Why not replace technical job interviews with yearly standardized exams?

This is perhaps even worse than the state of interviews today.

The exams mean very little. They are easy to study for and tell almost nothing about a candidates performance, just knowledge. If we wanted to go this route, we'd be using GPAs to differentiate candidates, but that rarely seems to be a factor today.

I see two kinds of technical job interviews: the FAANG style and the rest.

Let's start with the latter: the problem is that not every company wants exactly the same developer profile. Acing a standardized exam means that you are really good at what the exam is testing. But because you excel at leetcode interviews really does not mean that you are the best fit for most companies in the world. Maybe this company will want somebody with experience in a specific framework ("we have a Qt mobile app", "we work with Laravel", "we write firmwares", ...), that company will want something with domain knowledge ("we need someone who understands the medical domain", "we need someone who understands maritime navigation", ...). You can't standardize that. For the small parts you could standardize, it exists: a CS degree, "5 years experience as a dev", etc.

For the former, it seems to me that it is already pretty much standardized. When you interview for FAANG companies, you need to read a lot about the interview process and prepare it like you would prepare an exam. If you are super ready for the interview at Meta, you are also super ready for Google. It is some kind of standard already. Maybe the FAANGs could team together to share the exams, but the economy would be marginal (otherwise they would have done it).

Would this really be any different from certificates? And I don't think those are efficient in anything other than increasing billing rate or marketing for consulting.

Such tests would be gamed in multiple ways. Or cheated. Or corrupted. Or info dumped...

Management and those hiring don't want this because they like to silently discriminate in hiring using various personal biases. They will never admit it, but they do. With a correct standardized test, they lose this opportunity. Right now, the closest thing to such a test may be your StackOverflow or similar score.

Would it be offered any time I want to take it or is it only available to take once a year? If the latter why would I take it if I’m happy in my job? What happens if I don’t take it and get laid off later in the year?

How someone talks during their technical job interview should be seen as equally important to the content of what they say during it. Will there be an oral component of your exam?

Are there different exams for different languages/technologies and industries? How many exams do I have to take?

Do people cheat on the yearly standardized exams in place (that are used, for university entrance, for example) now?

Do hiring companies tend to believe that their needs are very similar to other hiring companies? How much faith would they put in such a standardized exam?

I doubt this will work.

In my long experience, the type of questions that will be on this test will quickly morph into a "Marketing Type Test".

In IT, changes happen so quickly, the tests will be out of date as soon as they are written. So as time goes on, you end up being quizzed about marketing instead of real IT terms.

Plus you will need many tests, one for admins, support, development. As a final note, I can also see these tests end up being about methodologies like Agile instead of real Tech.

1. You've just passed the cost to the unemployed developer. 2. Some of us do badly at standardised exams but are still highly competent and can prove it in other ways if given the chance. 3. If I fail an interview, I can reflect on where I did badly, study hard, and hopefully do better at the next interview days, weeks, or months later. A yearly standardised exam means I'm potentially unemployed for a whole year.

Skills and competency assessments are a great idea.

One piece is naming sure the assessments and competency assessors have competency.

You could get reasonably far with a core set of skills and competencies and then add company specific ones.

Because realistically, software engineering requires different skills from leetcode.

The FAANG-style leetcode nonsense is deluding people into believing that selects for the right engineers. It doesn't. It is flawed and only works for factory-style companies to do a bare-minimum job while hiring.

Software development is going the same way as "IT". You've been warned.

Goodhart’s Law. When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric

Like certifications (A+, Linux+, RHCE, RHCSA, CISSP, etc.), but specifically for software developers?

Sounds like a business opportunity:

https://education.oracle.com/java-certification-benefits/cer...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/browse/

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-developer-ass...

"Save money"? This would make money.

Just think how much businesses would pay to keep their employees' credentials current!

You could also charge exorbitant fees for training, books, and videos people would use to prepare for the exams.

Maybe you could even setup a school business built on teaching people stuff for all the exams and then give them an "everything" certificate after they took all the exams the school had?

Oh, wait.

Same reason that Ivy League admissions aren’t based on anything that could be considered objective. The gatekeepers don’t want them to be.

I feel like the answer is that people like their gate-keeping.

There are a lot of programmers who like being part of a special club and want to manage who gets in. It’s couched behind meritocracy, but I think it can be boiled down to gate-keeping.

you mean like go to university and get a real CS degree and have companies use that to give you a job? oh wait…

this was supposed to be how it works but then some indian dude came along and made a platform and then some woman wrote a book and got in a HR decision making position in a FAANG and destroyed the value of everyone’s degrees by introducing coding interviews you can only pass if you grind them

This is idiotic.