State of the Market

[BikeShedder]

I did a tech test which was with the interviews watching me type etc yesterday. I was allowed to use Google but not AI.

It felt like I had been taken back to the dark ages 😀

I had to write a split function in Java without using collections. Awaiting feedback, been more than 24hrs so probably not going anywhere.

Did a test once for a permanent role, I choked, so I didn't do well on the test...

After that as an independent contractor, never had an interview where a test was needed. Been a contractor for fourteen years now, so I've had my share of interviews. It is how I prefer the interviews actually, my CV as a reference for my knowledge and skills, and the conversation to back it.

In my experience these tests are not real assessments of your capabilities anyway. Fingers crossed on the feedback.

Is that becoming the norm now, or is it mostly a banking thing?

[Fraidycat]

Is that becoming the norm now, or is it mostly a banking thing?

It depends on how many good candidates the client is getting. The more good candidates they have the more they can waste your time and put you through various humiliation rituals.

When good candidates are scarce it becomes a case of let's not do anything that might annoy the few good candidates we do have. And don't ask pedantic and irrelvant questions that could filter out good candidates for no good reason.

[willendure]

In my experience these tests are not real assessments of your capabilities anyway.

Yup. And its laziness on the part of the interviewer thinking that some coding test they found online is going to differentiate the candidates. Much better if they present some problem, that reflects a real aspect of the actual work they want you to do, and then get you to describe how you would go about solving it. If they really want to make it into a test, they could keep a scorecard of some kind themselves that they incorporate into the decision.

I had a Java interview about six months ago - did it on my laptop which I rarely use, primarily because the webcam is better and more centered, so I am not looking off at some weird angle. They threw a surprise "lets code this really hard problem live in the interview" task at me, and I didn't even have the tools installed or a GUI ready to do it in. For some reason I felt really awkward about declining to do the task, I think now I would just say "forget it, we're clearly wasting each other time, have a good day!".

[BikeShedder]

And don't ask pedantic and irrelvant questions that could filter out good candidates for no good reason.

A former colleague of mine got an Oracle Certified Master certificate to avoid this kind of questions. A bit overkill he admitted, but it worked. Interviewers were too intimidated by the certificate

[Fraidycat]

Much better if they present some problem, that reflects a real aspect of the actual work they want you to dogood day!".

I think the correct test to give candidates these days is a bad AI generated codebase and ask the candidate to point out the issues with it and ways it can be improved.

Perhaps even the stage before that, asking the candidate what was wrong with the original specs and prompts given to the AI to create that bad output in the first place.

[sadkingbilly]

INKSDE. such a hard life coders have.

[Robinho]

Agree with people saying AI is only getting better. Unfortunately.

TBF, it's pretty awesome. Helped me fix a number of things which I didn't completely understand and still don't.

I am getting to the stage were I know copilot will know how to fix it so why bother understanding the details of it all.

I have a friend and he puts his Jira ticket into copiolet and says fix it and it works!!😀

It's taken a lot of the fun out of coding though. Sure reducing boilerplate is good to an extent but sometimes just bashing out code like that on autopilot gave you some mental downtime. I find most of my day is just configuring, deploying, PRs and issue fixing now. AI is doing most of the satisfying stuff.

I guess we should be grateful to still have a trade, for now.

[SchumiStars]

Heard back from the tech test. Was exactly as I expected. Apppranelty I didn't finish the test (you didn't let me) and my answers on sql did not demonstrate knowledge (I did answer everything) clearly.

It's not unusual for me to receive replies likes this, even with an upgrad comp science and masters in soft eng, from Oxford, I get told I know nothing 😀

[BoggyMcCBoggyFace]

I'm 4 months in since redundancy and not even managed to secure a single interview, what's become obvious is they do hire for what I do but its all in India now, search linkedin for UK positions with it and nothing, search for India based and loads all working a UK shift pattern. I did see 1 role, contract, rate was less than I was getting in 2005, did a bit of a digging and it turned out to be the employer who made me redundant, different area but same tech, wasn't going to happen as settlement agreement included a term I would pay it back if I can back within 12 months in any form.

Started to wonder now what I'm going do, cut my loses and retrain in something completely different but it feels like start from scratch and I'm 51, or keep trying to get back into what I did, but I getting pretty fed up now and getting pretty depressed tbh, not just job gone but feels like end of a career, trying to stay positive but hard.

[ResistanceFighter]

It depends on how many good candidates the client is getting. The more good candidates they have the more they can waste your time and put you through various humiliation rituals.

When good candidates are scarce it becomes a case of let's not do anything that might annoy the few good candidates we do have. And don't ask pedantic and irrelvant questions that could filter out good candidates for no good reason.

Exactly this - I find this behaviour so odd. Remember the days during and then slightly post covid where they couldn't print the contracts fast enough?