I used to think like that ... then we hired a batch of 3 "senior" devs who could not do simple, everyday coding tasks, even in their ostensible languages of preference. All had come with exceptional resumés and personal recommendations.
So now, no one at any level one gets hired without demonstrating that they can at least write a fizzbuzz and commit it to a repository.
Now, I doubt that senior engineers in other fields have to do this sort of thing. But, most other engineering fields have licensing/accreditation with accompanying post-graduate academic curricula. We don't (but probably should).
Your candidates aren't fresh out of school or just starting their careers. They already have plenty of work experience. They already know how to code and have been doing it for years. A conversation will tell you much more about their approaches to problems solving, team work, and mentoring than a coding challenge will. Looking at their GitHub, their work experience and references will tell you the rest.
It's like asking a doctor to go over basic human anatomy.
Through all of the technical interviews I've run on behalf of multiple companies, I've become convinced that our industry is full of imposters. A terrifying number of people who are employed as developers cannot code, beyond making tiny edits to existing code, or slinging StackOverflow answers and AI generated content around. They cannot think for themselves. They rely heavily on their coworkers to make any substantial progress. If anything, modern AIs have made these people more difficult to spot. I've found these imposters within the companies I've worked for too, and if it's not possible to move them to a non-technical role where they can be productive, then it's best to fire them. If that isn't possible, then keep them out of the way of any critical work, but know that they'll continue to be a drag on their team, and will decrease the moral of those on their team who have to keep covering for them.
Once I even worked on a team (as a junior) where only 3 members out of ~16 even knew the language that was exclusively used for the job. The remaining team members accomplished nothing every day. Those stand-up meetings were painful. Drawn out to 45+ minutes of standing in a circle while the unproductive team members found new ways to explain why they haven't made progress. Then I'd see them return to their desks, and not even open their IDEs for weeks at a time. They seemed to keep their jobs because their boss didn't want to fire them, and it cost him nothing personally to keep them around, offering them a sort of corporate welfare. Perhaps having such a large team even helped him politically, but it's unclear if he cared about that since he also spent almost all of his time slacking off, playing games in the break room, while the 3 productive team members carried the rest of the team.
I'm telling you from my own experience that this is observably not true. Twice now I've been burned by internal hires who objectively had years of experience (easy to verify when they have been working within my division) and yet couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.
And tangentially, with some of the health care experiences I've had I very well might try to administer a basic anatomy quiz to potential doctors if I thought I could get away with it.
Having hired many developers over multiple decades, let me assure you that you should definitely make sure they can actually code. Do definitely have those conversations, too, but trust me when I say that a technical conversation, a degree and several listed years of experience as a software developer on a resume are not enough to guarantee that they can actually code.
You're hiring for a senior role, not a junior or mid.
Your candidates aren't fresh out of school or just starting their careers. They already have plenty of work experience. They already know how to code and have been doing it for years. A conversation will tell you much more about their approaches to problems solving, team work, and mentoring than a coding challenge will. Looking at their GitHub, their work experience and references will tell you the rest.
It's like asking a doctor to go over basic human anatomy.
They need to be able to compare candidates, and senior devs will be expected to code. Their goal is to pick the best candidate. Asking them to demonstrate their coding skill isn’t just fair game, it’s what half the interviewees actually want. A lot of people prefer being evaluated on code than on soft skills (just read the threads here for tons of evidence.)
It’s useful to know whether a candidate is going to be on the principal engineer path or management path. It’s useful to know whether they are actually good at coding, and how good exactly. And it’s also useful to know if they are willing to do what needs to be done once hired. Someone interviewing for a senior coding position who refuses to code during the interview is about as big of a red flag as you can have, and I’ve been part of hiring teams that will politely excuse someone for that, and I agree with the reasoning.
This might not make sense until you’re on the hiring side of things, but having a resume does not entitle one to being hired for a higher title and more money.
They talk the great talk about problem solving and team work and mentoring, but once it's time walk the walk, they just can't seem to write any code - and we are not talking advanced algorithms, we are talking Fizz-Buzz level.
Maybe it's different for doctors, but as long as such people exist and apply to jobs, we need to ask programming questions.
This also means that if _you_ are applying to a job in a larger team for a senior position and they did not ask you for any coding questions, they either:
- Really good for firing people fast for low performance
- Have people at "senior" position which just give advice and nasty code reviews, but don't actually write any code.
Either way, it's a red flag for the company.
I exclusively give pairing interviews, usually just 1 hr. The variance between good and bad candidates is amazing, and you wouldn't guess at all from resumes or casual conversations. Most candidates have given me very positive feedback. Why wouldn't you want to be interviewed like this?
I know this, because I used to look at resumes and have long conversations before I ran my pairing interview. And I found the results almost uncorrelated. Now I save the fun conversations for people who make it through the screening. But by then I already know if I want to hire them.
My pairing interview (it's a pairing session, not a code challenge) covers aspects of engineering that I specifically care about. It's not terribly hard. But at the end I'll have a pretty good idea if I want to turn this person loose in my codebase.
The number of people with impressive looking resumes, and good command of the jargon, but who still can't successfully code hello world is shocking.
I don't believe you (general you, not just the parent) can even code until you demonstrate that to me, or until the industry comes up with a reputable way to tell me that you can code. Until then I'll be making sure you can at least write code that compiles and finishes a brain-dead simple task.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283803351_The_Valid...
People say "No I don't have any past hobby work, never contributed to OSS, and all my professional work is verboten to show" that's not unusual, but it's also not an encouraging sign to me when interviewing.
