Hackerrank was broken - but now it's actually harmful
I had an interesting conversation with some junior and mid-level engineers recently. They were pretty discouraged about whiteboading coding tests. Apparently, they've gotten significantly harder over the last two years.
I got my hands on a few questions they've given someone with 1 YoE and 3 YoE. They were extremely hard, especially for someone at that experience level.
From quick reddit searches, it's clear that everyone's using AI for these tests. Whether it's ChatGPT or specialized "Coding Interview Assistance" tools (I won't link them, you can find them), people have come to rely on them heavily.
If you're a company using these platforms, you're optimizing for your internal engineers' time. Fair enough. But here's what typically happens:
The test parameters are usually configured by someone semi-technical at best. The evaluation boils down to a score, and the platform tells you if the candidate is "good enough."
In one company - which was a bank - the test difficulty was calibrated by the technical recruiting team. And these companies are really good at selling to recruiting teams 👇
