Let me rephrase what you said in a better perspective. I don't think anybody would subject themselves to unnecessary testing, regardless of the profession or industry. If this becomes an industry norm, then tough cookie for us engineers.
Interviews are a necessary and evolutionary process of finding good employees, and we know that so that's why we subject ourselves to them. It's not a form of humiliation because it's the norm. How else would a manager figure out if you got the skills and character to do the job? It's not a perfect process by any means, but it definitely helps.
Here's where this startup tries to take things to a different level. I get the idea behind it, but I cannot fathom why anybody would want to subject themselves to unnecessary testing. What's the ROI? Why give out personal information and have it stored on some database for some undetermined, possibly indefinite amount of time (forever? 1 year? 5 years?)? Am I going to be paid to do this? Can I no longer get a job if I don't do this? If this is purely voluntary, I have absolutely no incentive of taking the test.
Perhaps these questions should be something the founders should consider.
I agree. Referrals are the best ways of finding good engineers. Just because one could (or could not) answer questions correctly on a test doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is a good (or bad) engineer. Everyone has good days and bad days.
There are also plenty of ways of circumventing this. Since a test taker is evaluated not just by his answers, but also by the process of inputting his answers, that itself could also be faked away.
While I don't think the point of this idea is to evaluate the candidate's personality, I'm wondering if the founders thought about this. Is this going to be left to the companies to figure out on their own, or are the founders going to assist in this? What I don't like is the idea of encouraging employers to filter candidates by coding skills first, then personality. As a project manager, I've dealt with my fair share of really intelligent but lazy, egotistical engineers and thinking back I wouldn't really hire them had I known about their personalities earlier. I would rather hire engineers with B+ coding skills and A+ personalities, than engineers with A+ coding skills by B+ personalities.
Interviews are a necessary and evolutionary process of finding good employees, and we know that so that's why we subject ourselves to them. It's not a form of humiliation because it's the norm. How else would a manager figure out if you got the skills and character to do the job? It's not a perfect process by any means, but it definitely helps.
Here's where this startup tries to take things to a different level. I get the idea behind it, but I cannot fathom why anybody would want to subject themselves to unnecessary testing. What's the ROI? Why give out personal information and have it stored on some database for some undetermined, possibly indefinite amount of time (forever? 1 year? 5 years?)? Am I going to be paid to do this? Can I no longer get a job if I don't do this? If this is purely voluntary, I have absolutely no incentive of taking the test.
Perhaps these questions should be something the founders should consider.