It's not the be-all end-all, but it seems like a decent first-pass filter.
It is really not, I have been round and round about this with every organization that I have been in that does these. The only thing it displays is the persons ability to answer trivia and solve puzzles. These are not the characteristics of a great developer, the characteristics of a great developer are simplicity, creativity and rapidly adaptation.
You would be better off handing them a paint brush and a canvas and using that as a measure of their creativity. If that seems like a weird concept, then you start to get a picture of how far off these trivia puzzles are, they are literally of no value, not only that they can filter out the best candidates and worse yet they make a company seem like a bunch of elitist that think they are smarter than the average bear.
Good to hear the input, actually. I haven't personally used the puzzle, I was just saying it seemed like a decent filter. Obviously I was wrong in my perception :)
Sure I was not trying to represent it as your view, just trying to highlight the deceptively simple but flawed reasoning in this hiring practice. People believe that because logic is involved having a trick logic puzzle will filter out bad candidates, but given the nature of development there are other more important qualities of a candidate such as creativity that are not tested and are not displayed in a logic puzzle. So you may filter out a guy that is not real strong on logic but is extremely creative. The creative guy is more important in 90% of the tech jobs out there, and further you only need one person strong on logic in the team because he can be consulted for tough logic, the creative guy cant be leaned on in the same manner to make the non-creative creative. The logic guy can't go to the creative guy and say hey give me a hand with being creative.
I believe Google hiring practices that favor these kind of logic puzzles is one of the reasons they have had such an issue innovating in the market place. An overwhelming focus on hiring the technically smartest guy in the room, by nature filters out the most creative guys in the room (it's a right brain, left brain thing). The trick is finding the guy that is right in the middle of the two.
It is really not, I have been round and round about this with every organization that I have been in that does these. The only thing it displays is the persons ability to answer trivia and solve puzzles. These are not the characteristics of a great developer, the characteristics of a great developer are simplicity, creativity and rapidly adaptation.
You would be better off handing them a paint brush and a canvas and using that as a measure of their creativity. If that seems like a weird concept, then you start to get a picture of how far off these trivia puzzles are, they are literally of no value, not only that they can filter out the best candidates and worse yet they make a company seem like a bunch of elitist that think they are smarter than the average bear.