Just want to say, in conjecture to my sibling post on this thread, I had a identical experience. In fact, if you're in the Bay Area we likely applied to the same companies.
My take-homes made me fundamentally question my ability as a programmer. And I'm a damn good programmer. That is wrong on so many levels.
I can only pledge that if I'm ever in a position to hire developers (at any level) that I'll never force that kind of experience on a potential applicant.
I feel their is a major gap between junior and senior developers. And in this environment a junior developer has zero leverage with the companies he/she applies to. So they treat us like cattle.
It's like with every generation gap, their isn't much point blaming those who came before us. We can only do the best we can and make an effort not to replicate their mistakes. The next class(es) of software engineers have to improve and be better then the ones before them.
I can only say that if you're ever hiring, you probably will ask people to code for you. You won't at first, but after you've hired a few who could "talk the talk" but then can't actually write readable, maintainable, and in some cases working code, you'll reevaluate.
There's a gap between knowing concepts and knowing how to apply those concepts. There's actually a certain (limited) amount of artistry to writing code. Hiring a programmer without seeing code is like hiring an Architect without ever having seen a house he's designed.
>I can only say that if you're ever hiring, you probably will ask people to code for you. You won't at first, but after you've hired a few who could "talk the talk" but then can't actually write readable, maintainable, and in some cases working code, you'll reevaluate.
You don't need an 8-hour take-home coding exercise to determine whether or not someone is capable of writing working code.
My take-homes made me fundamentally question my ability as a programmer. And I'm a damn good programmer. That is wrong on so many levels.
I can only pledge that if I'm ever in a position to hire developers (at any level) that I'll never force that kind of experience on a potential applicant.
I feel their is a major gap between junior and senior developers. And in this environment a junior developer has zero leverage with the companies he/she applies to. So they treat us like cattle.
It's like with every generation gap, their isn't much point blaming those who came before us. We can only do the best we can and make an effort not to replicate their mistakes. The next class(es) of software engineers have to improve and be better then the ones before them.
I'm preaching, but I hope you get what I mean.