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by chadash 3034 days ago
There's no question that some questions are inappropriate for senior hires. For example, if someone comes in with a lot of open source work, I think it's probably wise for the hiring manager to devote some more time and personalize the process a bit since that person has already has signals that they are probably good (or at least more likely to be good than most candidates).

But most developers (and I'd venture most good developers) don't have reputations that proceed them. Since it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, I think that a quick coding quiz is fair game so long as it doesn't waste too much time. For example, if I were interviewing, I'd probably be willing to devote about 30 minutes to this sort of thing, but more than that and I'm probably not going to bother unless I'm very interested in your company.

1 comments

Sure, valid points, and agree there's a place for this type of screening. I'm mostly referring to when you're experienced, and approached by a company via an on-site recruiter or employee referral. You are busy and not actively looking, but then trying to then feed you through hackerrank quizzes or whiteboards is just so off-putting.
My experience has been worse: After I'd do all that, they said "great, we'd like to hire you at 80% your current salary!". It angers me.

Nowadays I say up-front "I just want to mention this because it's generally been a sticking point and I don't want to waste your time, I'm looking for a salary in the range of $X". That has saved me a whole bunch of time.

Agreed. I've seen this a lot myself. Companies want you to jump through hoops for them, but the most qualified people for the job probably don't have the time, patience or desire to do so.