[muzani]

Someone here once posted that they realize that it has little to do with work, but they don't have time to test work related things. Plus candidates hate coding challenges. So the algorithm is the closest to it.

It has a lot of false negatives, but companies like Google have so many candidates it doesn't matter.

I liken it to military push ups. Someone who can do a lot of them also has good enough physical strength to do all kinds of physical work.

[caseymarquis]

Except most people are trying to hire distance runners who will be lifting at most 5 pounds (~2.5kg).

[ratsimihah]

You could argue lifting 5 pounds running long distance demands a lot more energy than lifting 5 pounds and dropping it. And I'm sure they carry a lot more than 5 pounds of gear.

[gotts]

I believe what caseymarquis meant is not the amount of energy throughput but the kind of activity.

Marathon runners and sprint runners are both runners but they literally have completely different muscle structure.

So developers are judged by how well they do "sprint run" when they actually are supposed to be "marathon runners" on a daily basis.

[ratsimihah]

Oh thanks for putting me back on track (get it get it?)

Nice analogy!