Enough with the Programming Puzzles

I think it is a very fair point that if you have to use a puzzle maybe you're not attracting the right candidates.

Isn't it difficult to reject these puzzles on principle without sounding either bitter or like you simply can't solve them? I can't imagine a single case where this is going to cause a potential employer to re examine these exercises. They'll simply chock you up to being unqualified.

I reckon most jobs simply require you to not be a knob for an hour while someone asks you tricky questions about your worst behaviors. How often, day to day, are you required to explain something bad about yourself in a constructive way? Yet it is as utterly common as programming puzzles.

My supposition is that if that's where the wind is blowing, I'd had damn better face my sail that way. I hate silly problem solving puzzles as much as anyone, but not a shit lot you can do about it when they're the ones holding the keys.

I wonder if the author didn't know enough about the company to know if he wanted to do an online coding test, then how was he certain that the content wasn't relevant to what the company was looking for?

I'm actually in the middle of a bunch of interviews right now. The most ridiculous interview process I encountered so far was one that was supposed to be 7 (!!) steps long (that usually takes 3-4 weeks by their own estimates), beginning with a 45 minute HackerRank challenge, then a technical project that was said to take 2-5 hours on average (but the time given was a whole week, so I have my doubts about that estimate), followed by up to 4 Skype calls, and finally an onsite.

The HackerRank challenge consisted of two relatively trivial multiple choice problems, a simple FizzBuzz-level coding problem, and a programming puzzle. And I do mean programming puzzle. I consider it a puzzle in the sense that it had very little to do with any classical CS domain I'm aware of (although that may just be an artifact of my own ignorance, but to someone unaware of that domain like myself, it as might as well just be a puzzle) and certainly wasn't anything one would ever encounter in front-end development (I was applying as a front-end engineer). I later found the problem online and here's a thread discussing it for those interested (the company I interviewed with wasn't Google though): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28967020/check-if-there-e...

I finished the 2 MC questions and first coding problem within the first 5 minutes, but I wasn't able to finish the programming puzzle in the time remaining (For what it's worth, I was on the right track with my approach, but it took me a lot of trial and error to arrive at that approach, so I didn't have enough time left to finish the implementation). I got my rejection email two days later.

I really question the wisdom of using a programming puzzle like this as a filter in the first step of your interview process (or really, in any step of the interview process for that matter). You're effectively discarding candidates solely based on their inability to solve an esoteric programming puzzle under some arbitrary time constraint.

Although at the end of the day, I'm not that disappointed in this early rejection. If this programming puzzle was a sign of things to come in the next 6 steps of their interview process, I think I may have dodged a bullet. That could have been so many hours of my life that I'd never get back. Good riddance I say.

I don't know what the solution to hiring is, but I don't think it is as simple as just talking to people. While I have not been involved in too many new hires, I have known many people that come across as knowledgeable in conversation but produce pretty terrible code.

I think coding challenges provide some value, but it can be a but much to expect candidates to spend hour's of their time early in the process