From the original post... Does anyone else do this? Absolutely not. I learned a long time ago that a lot of POP code becomes production code. Like one of the other respondents posted... Code right or code not. There is no try.

We didn't manage to hire anyone because we never got to the code part. The candidates were that bad. I also agree that just because you don't have a personal cache of code examples doesn't mean that you're not learning anything. But, when a company asks for such a thing as a part of the pre-interview, you need to have one because, in the absence of one under such conditions, you may never get invited to an interview. And, no... I'm not talking about the "toy" code some are speaking of. The internet is full of forums where people ask for help. Solutions to such questions make great examples for a code cache, especially the more complex ones. Again, I'm not trying to force anyone to see it my way. I've been on both sides of the hiring fence and I'm trying to help folks see it the way employers see it to give them a better chance at being the successful candidate for a job.

--Jeff Moden

No time and no inclination... that's fine but don't get mad if someone beats you out of a job that decided to make the time and had the inclination. ;-) I'm trying to explain how to win the job. You don't have to take that advice. It's your choice.

Yeah... strongly agreed. You mistook what I said. It's not the "learning" code that they want to see. They want to see that you're taking the time to learn. Once you've learned how to do something, then turn it into a formal but still personal bit of code and use it as an example of your work. I totally agree on the ideas of maintainable code, elegant design, and polish will set folks well apart from those that don't practice those ideas. Again, the chance to shine in those areas is the demonstrable code you send them when they request it. Of course, this should be YOUR code... not the code that an employer has proprietary rights to or anything else that would violate an NDA, Covenant not to compete, or ethics in general.

--Jeff Moden

Heh... I'm looking at this site and see the following at the bottom of the thread list.

Quote:

Last Visit: 31-Dec-99 19:00 Last Update: 8-Feb-18 3:29

With that, the forum code also cutoff the "La" of "Last" when I block quoted and I had to correct it. Perhaps if people spent a little more of their own time learning the trade that pays them, these types of silly mistakes wouldn't happen. And that brings us back to the subject of the original post. While I do whole heartedly agree that your job shouldn't be your entire life (especially if you have kids or are married), you DO need to spend some time learning your trade and that's what employers want to see because they're tired of people that can't even get a bloody date right. While I also agree that you shouldn't have to keep up a web-presence or list your code on the likes of Git-Hub, you should be prepared for an interview especially if you have 15 years experience like the OP does. It will also show them good common sense and respect on your part if you tell them that you respect the proprietary nature of a previous company's code but don't let that be a barrier to showing your stuff. After all, you're on an interview to determine if you have the skills to do your job. And, no... the stuff you put on your resume isn't enough. That's just the proverbial "knock on the door". Too many people either exaggerate their knowledge or flat out lie on resumes. During one run of interviews of both experience web developers (with good knowledge of T-SQL) and DBAs (all claimed at least 10 years of experience on their resumes), 20 out of 22 couldn't answer the simple question of how to get the current date and time. I had originally started asking the question as a simple ice-breaker question to help the candidates relax. Little did I know it was going to me the litmus test for how the rest of the interview was going to go. Out of that same batch of people, only 1 DBA knew anything about how to do native backups and restores (and no... I do NOT ask for the precise syntax). One of the people also claimed to be an expert T-SQL performance tuner (again, with more than 10 years experience). When I asked him about clustered indexes (and, no, I didn't make this up. It's just too silly to even think of such a thing) he told me that he never worked with them because he had never worked with clustered servers. Employers are sick and tired of wasting time on people that don't actually have