I honestly don't know what the masses expect companies that hire programmers to do. We're told that we're not as good of a company if programmers don't program in the interview. But then the next thing we're told is that nobody programs on a whiteboard and/or with someone watching. To help, we come up with take home exercises that are custom to us so we know the answers are real. Now this article and the parent are saying we're wasting time with these "puzzles".
When I hire, I do a phone screen before asking the candidates to complete the code exercise. If it isn't going to be a fit from either of our perspectives, then they didn't spend time doing it.
It would be nice if companies simply asked for a code sample, and then asked the programmer to explain what it does, their reasoning for doing so, etc.
I have a major open source project under my belt, but I've never had an interviewer simply ask me about my code. Instead, they ask me to sort an array.
As an interviewer, I didn't see the value in asking candidates to complete FizzBuzz until one of them was unable to do it. Since then, I've had a half dozen or so candidates make it through the resume and phone screen process and still not be able to complete FizzBuzz.
In regards to discussing existing code, I'd be more than happy to do so, but my experience has been that about one person per stack of resumes has quality existing code available to share.
Well, my experience was that I wasn't interviewed at all, instead I was just asked to code up this blog system, even after demonstrating extensive knowledge of the area in my CV. The way you're doing it sounds better, but it also depends on the coding exercise. If it's an interesting problem, I'm much more inclined to work on it, rather than a simple model when I've already told you I launched dozens of projects using the technology you're using.
I think the key is that there are crappy puzzles (and coding a blog system is not a "puzzle") and there are decent puzzles. I've been giving applicants a simple word search puzzle for over five years and it has been great at differentiating candidates.
The biggest plus for me as the hiring manager is that it allows me to be much more confident in taking flyers on people without that picture perfect resume.
I can certainly understand that. I've definitely taken care to make sure that all of our examples couldn't be construed as free work. Code katas, like the bowling kata, are good for this.
When I hire, I do a phone screen before asking the candidates to complete the code exercise. If it isn't going to be a fit from either of our perspectives, then they didn't spend time doing it.