It is illegal to administer an IQ test as part of the hiring process. Since IQ is the #1 predictor of future job performance (See The Bell Curve), then I imagine puzzle questions are just about the next best thing.
Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
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Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#22It is illegal to administer an IQ test as part of the hiring process. Since IQ is the #1 predictor of future job performance (See The Bell Curve), then I imagine puzzle questions are just about the next best thing.
Do you have any sources on that? What if you administer an IQ test, but you call it something else?
Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#23discrimination should be legal. forcing you to hire someone you don't want to isn't freedom.
On discrimination laws: http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html You'll see a number of groups identified at various points. Lists of them usually start with something like "race, color, religion..." These are known as 'suspect classifications' and discrimination is often not possible except where a suspect class is involved. Suspect classes themselves have been defined by the Supreme Court via 14th amendment rulings, an…
Most people think discrimination is bad. I agree with them. But just because something is bad does not mean that it's correct to make a law against it. The people who discriminate disagree about whether discrimination is a good or bad idea.
Disagreement should not be dealt with by force, it should be dealt with by persuasion, (and with competition). The only exception is when force would happen no matter what we do (ie, they want to assault or defraud someone, then force takes place whether we stop them or not).
When people want to peacefully do things we think are bad, like discriminate, or watch Desperate Housewives, or buy homeopathic medicine, the best thing to do is leave them alone. Do we really want the Government monitoring and judging our peaceful economic choices? The only thing at stake with discrimination is it prevents cooperation between certain people. But so what? I do not have a right to have others work with me; such things should be purely voluntary. And there are still plenty of better, non-discriminating people to work with.
Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#24What should be illegal is silently judging the "coolness" or "good looks" or "charisma" of a candidate. Because, in the real world, that's usually what gets you the job.
Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably moreso than most other things you could evaluate, including programming itself. I'd argue that puzzle-solving is more closely related to what you actually do as a developer than writing "reverse a string in-place" exercises in C. After all, what are programming problems besides puzzles? (Assuming you're working at a firm that actually develops software , instead of handing a template to some code-monkeys and…
The point is this is just a guess. You need scientific experiments to demonstrate this -- otherwise, it's potentially illegal to use puzzles in interviews.
A guess seems like a reasonable standard of proof, the experiment is when you hire them for a month to see if they can do the job. If that's illegal then the laws are broken.
Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#26not only is puzzle/quiz/aptitude testing the future of job applications... I'd throw in _conditioning_ (like the Suk doctors in Dune or the current military). Talent will be rewarded much more when money isn't wasted on less efficient, competent, dedicated and honorable people.
Re: Should asking puzzle questions in technical interviews be illegal?
#27It is illegal to administer an IQ test as part of the hiring process. Since IQ is the #1 predictor of future job performance (See The Bell Curve), then I imagine puzzle questions are just about the next best thing.
IBM did exactly that when I interviewed with them in 1998. They give you a battery of tests including:
A timed test of where you have to do a lot of boring math problems like long-multiplication and division of large sums. I hate boring math, but figured I didn't want to be an accountant, so I didn't stress out over it.
Another timed test where you're given character sequences, and you have to guess what comes next. That was the one all us hackers in the group of interviewees were bragging about after the test. "Oh yeah? I got through all but the last two!", that sort of thing.
We were told our results were not a condition of employment (though this was during the interview process) and they would be kept in our employee profiles, but we couldn't ever find out how we did.