[coliveira]

Yes, you can weed out 50% of incompetent applicants, but that is not the issue. The problem is that the people who will excel in these questions are the ones playing the leetcode game for months. The people with real jobs will pass your question but will do so-so compared to the leetcode gamers, and the second group will get the job. Also, doing exceedingly well in the coding questions doesn't guarantee these people are any good at the real job.

[Clubber]

Too bad there isn't a test for "fucks given." That would weed out about 80% of applicants. I can work with just about anyone who passes that test.

[ricardobayes]

While I don't advocate for it, a long take-home problem filters for that.

[funemployd]

It also filters for "people with children", "experts who realized they aren't show dogs", and "anyone who values their time".

[hyperadvanced]

What about a take home test that takes 1 hour with no leetcode/trivia? At a certain point I feel like you have to pick your poison

[hajile]

My last "1 hour" test took me hours to complete. I asked them to implement it in front of me in an hour and they couldn't.

Programmers are terrible at estimating and programmers will choose tasks that are obvious to them because it's the exact thing they do every day, but it might not be so easy for people not in their exact niche.

[Clubber]

>a long take-home problem filters for that.

I disagree. Maybe and only if it's paid and paid well. Maybe $150 an hour. Not many who are good will put up with that; because they don't have to.

[arp242]

The old saying is "pay peanuts, get monkeys".

Let me propose a variant of that: "you'll end up with monkeys if you require people to do monkey tricks".

[coliveira]

Your take-home exam will not get many high quality candidates. Most people who have an option will not put up with this kind of requests.