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Just as a side note, I wonder if this could be a better alternative to job interviews. An opportunity to have fun and interact with possible candidates.

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Please don’t. I get that every time a programmer solves a puzzle they then want to turn that into an interview question, but those usually have no correlation to work performance, and having to solve problems in a physical space sure isn’t fair to folks who have disabilities that make that difficult but could still work fine behind a desk.

At first I thought it was a good idea. Not to verify problem solving skills but to maybe get a more dynamic interview of the person working in teams. But yeah, you’re right. This would quickly turn into a dick measuring contest and soon there’s be “cracking the escape room” books dedicated to optimal escape room strategies.

Hey at least escape rooms would be better than coding white boards. Probably more of an actual test of a programmers abilities ;)

It's also just nice to do an activity and not worry about work.

I've actually discussed this with a local escape room owner, for our 50ish people company it's wasn't worth the effort, but if you are hiring 20-30 people in a short time it could be worth the effort.

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