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Comment by trotsky | Hacker News Reader

But I am still surprised at how few companies do this

Because it flags you as a mill, uninterested in the applicant and likely a firm that treats development as a commodity. I'd be willing to bet that the 30% who didn't bother to respond to the challenges included some of your best applicants.

You'd never hire an accountant by insisting they prepare a quarterly for you before you ever met them and you wouldn't make prospective truck drivers arbitrarily drive hundreds of miles to an interview.

If you want to screen for the absolute basics of rote capability that's what those various certified professional type credentials are for. But just like your little tests, you'll be pre-screening out the best as well as the worst.

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"Because it flags you as a mill, uninterested in the applicant and likely a firm that treats development as a commodity."

My impression is exactly the opposite. It flags them as a company that cares about technical competence.

"If you want to screen for the absolute basics of rote capability that's what those various certified professional type credentials are for."

Their test screen for more than that. And of course those professional certifications are useless if you go beyond the very basic level, just like "CV-years of experience" are useless for determining competence.

Most of the most talented won't have those credentials and, in my opinion unlike getting sample problems, being asked for the credentials is such a red flag that the best won't apply.

I agree with that. The problem with third party certs which you allude to is they are almost exclusively taken by mediocre developers looking for an easy feather in their cap. Meanwhile true talent has no reason to bother with such nonsense.

The credential I look for when hiring is someone who has already done something remarkable.

It flags them as a company that cares about technical competence

I bet the tasks being sent out are most probably something in the vein of parsing a CSV file or (in case of Atlassian) writing a simple JSP or trivial XSLT or what have you. Not the best check for competence.

The company I work for has prospective developers write something that parses Java property files, and sample files are given to them to examine. It is amazing how many are unable to write something to do this. Additional small-grained programmer behaviors are also discovered besides if they can code the answer: do they comment their code, do they structure it, name it in a thought out manner or use X,Y, and Z as variable and function names? Do they use exception handling? It is a pretty useful test and filters out people who have head knowledge but inability to do a simple task, or have impressive resumes that mean nothing.

Atlassian isn't hiring people solely on the strength of their screener. They just want to be able to more objectively screen out people who have no business applying. Most companies do this by reviewing resumes and getting rid of everyone who, say, doesn't have X years experience with Y language, or didn't have Z GPA in college.

You should give it a try, see what they send you! The stuff we did when I was still there was definitely more advanced. But again, pre-screening is never a test for competence, it is a test for lack of competence. The real test for great skill comes in the form of a 90m+ coding test and a 2h technical interview.

Tests taken remotely do not work to screen out the incompetent who routinely take them to the internet for solutions or pay someone else to solve. Nor do they screen in the competent who realize their day off work is much better spent making some phone calls or networking if they are really looking to switch jobs rather than spend it doing things like learning a new web framework to solve some canned problem.

And yes, he actually mentions in the article this is an actual thing he does: have applicants learn new frameworks in order to apply. Sheesh. Who has time for that except the very desperate.

I tried to address most concerns on my post. But I missed your comment about the accountant and the truck driver. I'd never ask a truck driver to travel hundreds of miles.

In fact, bringing in people to an interview right away without at least calling them IS like asking the truckie to drive a long distance just for the sake of it. I'd avoid that. But I would ask him to send me a photo of his current truck (if he claims he has one). I'd maybe also ask him to name five roads he'd avoid between his main destinations (say in SF, if he claims to be from SF). Someone who's actually a cab driver in NY would find that hard to answer. :-)

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