Show HN: Is this useful to those of you hiring programmers?

[devtestapp]

I created http://devtest.net as a weekend project, and I'm pretty proud of it from a technical and UI standpoint.

The problem is, I've built this by myself in a bit of a vacuum, to "scratch my own itch", and I don't know if this is useful to anyone other than me. I'm also not so hot on the business side and don't really know what I'm doing.

Basically, I'm looking for some advice, now that I've actually launched, what now? One thing that this has shown me is that I'm capable of putting together a pretty decent web application on my own in my spare time. Should I stick with this idea, or should I look for someone more business minded with a better idea to implement and partner with them?

[mindcrime]

That's pretty cool actually. I'm going to send the link to my boss, I could see him being interested. We have our own internal coding test we usually give applicants, but he might find some appeal in having something a little more formalized and centralized.

It might also be cool if you could let users upload their own test somehow, along with a spec that would let you automatically "grade" or evaluate the submission in some fashion (maybe using something like Fitnesse).

Edit: upon further review I see that you do support custom tests. Cool, I'll definitely dig in and give this a more thorough look later. First impression is very favorable though.

[rafa3rafa]

I think this is a great idea. I've come up with this problem in the past not being a technical person myself. Especially when vetting out new hires early on. In the past I've worked in organizations that have their own internal testing but those are often baselined against the person who originally wrote them. The great thing with your service is that you could also, once you've gained traction, normalize the data and create "the" benchmark to score testers. You can even splice by geographic region, etc. You could go further once you establish your service as the "industry" standard allow programmers themselves self-test and post (show off) their scores on resumes, linkedin, github, etc. in effect quantifying their qualifications. Could even explore a partnership with CodeAcademy downstream. What you need to do now is get some validation, a way to say your tests are sufficient and/or above average. Then you need to go to market and drive awareness, lots of outlets to seed this. I'd be happy to bounce some ideas with you. Would you mind checking out my app too? www.whisper.me thanks

[devtestapp]

I like it, we're using basecamp at the moment and the new version is just not quite doing it for us. I'll be investigating for my day job.

[dkoch]

Nice work! I'm in the process of hiring right now, and I was just thinking this morning that I needed a solution like this to give a code test to a remote candidate.

[devtestapp]

Awesome, if you sign up I'll give you some free credits and help with your test if you like!

[cfwebdeveloper]

I wouldn't mind testing it too!

[devtestapp]

No problem, sign up and I'll add some credits to your account, it'd be really good to have some feedback.

[Pwnguinz]

Great idea, and definitely something I've been looking for!

As you get more users and traction, you can even implement some forms of anti-plagiarism (the test should still be allowed to pass, but simply flagged for the reviewer of the results).

I've just signed up and I wouldn't mind getting a few credits to test out your app as well :).

[devtestapp]

Awesome, credits added!

[creativeone]

LinkedIn advertising might be good for you. Submit the site to any group devoted to engineering HR. Create a list of 100 target businesses and start cold calling them. Start an affiliate program. *choose three of those things and you should be on your way to a solid revenue stream.

[creativeone]

By the way, I love the site, don't know how well it works or not, but assuming it provides a great value to companies hiring, I'd love to be a business partner in the venture.

[dbecker]

I talked to a lot of people about almost this exact idea in late 2011. Though I didn't build it because I got involved in something else, everyone I talked to was very enthusiastic about the idea (e.g. ready to hand over a credit card).

I think you should pursue this idea further!

[rdg]

I think you people killed this guy's server :P

And after reading the positive comments I really want to see what this app looks like and what it does!

[devtestapp]

Weird, none of my monitoring is showing any downtime...

Is it still not working for you?

[rdg]

Wow, it's an amazing app. Congratulations.

[devtestapp]

Thanks for looking!

[relaxman]

Just Awesome!

[devtestapp]

Thanks!