Discussion on question by chiplax: Is it an alarming sign, if a company's hiring process for senior/lead developer doesn't include a coding task?

@MartinJames I am repeating myself. Fizzbuzz tests do not say anything how good someone exactly is with organizing data, testing and debugging, but if you fail fizzbuzz, you cannot do debugging (organizing data and testing are different tasks which may not need developer experience).

A big chunk of being a developer is actually programming and writing code. I really don't understand why some people here say that it is inappropriate to ask to do a coding test for a senior position? Coding is part of your job, you can't be afraid of that! Also coding test is not only about knowing the most optimal algorithm for a given problem but it's about seeing a candidate's thought process. I agree with dyesdyes here I would prefer to work for a company where everyone was exercised and proved they're not uncomfortable with writing code. It's especially important in pairing environments.

I heartily disagree with the opinion here and agree with Marek. We had a disaster here of someone claiming years of experience and acing the interview. His performance was so terrible that even a small coding task would have exposed him, so no, you cannot talk to judge his coding experience. Small coding tasks do not give you an insight of how good someone is and are not intended as such, they are fail-fast tests. If you cannot uppercase a String by hand, you cannot code. If you cannot do FizzBuzz, you cannot code. What you also can see is how the applicant approaches a solution.

I agree with @ThorstenS. due to having had the same surreal experience. We hired a guy who was in no sense a programmer. I got stuck trying to turn him into one. He ended up in desktop support and was successful in that role. The purpose of FizzBuzz is to identify the candidates who are simply kidding you (and themselves, usually). Anybody who's going to write code or manage coders directly needs to do a fizzbuzz. If they take offense, that's a red flag. We've all known idiots who failed upward into senior positions and had glowing references. You must weed them out.

@peterG You are searching for a good driver in a racing team. One applicant is really excellent in the theoretical test, but clumsy and sluggish in action, a real horrible driver. How do you find that out by asking verbal questions?. You can't. You must see that those duds have detailed knowledge of the standard interview questions and how to confidently answer them. If you let code them, you see at once patterns. C++ programmers claming Java knowledge (if aString == bString), bad habits (int i,j,k,l,m; i = k = l = m = -1), how he formats and how she thinks. I will add an answer below.

In other news, seven years experience is now considered to be "senior" :-)

@jamesqf And as I said below, while a driver will drive erratically and makes errors in such circumstances, he still drives. An incompetent impostor will simply stall the engine. Declaring a bunch of datatypes is error-prone: You can do long a,b;c; on a C compiler (people switch warnings off/ignore them), resulting that c is an int and the program still very likely works. Also for char * c,d; d is not a char pointer. Also from experience short varnames like i,j,k are most likely loop/tmp vars indicating other bad styles (function/global scope, reusing & forgetting vars).