[guitarbill]

> CS fundamentals have a big impact on the kinds of programs that individuals can write

Sadly, there seems to be very little correlation though. I've known programmers who graduated from a top CS school with extremely strong CS knowledge, who still write barely comprehensible code. And vice versa, people who have never been taught big-O, but who write the most maintainable, well-reasoned code I've seen. Most programmers aren't building e.g. databases, but writing software that provides business value.

Take home tests can be ok, as long as they are limited in time (<2h). I was adverse to pair coding, but found it to be not as bad as I thought, unless it's 100% pairing all the time. Well, whatever the solution, I think anything that's closer to what day-to-day work at a company looks like is going to give richer feedback/signals than whiteboarding.

[lumost]

Fresh graduates from university are a poor sample of top CS skills as they often lack practical knowledge of software engineering required to be productive. However this doesn't show that an individual with a strong knowledge of software engineering but mixed CS would be highly productive.

Ideally I'd want to interview for both skills.