> In my experience, someone who refuses or takes offense at a well-framed coding exercise is probably not going to be someone you want on your team.
In my experience those who refuse are the top of the top. We adapted our interview and intake process to accommodate these people (usually with a more stringent and goal oriented probation period), and it was the best thing we did in terms of resourcing. The people we took on through this stream ended up being by far the best performing bang for buck employees. They are opinionated and snobby, but that's a good thing, because they actually care about their respective fields enough to have strong opinions. They don't waste time with tests and coding challenges.
That really depends then on what one is hiring for. An entry level position? Mid level? Senior? or Rock Star?
Those who are opinionated and snobby, even if they are the best preforming, may not be the best fit in many environments. A not insignificant portion of a senior developer's time can be spent mentoring people - and the snobby person may not be the best choice for that.
If the goal is to hire a team of one - great. If the goal is to hire into a team of half a dozen in what would be termed an enterprise development - the refusal to take a programming test may and work with the process rather than rebel against it may act as a strong indication that the person isn't going to be a good fit.
If you're hiring for 'enterprise development' you're already outside the interest zone of actually talented developers, so that works out I guess. If you're doing 'enterprise' just pick up a bunch of guys with Agile and Cisco certificates, indian outsourcing will also do just fine.
This might be the single most arrogant comment I've ever read on HN. At least those enterprise developers perform actual engineering instead of copy pasting the newest JS framework tutorials and pushing pixels around like all the boot camp hipsters without proper CS education nowadays.
> In my experience, someone who refuses or takes offense at a well-framed coding exercise is probably not going to be someone you want on your team.
In my experience those who refuse are the top of the top. We adapted our interview and intake process to accommodate these people (usually with a more stringent and goal oriented probation period), and it was the best thing we did in terms of resourcing. The people we took on through this stream ended up being by far the best performing bang for buck employees. They are opinionated and snobby, but that's a good thing, because they actually care about their respective fields enough to have strong opinions. They don't waste time with tests and coding challenges.