[dmoy]

Many things happen:

* You hire people who end up not being able to do the work (I hear my wife complain about this problem in accounting just about every three days)

* You end up needing more stringent certifications than exist in comp sci land (you mentioned lawyers, so that's one with bar exams, but also accounts with CPA exams, professional engineers, doctors, etc)

* You get proof of prior work

* You rely heavily on recommendations, with all the pros and cons there

[jnbiche]

> You hire people who end up not being able to do the work

Funnily enough, I've heard the same thing from some friends who worked at companies with algorithmic interviews.

> You end up needing more stringent certifications than exist in comp sci land

That sounds great. You just have to study up and take a very hard exam at the beginning of your career instead of having to study up and take a hard exam every few years.

> You get proof of prior work

And what about Github? Most employers want to see proof of prior work unless you've got a very good excuse.

> You rely heavily on recommendations, with all the pros and cons there

This may be the only decent argument against the accounting/engineering/medicine interview. Even with good performance, recommendations are a crap shoot (did you get along well w/your boss, are they pissed you're leaving, do they refuse to give out references to anyone like one contract employer I worked for for a year a long time ago).

But then again, puzzle interviews are also a crap shoot.

[hackandtrip]

GitHub can't be used in Graduate interview efficiently, and those one could be probably the most problematic. If a candidate has work experience, you can at least assess that he can do something

[dmoy]

To be clear I wasn't arguing anything, just stating what happens. Things are different in some ways, but not all (recommendations and proof of work are common in programming too)

[jnbiche]

In my experience, recommendations aren't very common in programming, unless you're talking about referrals by former supervisors/colleagues to some job opening.

Have others had a different experience?

[jmchuster]

Recommendations really only come into play when you're talking about the best engineers. In which case, you're effectively no longer interviewing, just getting people in your network who say they must hire you or tell other people in their networks they must hire you.

Related, in blog form: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-deve...

[jnbiche]

I would consider those as more referrals, not recommendations (which implies the traditional job recommendation process).