[JimboOmega]

When I was interviewing over the summer, the VAST majority of candidates I got for my mid-level rails position were from one of these bootcamps.

I'm willing to give anyone a try, and so I interviewed a lot of them over the phone, and gave nearly all of them the coding exercise. Which they almost universally failed to complete.

Still, I wound up hiring one as very junior. And that's exactly what she is. I don't have to hold her hand through the really really basic stuff, and she needs me to get her through sticking points pretty regularly, but overall she contributes to the team.

$100k, though, I really don't see it happening. And she's the exception - she finished the coding exercise.

Which means a lot to me. The coding exercise we use isn't particularly hard, but it requires you to do a bunch of separate things - and it thus requires some ability to go on google/stack overflow/etc and figure out something you didn't already know. Which is what I want most in a junior dev - a way to move forward when you get stuck.

[coolsunglasses]

Would you mind sharing the exercise? I'm writing a book and would like to know the pass-rate of my students.

[JimboOmega]

Unfortunately we don't make it public.

The core challenge isn't the problem itself, but that we require them to make a rails app of it - including an ability to save the information put in, and add comments.

None of it is a particular challenge, but it could be tedious. There's definitely some minimal amount of integration involved. What I find interesting is that when I ask people I know and regard as good programmers, they balk at the amount of time the exercise might take.

When I interview the bootcamp programmers, they always say they can get it done in a day, no problem. And usually don't finish.

[cortesoft]

Not the person you were asking, but I always loved giving this quiz in interviews: http://rubyquiz.com/quiz9.html

I always say I don't care what language they do it in.. I just like to see how they approach the problem.

[bduerst]

It probably uses propriety data/code, making it difficult to share.

If not though, I second this request.