Title: After an invitation to apply for a job with a YC company yesterday (an email from the CEO offering to &quot;have a conversation&quot;) I got a generic invite to take an online coding test in Javascript.<p>I&#x27;ve written JS and shipped numerous apps in it over the last 20 years and let me tell ya, if anyone worked for me and wrote code like I saw on those tests, I&#x27;d fire them.<p>My favorite was a sort question that had an obvious bug. Both sides of the sort had the same test (so no sorting would happen). But the question wasn&#x27;t about that... it was about which input would tell you the code was wrong. This is most ridiculous way to diagnose or fix a bug that I&#x27;ve heard of.<p>Nobody who really works on software works on these kind of bugs. And this diagnostic technique of arbitrarily working backwards to force a multiple choice solution is probably the worst method of programming that I&#x27;ve ever come across. No wonder so many companies are hiring shitty programmers and writing garbage code.<p>Without an actual problem and an understanding of the problem domain, no programmer is going to write anything useful for you. Frankly, I&#x27;m frustrated by this method of interviewing and selecting candidates. It makes me not want to work at places that do this.<p>Anyone else have a similar experience? Also, hiring managers... Do you find these kind of tests useful? Why? How?
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