Definition of a programmer

By definition (New Oxford American Dictionary): programmer |ˈprōˌgramər| noun a person who writes computer programs. If you want to hire one, you'd better make sure that he/she can write programs. And what is the better way to find out, than putting him/her in front of a computer and asking to write a program? None. Easier said than done. You need to invent a programming assignment (ideally an extract of daily programming practice). Assignment must be meaningful, yet simple enough to be solved in ten-something minutes. Then you need a qualified specialist to assess the solution. Most likely you will need to screen more than one candidate (usually tens to hundreds per one position), s you need to make sure that assessment made by different specialists are consistent. Moreover, specialists' time is usually in short supply. And good luck motivating them to review hundreds of applications with proper diligence. Codlity attempts to solve some of the above problems by delivering the set of programming assignments along with an automated on-line tool for assessing solutions. Each assignment is a short program to write. The programs are assessed for their correctness and scalability. In a software development organization, Codility attempts to help the following groups: HR Specialistst and Non-Technical Recruiters gain a powerful tool to perform initial technical assessment of job candidates. Experience shows that up to 90% of software job ad respondents may not be qualified for a job due to lack of programming skills. Codility is able to filter these candidates out in a very early stage of the recruitment process. Technical Interviewers and Technical Managers need to spend less time in interviews and meet only qualified candidates (which leads to more interesting interviews!). Moreover, for each Codility test, the system generates detailed technical reports of what was right and wrong in their solutions, giving the interviewer immediate insight in the candidate's strong and weak points. HR Managers gain insight in valuable statistics showing how the candidates sourced and/or hired compare to the average for the industry or location. Besides, Codility has a hidden agenda. I was once interviewing a guy for a programmer position. He seemed OK and had several years of experience, but after programming exercises I was sure that he is an "absolute no." He left and I grabbed his CV to have a look again. I was curious how he survived several years in programming jobs and I froze in horror - the guy worked on the software for medical systems. The hidden agenda of Codility is to raise the standards to prevent similar hazards. Or perhaps he just faked the medical systems job, so that we get scared and hire him to limit the damage?