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by wpietri
1746 days ago
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You really need to interrogate "merit" and "objective". Nominally objective standards have long been used to advance racial discrimination in the US. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test You should also look up the extensive critiques of meritocracy as a concept. There's a lot of literature there. Further, I know of no major tech company who uses a nominally "objective coding test" as the only criterion for hiring. And they shouldn't, because being good at taking coding tests is not the job and not what we should be hiring for. |
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Coding tests examine the type of work actually required to be done on the job (as coders), and they have been correlated with post-hire performance successfully. Someone who is not familiar with efficient data structures will not write scalable code and will end up creating a burden on their teammates during on-call, for example. Asking someone to solve an engineering problem with a provably correct answer is an objective test for hiring engineers, and I will have a difficult time continuing to engage with anyone who counteracts this basis of reality and truth.
When I was hired there were three coding test rounds and one interpersonal round. You might argue that the latter is where racial discrimination seeps in, as well as the recruiter outreach step itself, but somehow I am optimistic that a bunch of tolerant Californians have moved past applying a Literacy Test here already by hiring a majority immigrant / minority workforce. In my situation, my recruiter was also an Asian-American minority.