

Show HN: Is this useful to those of you hiring programmers? - devtestapp

I created http://devtest.net as a weekend project, and I'm pretty proud of it from a technical and UI standpoint.<p>The problem is, I've built this by myself in a bit of a vacuum, to "scratch my own itch", and I don't know if this is useful to anyone other than me. I'm also not so hot on the business side and don't really know what I'm doing.<p>Basically, I'm looking for some advice, now that I've actually launched, what now? One thing that this has shown me is that I'm capable of putting together a pretty decent web application on my own in my spare time. Should I stick with this idea, or should I look for someone more business minded with a better idea to implement and partner with them?
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mindcrime
That's pretty cool actually. I'm going to send the link to my boss, I could
see him being interested. We have our own internal coding test we usually give
applicants, but he might find some appeal in having something a little more
formalized and centralized.

It might also be cool if you could let users upload their own test somehow,
along with a spec that would let you automatically "grade" or evaluate the
submission in some fashion (maybe using something like Fitnesse).

Edit: upon further review I see that you do support custom tests. Cool, I'll
definitely dig in and give this a more thorough look later. First impression
is very favorable though.

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rafa3rafa
I think this is a great idea. I've come up with this problem in the past not
being a technical person myself. Especially when vetting out new hires early
on. In the past I've worked in organizations that have their own internal
testing but those are often baselined against the person who originally wrote
them. The great thing with your service is that you could also, once you've
gained traction, normalize the data and create "the" benchmark to score
testers. You can even splice by geographic region, etc. You could go further
once you establish your service as the "industry" standard allow programmers
themselves self-test and post (show off) their scores on resumes, linkedin,
github, etc. in effect quantifying their qualifications. Could even explore a
partnership with CodeAcademy downstream. What you need to do now is get some
validation, a way to say your tests are sufficient and/or above average. Then
you need to go to market and drive awareness, lots of outlets to seed this.
I'd be happy to bounce some ideas with you. Would you mind checking out my app
too? www.whisper.me thanks

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devtestapp
I like it, we're using basecamp at the moment and the new version is just not
quite doing it for us. I'll be investigating for my day job.

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dkoch
Nice work! I'm in the process of hiring right now, and I was just thinking
this morning that I needed a solution like this to give a code test to a
remote candidate.

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devtestapp
Awesome, if you sign up I'll give you some free credits and help with your
test if you like!

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cfwebdeveloper
I wouldn't mind testing it too!

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devtestapp
No problem, sign up and I'll add some credits to your account, it'd be really
good to have some feedback.

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Pwnguinz
Great idea, and definitely something I've been looking for!

As you get more users and traction, you can even implement some forms of anti-
plagiarism (the test should still be allowed to pass, but simply flagged for
the reviewer of the results).

I've just signed up and I wouldn't mind getting a few credits to test out your
app as well :).

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devtestapp
Awesome, credits added!

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creativeone
LinkedIn advertising might be good for you. Submit the site to any group
devoted to engineering HR. Create a list of 100 target businesses and start
cold calling them. Start an affiliate program. *choose three of those things
and you should be on your way to a solid revenue stream.

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creativeone
By the way, I love the site, don't know how well it works or not, but assuming
it provides a great value to companies hiring, I'd love to be a business
partner in the venture.

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dbecker
I talked to a lot of people about almost this exact idea in late 2011. Though
I didn't build it because I got involved in something else, everyone I talked
to was very enthusiastic about the idea (e.g. ready to hand over a credit
card).

I think you should pursue this idea further!

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rdg
I think you people killed this guy's server :P

And after reading the positive comments I really want to see what this app
looks like and what it does!

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devtestapp
Weird, none of my monitoring is showing any downtime...

Is it still not working for you?

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rdg
Wow, it's an amazing app. Congratulations.

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devtestapp
Thanks for looking!

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relaxman
Just Awesome!

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devtestapp
Thanks!

