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Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

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Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#81

Post by pc86 »

trentmb wrote: post #28
pizzaman09 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credentialing. Seriously. Have a Bar Association for developers. When anyone can do a few weeks of Googling and claim to be a software developer, you're going to get mostly crap candidates. Offload that process to a formal body, like lawyers, doctors, and engineers do. You can hire unlicensed developers, but you do so at your own risk. Then once you're talking to someone licensed in an interview, you can focus on jus…

It exists: https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ No one cares though.

I would love to sit for a PE exam, except my state requires you to apply for permission, and one of the requirements is 4 years of professional experience working under another PE, after you're already approved as an Engineer-in-Training, which itself required 8 years of experience if you don't have an engineering degree. 15 people sat for the software PE exam last year nationwide compared to nearly 1,000 for some other disciplines.

With those kind of numbers how is anyone with the 12+ years of experience required who doesn't personally know a software PE (of which it seems there are maybe 100 in the United States based on the age of the test and pass rates) supposed to get the certification? I totally accept that my Poli Sci degree means I'll need more professional experience that a Comp Sci or Comp Eng graduate, however the requirement to work under another PE eliminates the vast majority of potential applicants.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#82

Post by pc86 »

neverminder wrote: post #80
shados wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> similar tests aren’t necessarily relevant to the work actually done in finance technology roles IMO, what's relevant for a role is the skill set most people currently doing that role have and that's not always a good thing. I've been the first shouting on top of a roof that we shouldn't ask people to know stupid little algorithm trivias to get a job. But the narative for that quickly devolved to "data structures an…

I thought about this, I thought about this a lot and I still do. Thing is, this attitude can quickly get you tumbling down the rabbit hole. So say I'm a Java developer. But surely in order to be a good Java developer I should know the innards of the JVM, right? To do that I now have to also have to know C++ because that's what JVM is implemented in or whatever. But surely I can't know C++ well if I don't know C, righ…

Scott Hanselman has said a few times that two layers of abstractions is generally sufficient. I'm not sure if he stole it from someone but using your example, that means to be a great Java developer, you should have a good understanding of the JVM, and an adequate understanding of C++. Do you need C++ to be a good Java developer? No. If you've got a decade of experience in both, are you a better Java developer than the guy who learned it in school and that's all he knows? Probably, but not necessarily.

In addition I think the argument falls apart the closer down you get. Granted I am no C expert but I don't think you need to know any assembly to be a very good C developer.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#83

Post by pc86 »

mindcrime wrote: post #62
davb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see some sort of standardisation and rationalisation within software engineering. It's so fragmented and ego driven. Every framework is better than the last, my programming language is better than yours. Thought is rarely given to longevity. I'd much rather work with a more dated ecosystem that I know will be around of true next 20 years than the continual paradigm shifts we endure just now. I'm exhau…

Fair point, but consider that software engineering is a MUCH younger profession than, say, accounting. Consider that "double entry book-keeping" dates back to around 1340, and accounting in general is even older than that. We've had about 60 years to figure this stuff out, and arguably the ground is always moving beneath our feat as the nature and scope of the systems we build keeps changing. I'm exhausted and frustr…

I'm not sure of anything, but if I had to pick one thing to bet on it would be that none of us, or our children's children['s children] will be here in 400 years.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#85

Post by pc86 »

xtracto wrote: post #41

We faced exactly this problem at the current company I work for. When the company was just starting, we had the great idea to use interview questions "like the ones they make in SV", thus used algorithmics-heavy problems when interviewing candidates. Fast forward 4 years, and I realized that the dev team we have is basically a group of just-graduated Engineers or people with at most 1 year of experience. My "eye open…

How much algorithm work does your dev team deal with on a day-to-day basis?

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#86

Post by pc86 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #8

What I like about these tests, is that everyone can have a shot. You can't forge a university degree you don't have, or a 5-years work experience, but you can take a couple of months and work hard to practice your algorithmic skills. As far as ageism is concerned, I prefer to have the opportunity to show my skills through technical tests rather than seeing my application ignored.

> you can take a couple of months and work hard to practice your algorithmic skills

Unless you have kids, or a demanding job, or personal obligations, or you don't want to make learning sorting algorithms for a job you'll never need sorting algorithms a full time job on top of your current full time job.

It's just pre-selecting for a group you're in as opposed to a group you're not (the royal you :)).

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#87

Post by openmosix »

shados wrote: post #79
Joe-Z wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it from a problem-solving perspective: I don't need to know the intricate details of dozens of sorting algorithms or data structures. What I need to be able to do is solve the problems that get thrown at me in daily work. So if I get assigned, say, a performance problem I might, after some research, come up with the idea to use a different data structure to solve it. Or something entirely else! Depends on…

> So if I get assigned, say, a performance problem I might, after some research, come up with the idea to use a different data structure to solve it. Yup. And my feel on that is that (assuming the perf issue is related to a core data structure), that -particular- perf issue shouldn't even have happened in the first place. It should have been obvious given the right background and you could have spent that time doing…

Things evolve. The scale of problems evolve. A data structure that was handling hundred of transactions, crumbles on hundred of thousands. Premature optimizations (and premature abstractions) are the root of all evil.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#88

Post by dver »

Spoom wrote: post #52
joncrocks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the company I work for) use Codility for some of our roles. I think you can add your own tasks/questions.

Big fan of Codility. They do have a lot of algorithmic questions as well, but they also have easy ones (which we use), and we tested them on our own staff prior to deploying (all then-current staff got perfect or nearly perfect). I would only use medium or above if the question tested something that the job absolutely needed in a candidate. They also allow candidates to add their own test cases easily, which, for the…

To get a true stress read, I think you would have had to tell your staff that they needed to pass this test to come back to work in the morning.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#89

Post by AstralStorm »

openmosix wrote: post #87
shados wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if I get assigned, say, a performance problem I might, after some research, come up with the idea to use a different data structure to solve it. Yup. And my feel on that is that (assuming the perf issue is related to a core data structure), that -particular- perf issue shouldn't even have happened in the first place. It should have been obvious given the right background and you could have spent that time doing…

Things evolve. The scale of problems evolve. A data structure that was handling hundred of transactions, crumbles on hundred of thousands. Premature optimizations (and premature abstractions) are the root of all evil.

Corollary: A data structure that is instantiated million times in small sizes is different from one huge instance with million entries.

Re: Why HackerRank and other coding tests are ageist

#90

Post by AstralStorm »

Spoom wrote: post #52
joncrocks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the company I work for) use Codility for some of our roles. I think you can add your own tasks/questions.

Big fan of Codility. They do have a lot of algorithmic questions as well, but they also have easy ones (which we use), and we tested them on our own staff prior to deploying (all then-current staff got perfect or nearly perfect). I would only use medium or above if the question tested something that the job absolutely needed in a candidate. They also allow candidates to add their own test cases easily, which, for the…

Big NOT fan of algorithmic question that can be summed up in one sentence taking a full page of text description.

In most of these coding test the algorithm is easy, but figuring out the catch in the description is harder than actual implementation (unless you're insanely limited and have to reimplement basics from scratch)

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