[kube-system]

> You don't see accountants balancing books before they get hired.

You sure do, and not just by a hiring manager's whim, but by law. Accountants have occupational licensing.

> I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume.

This is a straw man, I have never "caught a liar" on an a coding exam. What they are helpful for doing is judging the quality of what it means to be "proficient in [x]".

If there's anything I have learned from giving coding exams to candidates, it's that the ability of a candidate to verbally sell themselves in an interview has a weak correlation to their ability to produce quality work.

[vikingcaffiene]

> Accountants have occupational licensing.

Forgive my ignorance, but is this during every interview? If I am reading this right this is a certification they'd need to get which would be on their resume. Do they need to re-prove those skills every time?

[kube-system]

Sometimes they are even more often, as those licenses often have "continuing education" requirements to keep them active. For example, they expire every two years in California. https://www.calcpa.org/cpa-licensure/renewing-a-cpa-license/...

But no, they don't happen "during interviews". My point is that there's less need to test people during their interviews for occupations with licensing, because they've already been tested before they even showed up for the interview. Depending on where you're at, you can't even legally call yourself an "accountant" without an occupational license. By contrast, anyone can legally call themselves a "software developer" and show up to an interview, which is why the need to evaluate their skills at that moment may be different.

[vikingcaffiene]

While I see where you are coming from but respectfully disagree with your conclusions.

> My point is that there's less need to test people during their interviews for occupations with licensing, because they've already been tested before they even showed up for the interview.

I mean past job experience and education are pretty good indicators? Is there some facet to the accounting certification process I am unaware of that filters out under performers? If my past few accountants are any indication, then no. :)

All of that aside, I've not seen any data that suggests the hiring practices common in our field produce better outcomes than that which I am evangelizing for. Furthermore, those practices are common FAANG type companies which can offer much higher compensation packages than a typical startup. I assert that it's not only the right thing to do, it is also a _competitive advantage_ to have a streamlined, humane, hiring process.

[kube-system]

The problem that I have with judging someone based off job experience (or academic experience) is that I usually have no idea what value that experience is. I am not familiar with most workplaces. When I have an applicant that has "3 years of experience as a senior developer at XYZ Corp", I have no idea how valuable that is. I've never heard of XYZ Corp; I don't know how good their organization's IT department is, nor do I have any idea what would be expected of a senior developer there. For some companies, this might mean 3 years of solving challenging and highly technical engineering problems, leading a team, and functioning as a sales engineer in the field. For others, it might mean they copy and pasted existing legacy code and changed field names for three years while sitting alone in a cube. And depending on how humble the candidate is, and how good their self-marketing skills are, it might be hard to distinguish between the two in an interview. Or, their skills may not be matched to their previous job position.

This is not to say that I think occupational licenses are always an ideal way of handling this: I definitely don't think that. I'm merely using it as an example that testing people's ability in an occupational setting is not uncommon.

> All of that aside, I've not seen any data that suggests the hiring practices common in our field produce better outcomes than that which I am evangelizing for. Furthermore, those practices are common FAANG type companies which can offer much higher compensation packages than a typical startup. I assert that it's not only the right thing to do, it is also a _competitive advantage_ to have a streamlined, humane, hiring process.

I 1000% agree with you here. I think that this can include some coding exercises, but they need to be very limited in time and scope. You are absolutely right that most companies are not FAANG, and should not interview like FAANG. Every coding exercise I give is very limited in scope and is directly relevant to the job position -- never leetcode or other BS.

[Siira]

> continuing education

I have seen examples of this for teachers, doctors, and bankers. It usually did not add any useful skills to the trainee.