue themselves.

To be fair, there's a board certification process for doctors that they are typically expected to pass before being considered for employment. You could argue this is their version of a 'take-home' interview.

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