[r-s]

While this may be true, the guy who has worked a bunch with RSS feeds will ace this question even if he is a substantially worse developer. This wouldn't be a problem if said technology was what the company actually used, but in this case it was not.

[johnnyfaehell]

We're talking about XML basically. So he would have had to deal with the data in JSON if he had access to their API or XML in the test. Traversing XML isn't exactly the hardest thing to figure out and it took him an extra 100 minutes or so to figure it out. I personally consider the ability to learn one of the key things needed in a developer as you're constantly having to learn new things to achieve things you've never done before.

[gutnor]

So is that a fail in your book ?

The guy actually learned the tech in less than 2 hours under pressure in an unfamiliar environment. If you fail him for that, the message you are actually giving is "I don't care if you can learn, every minute count in my business and if you don't know something you are out."

[arethuza]

Wouldn't you expect someone who had never seen or heard of RSS before to be able to do a bit of research, find out what it is and work out how to parse and give an account of the steps they took?

A good candidate who had never seen RSS before might be better at that than someone who has spent their entire career processing RSS and never thinking about the details.

[lucasnemeth]

I think you are right, but then, you would not dismiss him based on time.