Hiring people who know how to program is actually not hard. I also can screen for this in an hour, no problem.
It's everything else that is the problem. Are they lazy? Do disappear for days at a time? Will they not fix bugs in someone else's code? Will they complain NIH at the drop of a hat. Will they care to write all the ugly code we need to ship with, and not just the first 80% of the project?
These are the things that are hard to assess. But just knowing if they can code -- that's pretty easy.
It's everything else that is the problem. Are they lazy? Do disappear for days at a time? Will they not fix bugs in someone else's code? Will they complain NIH at the drop of a hat. Will they care to write all the ugly code we need to ship with, and not just the first 80% of the project?
These are the things that are hard to assess. But just knowing if they can code -- that's pretty easy.