When did it become a trend to give people 4 hour technical tests? As a 32 year old man who commutes to work (1.5-2hrs each way) where do they possibly think I'll ever get that amount of time to complete a "test".

What's wrong with a github link and a face to face chat? A decorated linked in with recommendations?

Why can no one have the confidence to hire a dev?

When people started glorifying the loop interview, but totally misunderstood how it worked. The bright side is Amazon interviews are closer to 7 hours.

The reason they can't just accept a GitHub link and a chat is there are an unfortunate volume of humans who are dishonest as fuck. Interview proxiers, people who Google during the interview for answers, people who erase git history and claim others' work as their own on GitHub (it's trivial to create a fake history in git).

The only way to make sure before committing to someone, especially in places with aggressive employment protection laws is to grill the hell out of them and see if they crack.

@SortOfTested its a real shame, I've got a lot of experience as a hiring manager as well and barely ever had any horror stories, we had a pretty simple test but most of the time would go off of merit alone. Generally that's what probation periods are for, but people tend not to ever think about that!

Its just a real shame that given a track history with specific recommendations and titles/roles merit enough isn't enough to be able to just have a chat to some of these people.

@japhex
Having personally been fucked over by someone looking to gap fill some labor for a month with a probation period, I would never agree to one. I sued them and won, but it took over a year and $14,000 in legal fees. There has to be mutual respect and trust on both sides. You're looking for talent, you're also asking someone to give up a stable job.

Tl;Dr As goes employer loyalty, so too goes employee loyalty. It's a vicious cycle.

Yeah, probation periods can help, but if you can avoid a bad hire, it's better for both the employer and employee, if they quit a job for this one, and it only lasted two weeks, they've got a big problem...

Although, in the UK we're now effectively at will employment for the first two years...

And some bosses are letting people go at that two year point to avoid having to treat employees with respect...