[ethan_g]

Whether you can give real-world questions depends a lot on the domain. If you're using popular open-source tools, you may be able to test a candidate on the ability to complete standard tasks with them. But what if you're using tons of proprietary software and working in a specialized domain where you expect people to learn on the job? That was the case where I used to work (quant finance). We need programming questions that assess candidate's general ability rather than anything domain-specific. The linked-list question is a perfectly fair non-domain-specific question.

[crdoconnor]

>But what if you're using tons of proprietary software and working in a specialized domain where you expect people to learn on the job?

Then use it in the test! If you're judging people on how well they pick up proprietary software, give to them and make them do something with it.

My tests usually involve giving the candidate exposure to some software/module or other which they were not previously familiar and I judge them on how well they can work with it, applying general programming knowledge they will actually use day to do in the process.

[joshuamorton]

But then, more likely than not, your testing how long it takes someone to learn your stack, and not how well they can solve problems once they're using your stack.

(or in other words, total time taken to do n tasks is mn + b, where m is the efficiency when using your stack, and b is the time taken to originally learn your stack. b is relatively large, so with n=1, that's a very different thing than with n=100.)

[crdoconnor]

"But then, more likely than not, your testing how long it takes someone to learn your stack"

It tests how long it takes somebody to learn a small part of it, certainly.

Would that not be relevant for a job where you intend for them to learn your stack?

"not how well they can solve problems once they're using your stack."

A properly structured test could (and, clearly, both of our cases, should) accommodate both - to begin with, the ability to find their bearings in code with which they are not familiar and subsequently to solve problems within that context.

I usually do tests like this that last 45 minutes.

[joshuamorton]

My edit more clearly explains the issue:

>or in other words, total time taken to do n tasks is mn + b, where m is the efficiency when using your stack, and b is the time taken to originally learn your stack. b is relatively large, so with n=1, that's a very different thing than with n=100.

For clarity, I work at google and I'd argue that for all but the most trivial problems, it would take even a good candidate more than 45 minutes to get their bearings. Most new hires do multiple days worth of codelabs before sitting in their desks.

[crdoconnor]

In my experience the time it takes for programmers to get their bearings isn't necessarily about the triviality of the problem - it's usually about how decoupled/isolated the code you are working on is.

[joshuamorton]

Sure, but my point is that it really doesn't matter when everything is unfamiliar. Imagine I put you into a situation where you're using piper, bazel, gflags, and protobuffs instead of git, make, argparse, and json, its going to take time to get your bearings no matter what. You'll have to figure out 2-3 new syntaxes.

Sure, you can limit scope, to things with 1-2 files where everything is handled for you and no data transfer between systems, building, or commiting required, but then we're getting into a class of problems where your limited to relatively simple, logical issues with very well defined APIs, a class of problems that data structures fit very, very well.