alt Hacker NewsEveryone calls them Interviews but they are not really interviews. They are exams.
Oral exams, live coding exams, system architecture exams, take-home exams, behavioral examinations, code review exams, extended essay writing exams, case study exams, sample work trials.
You can't be a real professional if you have to take exams in every job change.
In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.
They don't take exams from random people in random companies that know nothing about evaluating knowledge. They take official, standardized exams prepared by professional testers/educators.
Engineering jobs can't be standardized. Engineering and required skills and knowledge is too broad for that.
An interview is not an exam. It's a meeting. The interviewer asks questions to learn about the candidate. The interviewer may ask some questions to learn about the company and the position. That's all. That's the universal definition of a job interview. All the other things are additional tests and exams.
Do they need to do those exams for better selection? Probably not. Their "hiring process"es are not backed by any science. Then why are they doing that? They have to filter somehow. If there are 1 to 100s ratio of candidates for each position, they need to filter hard. Exams are the standard method for ranking and filtering.
But we are professional engineers, not students.
Replies
Most devs are not engineers, and has not passed a licensing board or belong to any professional associations.
Most devs are doing work that more closely resembles pipe fitting or carpentry than any engineering discipline.
> In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.
The field of programming emerged from mathematics, not engineering unfortunately. So we lack any useful certification processes.
The only issue is that Software Engineering (is that the term we use?) does have more churn and change than other types that have PEs like Civil.
Not saying it’s not possible to focus on fundamentals that have only changed superficially in decades (like the networking stack or data structures), but it is more difficult in this field.
Sounds like you’re arguing for a professional licensing regime to exist
Indeed, and ridiculous exams at that. Imagine being at school and they had a several question exam from anything across a four year degree. No information on what area to focus on, because there’s no focus on purpose.
Quarter of a million dollars in a suitcase, loaded gun, and a copper ticking clock on the table next to you. Picture of your kids that need new school clothes.
Miss one question and you fail. Must also be confident, friendly, and not too old while doing it.
—> “I can’t find anyone that can pass my simple test, they must all be frauds.”
This is not how proper exams work, and for good reason.