On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Craig Pelkie <craig@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A recruiter friend of mine sent me the following. My reply to him is
included below. Any thoughts?
Sure, I've got thoughts. Since you're specifically asking for them, here goes:
I agree with you that the programming exercise is very artificial and
has little bearing on tasks that would come up in the course of a
normal workday. I agree with you that such an exercise isn't a good
basis for judging a candidate on their suitability for almost any
real-world RPG programming job.
That said, your recruiter friend asked this:
I am wondering how difficult
this quiz is or is there some trick that everyone is missing in reading the
instruction. Could you please look at the instructions below and let me
know your thoughts? Is this something everyone should know or is it really
so difficult that only 5% of Developers would be able to get this?
And the answer to that is: The quiz is not particularly difficult,
conceptually. If it is being judged in good faith, then far more than
5% of candidates should be passing.
What do I mean by "good faith"? Well, for example, if a candidate
produces a solution that is case-insensitive, but the judge was
looking for a case-sensitive one, there should be little or no penalty
to the candidate, because the instructions didn't mention that, and if
the solution works in every other way, then they've clearly
demonstrated that they understood the instructions and were able to
meet the requirements.
Another area where the instructions were lacking is what happens with
single-character "words". Either the judging data should not test this
behavior, or the candidate should not be penalized if their
interpretation was different than the judge's.
You mentioned both of those flaws in the instructions, but I disagree
with most of your other ones. It is very clear what "alphabetic"
means. Digits, whitespace, and punctuation are clearly not alphabetic.
Yes, in this day and age, there should be more clarity regarding
international considerations, but if this quiz is being administered
in the U.S., it's pretty safe to say "alphabetic" means either the 26
case-insensitive letters in American English, or the 52 case-sensitive
ones.
It's also very clear what should happen with two-letter words. "my"
should be converted to "m0y". (And if I were taking the quiz, I would
convert the word "I" to "I0I"; so that "I" and "II" return the same
thing.)
So, to sum up and reiterate:
(1) This quiz is not a particularly good test of real-world RPG skills.
(2) This quiz is not particularly difficult (assuming good faith).
Certainly not 1-in-20 difficult.
And I'll add some more:
(3) The quiz might have been designed to see whether the candidate
will point out the flaws in the instructions.
(4) How someone reacts to being presented such a quiz can reveal
useful information about their temperament, and how they would fit in
a particular team or working under a particular manager.
In other words, maybe the quiz was part of a meta-quiz.
Finally, since you did explicitly ask for thoughts, I've got one more:
(5) As an addendum to point 2: While the quiz (taken at face value)
isn't especially difficult, it's not a natural fit for the RPG
language. In a (perhaps misguided) way, I honestly think there is at
least *some* test for creativity in it.
Hmm. Now I'm actually curious. I might just have to write something
for this. (I have to admit I like puzzles.)
John Y.
midrange.com
