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from the boss-wants-to-see-how-you-handle-pressure? dept.
I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)
A coder who can't explain their work is useless. I don't care how well it works. If and only if the spec is for a black box with an acceptance test set is that ok.
Otherwise the work is write-once read-never, and I won't take it.
Good code expresses ideas both correctly and clearly, and the map of desired idea to code must be clear, or it's bad code.
If there's a tricky one line hack, take the paragraph to explain it in comments. That's life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:12PM
I would then ask the candidate to demonstrate code with those properties.