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Comment by valand | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with 'to see how you program', though? Why is FAANG, large banks, and several fintech companies are justified to use coding challenge and on-site interview, but not 10-15 employees startups> Considering those 10-15 employees startups need good programmers who can act as cofounders while mature companies already have mature filtering mechanism for recently people joining.

Also, about the open-source projects, not all candidate do open-source projects. Most of them write proprietary codes all day and don't have a chance to contribute to open-source projects. (Disclaimer: I'm one of those unfortunate people, as much as I want to contribute)

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> What's wrong with 'to see how you program', though?

* Dear dentist, can you please show me how you fill cavities?

* Dear lawyer, can you please show me how you law?

* Dear surgeon, can you please show me how you operate?

* Dear accountant, can you please show me how you do taxes?

* Dear architect, can you please show me how you design?

What's wrong with those?

Dentists, lawyers, surgeons and accountants have professional bodies issuing licenses or certifications. Those licenses verify that the candidate in question has at least met some arbitrary skill level in their respective field.

The software industry, for better or worse, have collectively rejected having such a professional body, which means companies looking for software engineers wind up having to evaluate programming skills individually.

I think the more important factor is those professions consider themselves high status and wouldn’t put up with incompetent-until-proven-otherwise interviews.

Programmers as a group don’t stand up for themselves.

* Dear writer, can you please show me some writing samples?

* Dear graphic designer, can you please show me your portfolio?

* Dear welder, can you please weld these test coupons?

* Dear actor, can you please audition for the role?

There are plenty of professions where a demonstration of relevant work ability is a normal part of the hiring process.

The problem with many "coding challenges" is that they take a long time to do - basically, are unpaid paid work. Writing samples and artist portfolios are compiled from work the candidate has already done; the closest we have in software is "looking at someone's GitHub" which has its own set of problems. Welding tests and actor's auditions are distinct because they don't take that much of the candidate's time, and quickly demonstrate if they are suitable for the role or not.

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