Programmer auditions – Actors do it, so why shouldn't developers?

> Programmer auditions -- Actors do it, so why shouldn't developers?

Programmer auditions that are analogous to what actors do would involve doing actual development work on the actual code based used by the hiring firm (potentially working with one or more other developers, who may either be on staff, hired specifically for the audition process, or also auditioning), the same way that actor auditions involve performing actual scenes from the actual work for which the actor is auditioning.

But, of course, under terms which prevent the hiring firm from making any use of the work product without hiring the auditioning programmer.

But auditions are a fairly expensive tool for evaluating applicants and is generally used for performers when the act of performance is itself the output and is highly specific to the particular work and for which there is no real substitute screening tool (some key points of which -- particularly the high specificity to the particular work and the absence of a suitable substitute -- may well be true of developers, making real auditions as I discuss above potentially useful for them, if quite expensive), but this article isn't about auditions at all, its about selling a platform for automating standard programming interview exercises, but its using the strained metaphor of "auditons" as an attention getter (but nothing in the article even addresses any substance to the comparison to auditions, fairly immediately switching to discussing what this is really about -- making interviewees take a test rather than perform an audition -- and its clear that "developer auditions" is just a a new weird brand name for programming tests with automated scoring that Code Qualified is trying to sell as a service.

> Personally, I prefer the “audition” being a problem/task for the developer to be sent out, allowing the candidate to do the test in the comfort of their own home, with their editor or IDE of choice, using proper build- and version control tools[...]

If your test requires the developer to use some version control tools, this probably means that it'll take an extended period of time. At that point, you should pay her or him for that "test".

Because programmers aren't performers.

The problem is that the "audition" is valuable work product that can be redeployed and has value to the employer whereas if a theatric audition is recorded and ever used in the final movie or anywhere, then that actor will get paid, period.

Full face helmets - Race car drivers wear them, so why shouldn't developers?