LOL. This reminds me of the “interview” for my first sysadmin gig, most of which consisted of me sitting in front of a PC running an official Novell Netware 3.11 (I think? Not sure, it’s been a very long time) admin quiz, compared to the actual job.
The best bit was that I had never used Netware in my life at the time, like, barely even as a user, so I just crossed my fingers & used my common sense. Now that I think about it – because I never did have any trouble administering Netware – I’m not sure whether that means that I’m brilliant, or that the Novell test was just really good at picking people with the right attitude.
I’ve done a few interviews recently. You can tell when HR is screening for the tech department when they expect you to run the gauntlet of these quizzes. “The link will be sent to you at x o’clock” “You have two hours to complete this task”
If you can get right through to a technical person it’s much more straightforward. They can tell if you are faking or not.
John Hardy not a Turnbull fan yeah, that would have been good. Actually I failed a test for a job I really wanted because it didn’t run right and I ran out of time for testing it.
Sorry to hear it. I don’t think the challenges I’ve sat for were that sophisticated (actually one was and I just refused it) but if you start from test cases then even if you don’t finish you get kudos for approaching from the right direction i.e. backwards from most people who like to start from the beginning.
Start from the tests, which should all fail and then keep writing code until they all pass.
I count myself lucky that I’m now old enough that if somebody says “can you solve this abstract coding problem” I can raise an eyebrow and say “I’m sorry, I don’t think this position is going to be a good fit for me, but I wish you all the best”.
Two reasons to do pointless coding problems for no money:
3. It’s one of those online JavaScript challenges where you can beat the frontend JS specialists in your team and say “well fancy that, JavaScript isn’t even my speciality, guess I must have just been lucky five times in a row”.
John Hardy Developer 
LOL. This reminds me of the “interview” for my first sysadmin gig, most of which consisted of me sitting in front of a PC running an official Novell Netware 3.11 (I think? Not sure, it’s been a very long time) admin quiz, compared to the actual job.
LikeLike
The best bit was that I had never used Netware in my life at the time, like, barely even as a user, so I just crossed my fingers & used my common sense. Now that I think about it – because I never did have any trouble administering Netware – I’m not sure whether that means that I’m brilliant, or that the Novell test was just really good at picking people with the right attitude.
LikeLike
I’ve done a few interviews recently. You can tell when HR is screening for the tech department when they expect you to run the gauntlet of these quizzes. “The link will be sent to you at x o’clock” “You have two hours to complete this task”
If you can get right through to a technical person it’s much more straightforward. They can tell if you are faking or not.
LikeLike
I’ve been doing interviews too. I’ll humor them if they want me to take a test, but I’ve never got a job that way.
LikeLike
I think the main trick is to spend most of the time building a unit test rig and writing the tests to go with it.
LikeLike
John Hardy not a Turnbull fan yeah, that would have been good. Actually I failed a test for a job I really wanted because it didn’t run right and I ran out of time for testing it.
LikeLike
Sorry to hear it. I don’t think the challenges I’ve sat for were that sophisticated (actually one was and I just refused it) but if you start from test cases then even if you don’t finish you get kudos for approaching from the right direction i.e. backwards from most people who like to start from the beginning.
Start from the tests, which should all fail and then keep writing code until they all pass.
LikeLike
I count myself lucky that I’m now old enough that if somebody says “can you solve this abstract coding problem” I can raise an eyebrow and say “I’m sorry, I don’t think this position is going to be a good fit for me, but I wish you all the best”.
Two reasons to do pointless coding problems for no money:
1. The problem is fun;
2. It gets you XP or unlocks a new area.
LikeLike
Oh and
3. It’s one of those online JavaScript challenges where you can beat the frontend JS specialists in your team and say “well fancy that, JavaScript isn’t even my speciality, guess I must have just been lucky five times in a row”.
LikeLike
David Heinemeier Hansson created Ruby on Rails.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pQtwGWHKYjt-UPYUM3sGq-QDAgzjarYrCX6nq-BXHD7DYgUgRh4TtmI5QTG-yVO-ZklM-rpmGJ0
LikeLike