TL;DR: For those reading the reviews and thinking all the engineering manager candidates are just being salty, they're not. This test has to be the worst indicator of potential success that I have ever seen. I wouldn't even consider this a good test for engineers.

The only thing this test illustrates is who has only ever solved HackerRank problems and never built anything real.

I only went a few steps into the process before I pulled my application. This is not how you find good software engineers or managers.

The process that I went through consisted of two steps:

1. Recruiter screen
2. Online test consisting of four problems

The online test is quite literally four questions where you parse integer arrays. The wording of the questions is incredibly confusing, by far the worst I've ever seen.

In addition, you're not allowed outside resources outside of the Microsoft docs. So, if you're a little rusty on some of the more nuanced features of arrays (because for some reason they only test your ability to parse integer arrays), you're SOL because you can't look it up like you would for any real-world problems.

I managed to solve all four problems, passing all test cases, and was invited for the next round of interviews. I declined and pulled my application because if you want to find great engineers or managers, asking them to solve array parsing problems (especially in C#, which has much more expressive data structures) is the worst way I can possibly think to do it.

Besides, I was applying to be an engineering manager. Where are the questions around how you lead and motivate people, track growth and performance, and determine how to efficiently run a team?

An engineering manager, at least at Capital One as it was described to me, is not a hands-on-keyboard role. So why the heck are you asking potential candidates to solve HackerRank puzzles and nothing else?

Given two integer arrays, determine which values of a[i] + b[j] are equal to a value of X. This determination should be based on input from a third multi-dimensional array. The format of this third array was not clearly explained in the problem description and was not obvious. Honestly, the hardest part of these problems is determining exactly what they want you to do, because they are horribly written. It's like they were written by someone in a foreign language who has never spoken to another person, then passed through Google Translate before being pasted into the problem description.