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

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.

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.

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

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 :).

Just Awesome!

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!

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!

Wow, it's an amazing app. Congratulations.

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.