I stopped at online test question. They ask for experts but instead of asking for real-life solutions, you need to find correct "echo" result on mess of characters, numbers, constants... Something that no sane person would ever write and is completely irrelevant.
It was basically an insult to answer things like that. I write code with 100% pass on phpstan (max level), deep understanding of Symfony (even undocumented features), been using nested-set for 9 years... and yes, I don't know the answers to those questions as it makes no sense to even try reading that mess.
Few weeks later, I got email asking me why I quit my test. After few messages with guy from Serbia, I figured the problem; they don't have actual programmers with real-life experience but only people who finished university and have bare minimum of knowledge.
Suggestion:
if you are looking for experts, make the first question something like this:
foreach($this->getResults() as $result) {....}
function getResults() {
return range(1, 100000000);
}
Task: refactor "getResults()" function to not eat all the memory.
Answer: generators.
Make that to be the easiest question. And it actually is, pretty much same example from php.net.
Bonus: allow start and end values of that range.
That's how you find quality programmers.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Toptal in Apr 2017
Interview
There was a phone interview, about my background and the position.
Then there was a coding challenge consisting of 3 tasks, they're a little bit tough, but I got through these and proceeded to the next stage.
The next stage is a interview with a senior developer while sharing screen where you can use your IDE and open the documentation as well, the interviewer gave me two questions each one has 20 minutes time limit. They're actually easier that the Codility code challenge. I solved the first one in time and couldn't complete the second one.
I didn't go to the next stage (Take-home project).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The code challenge questions are similar to Codeforces Div2. If you're coming from a competitive programming experience, it would be a breeze. However, I'm not sure how this evaluates you as a software engineer.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Toptal (Milan) in Feb 2014
Interview
There was a phone interview, about my background and the position.
Then we scheduled a skype interview with screen sharing. I had to solve two exercises. Had I not passed the first, I would not have passed to the second.
Then there was a project to complete, using whichever technology I was familiar with.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Print numbers as string with commas, starting from integers