Is it really worth the effort...

So, had an interview for a contract yesterday at a smallish company in Warwick. Seems like a good company, and an interesting role and I think I'm quite suitable for it. Pretty sure from a technical point of view I'm up to it ok. Anyway, the interview was with a team leader there and a contract architect, who only started yesterday! Think the interview went well, but the architect chucked in a curve ball half way through suggesting I would need to do a competency test. Fine really, cos I can understand that an interview and a CV doesn't really tell you whether someone is technically competent.

Anyway, they decided that they would send me this test, and I'd have a day to complete it and return it. I suspect most contractors would back away at this point just because of the hassle involved. I am not so, but was sorely tempted when I got the exercises!

Two exercises. The first, not too much of a problem but a bit of a pain. It was the old Bridge Crossing problem. 4 guys need to cross a bridge in 17 minutes or less. It's dark and they only have one torch. Only two people can be on the bridge at any one time. They can't throw the torch back etc. So basically you need to take two people accross, then return with the torch and take another two etc until they're all over.

Each person takes a different time to cross, 1, 2, 5 and 10 minutes. Now the solution to the problem isn't too taxing. persons 1 and 2 cross (2 minutes), person 1 comes back (3 minutes), persons 3 and 4 cross (13 minutes), person 2 comes back (15 minutes), persons 1 and 2 cross (17 minutes) and they're all across. Fine. Sadly, what they wanted was a program to find all possible solutions (they didn't state successful only, so I assumed each possible combination) to the problem.

So I spent most of the morning writing that. Not too hard, just a bit of a bugger. Went for the simple approach of a recursive algorithm. Not the most efficient, but it did the job. There are various other ways of solving it with mathematical equations etc, and then you could apply more complex rules to a recursive or even non-iterative solution, but I digress...

The second part was an architectural exercise. Now I don't want to moan, but to be honest I thought this was a bit cheeky. Not only was it an architectural exercise, when I'm not applying for an architects position (I would expect about double the money for that, and I'm not an architect anyway) and the problem they gave me was to define a high level architecture for the exact system they're recruiting for!!! They even recruited the contract architect to do exactly this job! Bit of a cheek really. Anyway, I basically wrote 6 pages of architectural waffle, including design principles appropriate to the requirements, a very rough high level architectural diagram (which may or may not be what they wanted at all) and an explanation of the architecture. I even included some possible technologies which could be applied.

Hopefully it's ok, but really I think it was a bit of a cheek to ask that. But there you go. We'll see. They better offer me a job after all that, otherwise I'll be a bit miffed!

There's another possible contract in Stratford on the table, so if not maybe that'll come off. It's a bit more money to!!

Right, had enough of typing now. Bye!