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I'm in ops and we've found that simple exercises are better at weeding people out than complex ones.



This reminds me of this discussion on cocktails and bartender skills from a while ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36492450

"The martini may be simple, but it is not easy to make an excellent one. It's a very solid test of a bartender's skill because, unlike many drinks, ingredients alone cannot carry the cocktail. A piña colada for example, is mostly about ingredients (are you using a good coconut cream? fresh pineapple?) For the martini the chilling and dilution need to be just right. This tests the bartender's most important skill: mixing. Proper mixing of the beverage is ultimately what makes a martini."

[..]

"martinis are shockingly easy to fuck up. and this conversation is exactly the reason why the martini is a good test of a bartender's capability. being a bartender is more than putting fixed quantities of ingredients in a glass. how do you know when your martini is properly diluted, either by shaking or stirring? a good bartender will know. a bad bartender will not. a terrible bartender won't even realize dilution is crucial."

I don't really drink much and never had a martini in my life, but I thought it was pretty interesting.


And chefs are supposedly asked to cook eggs.


True enough... Even in software, I was pretty amazed at how much of a filter of, here's a CSV, use one of N languages to load the data, do a check and output the valid entries to one file and the invalid inputs to an error file. You can use any libraries you like, please create a github repo and share with $ACCOUNT for your solution.

I know not everyone works with CSV necessarily, but there are dozens of libraries for a lot of languages. Even if focused on N being those supported in a given company/org. It should be less than an hour of work. Bonus points for any tests/automation, etc.




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