Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role
Thank you for writing this post. It was informative. A few comments from a fellow software developer who is approaching 50...<p>I don&#x27;t think the coding test isn&#x27;t there because people think you&#x27;re lying, it&#x27;s there because we have no industry wide, respected entrance exam. Actuarial interviews don&#x27;t (to my knowledge) contain a whiteboard vector calculus exam, but this isn&#x27;t because people just sort of believe actuaries, it&#x27;s because you have to pass a rigorous exam on these topics to become an actuary. I sometimes wish we had something like this in our field (not necessarily a legal requirement, just something that is widely recognized as legit). I&#x27;d be happy to put the time in and really study for a proper exam, but I&#x27;m not as interested in doing this over and over for companies that may administer and conduct these exams frivolously and in secret.<p>Also - I actually do agree that it&#x27;s bad if someone can&#x27;t write fizz buzz, but every interview exam I&#x27;ve taken has been vastly more difficult than fizz buzz. It&#x27;s &quot;find all subsets of a set of integers that is divisible by the sum of a different subset of integers&quot;. At a whiteboard, in 45 minutes. These aren&#x27;t impossible problems, but they&#x27;re much tougher than fizzbuzz.<p>I am saddened, angry, and relieved to hear of your problems with homework. The response you got back makes me realize that the two times I&#x27;ve done a homework assignment were probably pretty typical. I won&#x27;t do this anymore, and I do accept that this will limit my career options. It does anger me, though, when the companies who do this complain about a shortage of engineers.<p>True story: I did an on line exam and take home homework assignment, waited over a month (crickets chirping) to hear back, pinged the recruiter politely now and then, and finally got a one liner &quot;we&#x27;ve decided not to continue at this time.&#x27; A few weeks later, an article with came out with a picture of the CEO of this company standing next to President Obama, who nodded gravely as the CEO talked about the desperate shortage of software developers.