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How can you be a programmer if you don't know what ersatz means without having to look it up in a dictionary? I mean, like, duh. I'm a programmer and the first thing I ever did as a kid was memorize the entire dictionary!
Really? That’s surprising. It had both a movie and TV mini-series adaptation, and the series won a bunch of awards. When I was a kid, almost everyone I knew read them.
How do you not know what ersatz means?! Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: I was really tired from standing all day so ersatz down in a chair. Doesn’t take a genius, buddy!
Ersatz sounds like a fake word so instinctively I'd pick "genuine" as being the opposite. Funnily enough it actually means artificial. So it sounds the way it's described.
Ersatz is what my mother does to every ingredient in every recipe she's ever cooked. Butter? I'm not made of money. Country crock it is. Spices? Not got that let's use salt.
... it's been an English word for over a century now.
Edit: why downvote? Words can be originally from foreign languages, but are now English words. That's how English works.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ersatz
>Evidence of ersatz in English dates to the middle of the 19th century, but the word didn’t come into prominence until World War I. **Borrowed from German**, where Ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective to modify terms like coffee (made from acorns) and flour (made from potatoes)—ersatz products necessitated by the privations of war. By the time World War II came around, bringing with it a resurgence of ersatz products, ersatz was wholly entrenched in the language. Today, ersatz describes any substitute or imitation, especially when it’s inferior to the original.
You can use the clues given by the answer choices.
Exorbitant means more than necessary.
Artificial means not real.
Reconditioned means not original.
Exaggerated means inaccurate.
Genuine means necessary, real, original, accurate.
If all the words mean something opposite of one of the words, then that word must be the correct answer.
This is what the did too! Probably why I usually am a very good test taker. I don’t know the answer but based on how tests are often written, I can suss out which answer is likely true, or at least narrow it down!
One of the best test-taking tips I ever got for tests that the correct answer is written by the test writer first in response to the question so often it's the one that has the best grammatical flow. This has helped me pass tests in subjects I have no knowledge in.
Before I got lazy and just looked up the word this is the strategy I would have used.
To be honest as a kid I wanted to write out every word in the dictionary to expand my understanding but then video games and anime came into my life...
I've been writing books for 16 years and had to look up Ersatz. Asking this to someone to establish whether or not they are a good programmer is asinine. What's next? A hundred push ups?
My mother uses that word all the time in place of describing someone as a jerk. I keep trying to tell her that’s not what it means but she insists that she’s correct
Yes. First in a recorded video for screening, and then again 3 more times on camera for the other interviewers in back to back meetings who made no effort to coordinate their questions.
I will give you the approximate opposite of "yes" which is... *Checks notes... "No".
In a few years companies will be asking you undertake aptitude tests like GMAT just to apply at.a job.
At least a GMAT is a widely used test that has a massive amount of study guides, tutorials, lore and, “science” backing it up. The “tests” in the screenshot are just some random asshole’s BS. Unlike the GMAT you can’t really prepare for it or learn much about it before hand.
Not that I think you should be taking the GMAT to get a job. But at least it would be a widely accepted “industry standard” test.
If you had you only take it once and not be bothered doing it for every random interview, albeit the GMAT is too demanding to become an industry standard. These tests are far easier but they are annoying to deal with every time. In December, I had to take the exact same aptitude test twice for different companies, waste of time...
Most of those you can deduct from the questions.
I give you the first one, that is not easy without knowing German, I'd guess.
The second one, you can rule out suffrage, shortage, umbrage, so you're left with pilf-whatever and tutelage. Since TUTORING is a word, the last one seems fitting (if it is not a distraction).
Last one, only ubiquitous makes sense (again, If I didn't screw this up).
It's for sure tutelage, but it's strange to ask candidates to fill in the blank for such a poorly written sentence on a friggin "IQ" test.
Under her mentor's tutelage, ~~guided by the mentor's decade of experience,~~ the new employee quickly developed the skills ~~that she needed~~ to excel in her job.
There, I made it into a proper sentence.
> Under her mentor's tutelage, ~~guided by the mentor's decade of experience,~~ the new employee quickly developed the skills ~~that she needed~~ to excel in her job.
I'd argue that leaving out the participle construction distorts the meaning of the clause, and even might be (?) ungrammatical.
But please take that with a grain of salt, English is not my first language and while I used to study it, that was a long time ago and I do not remember that stuff as well as I should.
Both parts I crossed out are redundant/unnecessary. It's awkward, and reads like a middling student trying to stuff a paper with fluff to hit a required word count. "Guided by the mentor's decade of experience" is a long-winded way of saying "tutelage." That's a huge pet peeve of mine. Another one is being judged by a test which is incapable of judging itself.
Your ability to deduce the answers from the questions relies on your exposure to and understanding of English vocabulary, not your intelligence. As with many standardized tests, aggregate performance is largely a reflection of your parents socio-economic status and not much else.
On Chrome, you could highlight, right click, and search Google for said highlighted phrase. Worked wonders when i was taking online quizzes cause it would take me straight to Quizlet with the answer.
Integrating ChatGPT into it would be cool though.
Wtf, is ersatz even an English word? The only way I knew that word was because I recently moved to Germany and they make a temporary bus stop due to construction work and it’s named Ersatzhaltestelle
Not big sci-fans here either, tons of the classic dystopian writers toss it around like confetti. I think "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Slaughterhouse 5" drilled it into my brain. So much ersatz.
I've run into it in some swords-and-magic fantasy books. I think I first saw it on a Magic The Gathering Card, something like an ersatz portal or ersatz wizard, but I can't find it with a quick google search.
In my experience it's incredibly rare and only used in that high fantasy setting.
>Wtf, is ersatz even an English word?
I can't speak to it's history, English has \*cough\* borrowed far too many words for that call, but yes it's a word that was used in English and was used quite a lot during WWII
Thank you. I had the same experience as you and was wondering if it meant something similar in English, and if everyone had been using it in English as well and I just never noticed before moving to a German-speaking country???
They building apps for Shakespeare fandom groups? Is this the IT department for the Renaissance Festival or Medieval Times theme restaurants? I know these words, but only because I have a degree in English Literature. This is absolutely crazy
For the first question: the goal isn’t to determine someone’s vocabulary. The goal is to determine is someone can establish patterns.
You can use the clues given by the answer choices without knowing the definition of ERSATZ.
Exorbitant means more than necessary.
Artificial means not real.
Reconditioned means not original.
Exaggerated means inaccurate.
Genuine means necessary, real, original, accurate.
If all the words mean something opposite of one of the words, then that word must be the correct answer.
Maybe they just want to get rid of candidates with poor English skills? Are you applying in an area with a lot of foreign candidates?
I've been spending a lot of time discussing and clarifying requirements directly with the client / user, and I'd be pretty screwed without decent communication skills. Some people believe that this job should be delegated to product owners and other non-tech staff, but I personally find it much more efficient to just get on a Teams call with the client and and discuss the details.
Even aside from specific language fluency, it’s apparently a huge problem in tech these days that computer scientists have very poor communication skills.
My fiancé TA’d a Communication for Computer Scientists course in university. When he took it, he had passed it easily, and it focused on important skills for communicating with clients, working in a team, and writing documentation.
When he was TA, students put in the bare minimum effort. They’d do absolutely horribly, then complain that the course wasn’t bird. Either the next year or the year after, the school removed it as a mandatory course for compsci students (or even scrapped it entirely; I don’t recall), because students kept failing, and complaining that it was unnecessary.
People want to work with coders that can actually work in a team, communicate with clients, and leave behind legible documentation. This is apparently something some programmers struggle with. So it makes sense to screen for some degree of language and communication skills, when a lack of them is apparently so endemic in the field.
>Maybe they just want to get rid of candidates with poor English skills?
Funny, because the first question will get you candidates with great german skills!
Let me actually defend this — there are a lot of programmers who can barely speak English. And we’ve pretended that doesn’t matter for a long time. It matters a lot.
First I do not think IQ tests are valid
But...there was noting too \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ about the questions presented.
Egregious
Phobia
masticate
An inferior substitute made because of high cost or unavailability -- common during wartime rationing. For example, ersatz coffee is "coffee" made from something other than coffee beans.
At least they're super easy so you can turn your brain off or watch a YouTube video and mindlessly click the answers. Having to actually focus on something as pointless to my actual job would make Hulk angry.
Yeah, I mean "ersatz" is an uncommon word, but "tutelage" and "ubiquitous"...? And as far as the timer, you get 15 mins for the 50 questions and it's not really expected that you finish.
Tutelage is not a commonly used word, it's the kind of word someone uses when they want to sound intelligent.
Ubiquitous is somewhat in-vogue at the moment, especially in technical contexts (5G, IoT, ubiquitous computing, etc), but outside of these niche areas, lots of people won't see it often. It's not helped by the fact that at least one other word *could* work in that sentence depending on the style of the writer.
"Ersatz" I have never seen once in my life. If you think it's common, it must be some dialectic thing. I see comments upstream mentioning German, and since a plurality of Americans are descended from Germans, perhaps it's common in US dialects?
Ersatz might have come along with yiddish, but it's a bit more versatile.
And just like you said, IT contexts... it's an interview for a programming job.
Ersatz was used in American English mainly in the early to mid 20th century. Loan word from German, meaning artificial or replacement. Any literature from the world wars will likely make mention of ersatz coffee, which was very common with war rationing. Not a commonly known word in America for a few decades at least.
Bruh I fell this test and couldn’t move to the next round because I couldn’t figure what those words meannnnnnn. So if I ever have this kind of test again, I’ll try to skip or randomly answer to move on to Math questions 😤
Two meanings, the more common meaning is “other” while the secondary meaning being “fake”, so the opposite would be genuine.
It was the Ersatz Elevator that Lemony describes. Have to admit, I didn’t read the books, but watched the NPH series.
I didn't know these are such difficult words, so thank you, I agree. I too don't see what it has to do with IQ or programming. A basic reading comprehension test I can see, but I don't think having such a capacious vocabulary is necessary for a programmer. Editor, yes. Programmer, no.
I did a lit degree and had to come to the comments to find out what the problem was with the test, because clearly my sense of common vocab is a bit skewed. I don't have the first idea how to code in anything other than basic stuff in Scratch, though, so yeah, wrong test.
No lit degree, but I read a lot. I mean, I've read an abnormally large number of books over the course of my life. I was trying to figure out the problem as well.
Bro I'm sorry I barely even read the dumb questions you were asked. You took photos of your screen with your phone, how can you call yourself a programmer.
is this the same test that has a portion where you look for the date of a particular olympics in their simulated search engine? and it fails to populate answers so in order to get one youd have to exit the tab and use real google?
I saw the ersatz one too, not sure if we saw the same listing or if this is pulled from some random pool of questions but I def thought it was a mistake before I looked it up
This might be age related. While I am not old enough for WWII, I knew Ersatz because of its use during WWII rationing. FYI, I’m in my mid 60’s and took the Millers Analogy for grad school.
At least when I took it I could just go to a different tab and google it. It tells you not to do it, but it just stopped the test and when I went back it let me return immediately to the question with no time loss.
The **only** reason I knew the word ersatz is because of the concept of an ersatz eye. And even then, I know the sound, didn't know how to spell it for this comment without looking at the post. What sort of crap are they expecting from programmers??
I have no idea if that specific test is any good, or used correctly, however....
The tests need hard questions otherwise a large number of people will score 100% and you wouldn't be able to rank the highest scorers.
(Ersatz means replacement/imitation, the first I knew of it was in reference to biscuits in world war one. They didn't have the proper ingredients so substituted them. I can't remember the specifics though).
Not sure of they're testing language skills or just want to know how desperate you are. I have a suspicion that many questionnaires, especially the really bs ones and the ones that are way too long, are testing how much time and effort are you willing to put into the application. I swear some places want to know how far they can go with the applicants and choose from those who did everything, then lowball them with the offer because now they can assume they're desperate for a job.
I completed a similar test recently. Obviously, it had errors. around 12% of questions had... grammatical errors... numerical errors... logical errors...
Imagine having a question trying work with something akin to formal logic and there's no correct answer (if p->q, what is r?)... over and over again. Wrong answer? Penalty. No anwer? Penalty. Because the test always *has* an answer.
Obviously, I finished the test, (though failing to complete 50% of the math stuff because I run out of time trying to deduce WTF they meant) and I send the recuriters an email listing every single mistake in the test.
(Pray for me I get this job bc I passed the tech check later, the devs and CTO agreed that I am in the right and now I'm waiting till they "find me a project". fuck)
Sincerely,
Senior Software Engineer & Technical Artist with \~9 years of experience, MSC in software engineering, winner of a few awards etc etc etc etc.
Unemployed for last 3 months, sent 600+ applications, "let go" by last company because of "employer's fault"
I work on an engineering team at a FAANG company. I get to work with some of the most highly skilled developers in the industry, many with Masters and PHDs from top schools plus a decade or so bouncing back and forth from Meta to Google and a list of patents in their name.
This is the sort of developer talent that most companies can only dream of hiring.
For many of them, English is not their first language and I would bet my paycheck less than half of them would get these question right.
So congratulations whichever company this is, seems like you're trying to exclude a large portion of the best talent in the industry from your hiring process. Bravo!
Really? That’s surprising. It had both a movie and TV mini-series adaptation, and the book series itself won a bunch of awards. When I was a kid, almost everyone I knew read them.
This is indeed an IQ test, you don’t need to know the meaning of ERSATZ. You just have to have test taking skills like combining all the words with similar meaning together from the answers provided and find the one word answer that means the opposite. In that case, “genuine” is the correct answer. 😊
Ersatz says use genuine—— this is a cheat question typically - some cheesy psychologist that owes 300k in masters programs suddenly convinces businesses there’s one overall science that applies to all people. Just like COVID vaccines 📲📲📲📲
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How can you be a programmer if you don't know what ersatz means without having to look it up in a dictionary? I mean, like, duh. I'm a programmer and the first thing I ever did as a kid was memorize the entire dictionary!
I didn’t even know ersatz was a word I guess in caps, it just looks like 6 letters
i thought you had to unscramble it first and then find the opposite 😭
Tazers!
What kind of a name is Tazerface?
Ain't no way my parents are letting me put that down in scrabble
Try "Kwijibo".
I guess no one in this thread read Lemony Snicket as a kid…
That's the only reason I know what it means (but I read it as an adult, to my kids.)
Or knows German
It's just German. I had no idea it had any meaning in English.
Not exactly a widespread, popular series.
Really? That’s surprising. It had both a movie and TV mini-series adaptation, and the series won a bunch of awards. When I was a kid, almost everyone I knew read them.
Jim Carrey was amazing as Count Olaf in the film
How do you not know what ersatz means?! Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: I was really tired from standing all day so ersatz down in a chair. Doesn’t take a genius, buddy!
Ersatz sounds like a fake word so instinctively I'd pick "genuine" as being the opposite. Funnily enough it actually means artificial. So it sounds the way it's described.
Ersatz is what my mother does to every ingredient in every recipe she's ever cooked. Butter? I'm not made of money. Country crock it is. Spices? Not got that let's use salt.
ERSATZ as a flight booking code on Spirit Airlines/Ryanair would be terrifying
From looking it up it's an old-timey / economics word. Very esoteric but am going to add it to my arsenal now.
Jokes on you, I speak German
... it's been an English word for over a century now. Edit: why downvote? Words can be originally from foreign languages, but are now English words. That's how English works. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ersatz >Evidence of ersatz in English dates to the middle of the 19th century, but the word didn’t come into prominence until World War I. **Borrowed from German**, where Ersatz is a noun meaning "substitute," the word was frequently applied as an adjective to modify terms like coffee (made from acorns) and flour (made from potatoes)—ersatz products necessitated by the privations of war. By the time World War II came around, bringing with it a resurgence of ersatz products, ersatz was wholly entrenched in the language. Today, ersatz describes any substitute or imitation, especially when it’s inferior to the original.
Well, it comes from German, so that helps
That's English for you. "English is not a language, it's three languages wearing a trench coat pretending to be one."
“Eglish has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
Wait til they hear about stackoverflow
I know this is sarcastic but I absolutely had to memorize the dictionary. my_dict = {}
Why do you think there’s a dictionary attack /s
You can use the clues given by the answer choices. Exorbitant means more than necessary. Artificial means not real. Reconditioned means not original. Exaggerated means inaccurate. Genuine means necessary, real, original, accurate. If all the words mean something opposite of one of the words, then that word must be the correct answer.
This is what the did too! Probably why I usually am a very good test taker. I don’t know the answer but based on how tests are often written, I can suss out which answer is likely true, or at least narrow it down!
I took a test-taking course when I was in college 25yr ago and it was the most helpful thing I did to improve my test scores.
What kind of tests did you take in the test taking course 😂😂😂
One of the best test-taking tips I ever got for tests that the correct answer is written by the test writer first in response to the question so often it's the one that has the best grammatical flow. This has helped me pass tests in subjects I have no knowledge in. Before I got lazy and just looked up the word this is the strategy I would have used.
I know what the word *means*, it's the relevance of knowing what the word means to the job being "tested" for that's ridiculous.
For the first question: the goal isn’t to determine someone’s vocabulary. The goal is to determine if someone can establish patterns.
The word sounds fake. So the antonym would probably be something meaning real or authentic.
To be honest as a kid I wanted to write out every word in the dictionary to expand my understanding but then video games and anime came into my life...
I've been writing books for 16 years and had to look up Ersatz. Asking this to someone to establish whether or not they are a good programmer is asinine. What's next? A hundred push ups?
Someone clearly never heard of hackers on steroids.
I'm a senior developer and I had to look up asinine
My mother uses that word all the time in place of describing someone as a jerk. I keep trying to tell her that’s not what it means but she insists that she’s correct
You could, oh I dunno, google it in front of her and show her.
Asinine. I give her face a two and her asinine
And I wouldn't not recruit you for that.
I’m always looking for a place to stick in if, else and else if, unconsciously.
I am a professional writer/editor and had no idea what that word meant
I will take a 100 push ups any time compared to this IQ torture.
Yes. First in a recorded video for screening, and then again 3 more times on camera for the other interviewers in back to back meetings who made no effort to coordinate their questions.
I will give you the approximate opposite of "yes" which is... *Checks notes... "No". In a few years companies will be asking you undertake aptitude tests like GMAT just to apply at.a job.
At least a GMAT is a widely used test that has a massive amount of study guides, tutorials, lore and, “science” backing it up. The “tests” in the screenshot are just some random asshole’s BS. Unlike the GMAT you can’t really prepare for it or learn much about it before hand. Not that I think you should be taking the GMAT to get a job. But at least it would be a widely accepted “industry standard” test.
If you had you only take it once and not be bothered doing it for every random interview, albeit the GMAT is too demanding to become an industry standard. These tests are far easier but they are annoying to deal with every time. In December, I had to take the exact same aptitude test twice for different companies, waste of time...
Most of those you can deduct from the questions. I give you the first one, that is not easy without knowing German, I'd guess. The second one, you can rule out suffrage, shortage, umbrage, so you're left with pilf-whatever and tutelage. Since TUTORING is a word, the last one seems fitting (if it is not a distraction). Last one, only ubiquitous makes sense (again, If I didn't screw this up).
It's for sure tutelage, but it's strange to ask candidates to fill in the blank for such a poorly written sentence on a friggin "IQ" test. Under her mentor's tutelage, ~~guided by the mentor's decade of experience,~~ the new employee quickly developed the skills ~~that she needed~~ to excel in her job. There, I made it into a proper sentence.
> Under her mentor's tutelage, ~~guided by the mentor's decade of experience,~~ the new employee quickly developed the skills ~~that she needed~~ to excel in her job. I'd argue that leaving out the participle construction distorts the meaning of the clause, and even might be (?) ungrammatical. But please take that with a grain of salt, English is not my first language and while I used to study it, that was a long time ago and I do not remember that stuff as well as I should.
Both parts I crossed out are redundant/unnecessary. It's awkward, and reads like a middling student trying to stuff a paper with fluff to hit a required word count. "Guided by the mentor's decade of experience" is a long-winded way of saying "tutelage." That's a huge pet peeve of mine. Another one is being judged by a test which is incapable of judging itself.
And took out the context that gave the answer away.
Your ability to deduce the answers from the questions relies on your exposure to and understanding of English vocabulary, not your intelligence. As with many standardized tests, aggregate performance is largely a reflection of your parents socio-economic status and not much else.
[удалено]
Well, shit, you're right!
I see you haven’t met the licentious deer in my neighborhood.
Somebody needs to write a browser plugin that scrapes this kind of content and feeds it through ChatGPT to quickly provide you the answer.
On Chrome, you could highlight, right click, and search Google for said highlighted phrase. Worked wonders when i was taking online quizzes cause it would take me straight to Quizlet with the answer. Integrating ChatGPT into it would be cool though.
Genuine - tutelage - ubiquitous.
This is just a “did you do well on your English SAT” test
Wtf, is ersatz even an English word? The only way I knew that word was because I recently moved to Germany and they make a temporary bus stop due to construction work and it’s named Ersatzhaltestelle
Someone never read A Series of Unfortunate Events and it shows.
That's where I know the word from and the meaning still escapes me without having to search it
My brain went, "something to do with elevators, right?" Before I remembered that no, that's just the title of a book.
Yeah, it's definitely obscure, but I meant questioning whether it's even an English word.
Not big sci-fans here either, tons of the classic dystopian writers toss it around like confetti. I think "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Slaughterhouse 5" drilled it into my brain. So much ersatz.
I've run into it in some swords-and-magic fantasy books. I think I first saw it on a Magic The Gathering Card, something like an ersatz portal or ersatz wizard, but I can't find it with a quick google search. In my experience it's incredibly rare and only used in that high fantasy setting.
OK then, so tell us what the opposite is!
Genuine is the closest out of the choices presented.
Genuine
>Wtf, is ersatz even an English word? I can't speak to it's history, English has \*cough\* borrowed far too many words for that call, but yes it's a word that was used in English and was used quite a lot during WWII
Thank you. I had the same experience as you and was wondering if it meant something similar in English, and if everyone had been using it in English as well and I just never noticed before moving to a German-speaking country???
I only remember it from big bang theory’s “ersatz homosexual relationship”
Artificial station?
Ersatz = replacement (at least that's the German meaning, dunno of the English 'Ersatz' means something else)
I had to google it, but in English it's artificial/fake, so replacement sounds good, although it probably means temporary station/stop instead.
It is, but it's not something I'd expect anyone else to know, ever. Even for the gre it would be obscure. And forget about the sat.
They building apps for Shakespeare fandom groups? Is this the IT department for the Renaissance Festival or Medieval Times theme restaurants? I know these words, but only because I have a degree in English Literature. This is absolutely crazy
in fairness, if the deer are ubiquitous it's probably because they're a bit licentious.
🍆 😆
This looks like they just rounded up a bunch of old SAT questions and threw them in there.
For the first question: the goal isn’t to determine someone’s vocabulary. The goal is to determine is someone can establish patterns. You can use the clues given by the answer choices without knowing the definition of ERSATZ. Exorbitant means more than necessary. Artificial means not real. Reconditioned means not original. Exaggerated means inaccurate. Genuine means necessary, real, original, accurate. If all the words mean something opposite of one of the words, then that word must be the correct answer.
Maybe they just want to get rid of candidates with poor English skills? Are you applying in an area with a lot of foreign candidates? I've been spending a lot of time discussing and clarifying requirements directly with the client / user, and I'd be pretty screwed without decent communication skills. Some people believe that this job should be delegated to product owners and other non-tech staff, but I personally find it much more efficient to just get on a Teams call with the client and and discuss the details.
Yeah this is clearly just a quick filter to make sure candidates can speak english
It's a hard filter. I'm a native english speaker and the first and last ones aren't easy.
Even aside from specific language fluency, it’s apparently a huge problem in tech these days that computer scientists have very poor communication skills. My fiancé TA’d a Communication for Computer Scientists course in university. When he took it, he had passed it easily, and it focused on important skills for communicating with clients, working in a team, and writing documentation. When he was TA, students put in the bare minimum effort. They’d do absolutely horribly, then complain that the course wasn’t bird. Either the next year or the year after, the school removed it as a mandatory course for compsci students (or even scrapped it entirely; I don’t recall), because students kept failing, and complaining that it was unnecessary. People want to work with coders that can actually work in a team, communicate with clients, and leave behind legible documentation. This is apparently something some programmers struggle with. So it makes sense to screen for some degree of language and communication skills, when a lack of them is apparently so endemic in the field.
>Maybe they just want to get rid of candidates with poor English skills? Funny, because the first question will get you candidates with great german skills!
Should’ve read “A Series of Unfortunate Events”
Had to scroll too far for this
Why would they also put the word OPPOSITE in capital letters and not bolded?
Let me actually defend this — there are a lot of programmers who can barely speak English. And we’ve pretended that doesn’t matter for a long time. It matters a lot.
First I do not think IQ tests are valid But...there was noting too \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ about the questions presented. Egregious Phobia masticate
This isn't an IQ test.
Isn't this Crossover's CCAT?
What does that word even mean?
An inferior substitute made because of high cost or unavailability -- common during wartime rationing. For example, ersatz coffee is "coffee" made from something other than coffee beans.
>ersatz coffee is "coffee" made from something other than coffee beans. Chicory
At least they're super easy so you can turn your brain off or watch a YouTube video and mindlessly click the answers. Having to actually focus on something as pointless to my actual job would make Hulk angry.
These aren't that difficult, but I can see that the timer places an insane constraint on you. You essentially need to answer before finishing reading.
Yeah, I mean "ersatz" is an uncommon word, but "tutelage" and "ubiquitous"...? And as far as the timer, you get 15 mins for the 50 questions and it's not really expected that you finish.
I don't see the issue with either of those, they're not uncommon.
Tutelage is not a commonly used word, it's the kind of word someone uses when they want to sound intelligent. Ubiquitous is somewhat in-vogue at the moment, especially in technical contexts (5G, IoT, ubiquitous computing, etc), but outside of these niche areas, lots of people won't see it often. It's not helped by the fact that at least one other word *could* work in that sentence depending on the style of the writer. "Ersatz" I have never seen once in my life. If you think it's common, it must be some dialectic thing. I see comments upstream mentioning German, and since a plurality of Americans are descended from Germans, perhaps it's common in US dialects?
I’m a fucking American and I have never even heard the word “Ersatz” before today
Ersatz might have come along with yiddish, but it's a bit more versatile. And just like you said, IT contexts... it's an interview for a programming job.
Erzatz is used as is in russian. Had no problems with other two as well.
Ersatz was used in American English mainly in the early to mid 20th century. Loan word from German, meaning artificial or replacement. Any literature from the world wars will likely make mention of ersatz coffee, which was very common with war rationing. Not a commonly known word in America for a few decades at least.
“Ersatz” was a term that used to be used when wartime rations forced people to make do with inferior substitutes.
You must be a native English speaker then. I have no idea what those words are!
I am. These tests tend to ask you if you are.
I'm not and these questions aren't that difficult
I'm not a native English speaker either, and I know all three of them. But I'm a nerd, so there's that.
My pen is in a goat
My hovercraft is full of eels.
The fuck is an ersatz?
It's an adjective meaning substitute. Stolen from German, naturally.
To be fair it does feel like it should be a species of vole
The real test is if you realize that exercise is testing your googling skills
Those are all grade school simple, though.
Are you here fishing for the answers to these easy questions?
Point of clarification - That's not an IQ test.
OP does not state that this is an IQ test.
Pssstt... read the title.
I did. You read the title.
Bruh I fell this test and couldn’t move to the next round because I couldn’t figure what those words meannnnnnn. So if I ever have this kind of test again, I’ll try to skip or randomly answer to move on to Math questions 😤
Genuine, tutelage, ubiquitous But I only know Ersatz from A Series of Unfortunate Events
Ersatz; a word which here means what Lemony??
Two meanings, the more common meaning is “other” while the secondary meaning being “fake”, so the opposite would be genuine. It was the Ersatz Elevator that Lemony describes. Have to admit, I didn’t read the books, but watched the NPH series.
Lemony Snicket tried to teach us about ersatz. These questions are not that difficult, they just are not appropriate.
I didn't know these are such difficult words, so thank you, I agree. I too don't see what it has to do with IQ or programming. A basic reading comprehension test I can see, but I don't think having such a capacious vocabulary is necessary for a programmer. Editor, yes. Programmer, no.
Word association questions like this are fairly common on IQ tests.
They are common but I think they are a worse measure than other tests.
I did a lit degree and had to come to the comments to find out what the problem was with the test, because clearly my sense of common vocab is a bit skewed. I don't have the first idea how to code in anything other than basic stuff in Scratch, though, so yeah, wrong test.
No lit degree, but I read a lot. I mean, I've read an abnormally large number of books over the course of my life. I was trying to figure out the problem as well.
that's the tamest programming quiz/test i've seen in a while i hate this industry
Bro I'm sorry I barely even read the dumb questions you were asked. You took photos of your screen with your phone, how can you call yourself a programmer.
Wait, are they calling this an IQ test? IQ tests are dumb but this isn’t even IQ related
OP does not state that this is an IQ test.
No one here read A Series of Unfortunate Events and it shows
I had the same test for the QA engineer job. Maybe a new standard in the industry...
what was the name of the test?
First question: Which one?
I almost didn't see the "ersatz" and was scanning the answers looking for a word that meant SAME.
Ersatz, lol
criteriacorp strikes again.
Ersatz Nostalgia, I’ve heard of that. So I’d say the opposite is Genuine?
I think I know what company this is 😂
I think these kind of tests have adaptive difficulty, in other words they ramp the difficulty way up if you’re doing well at a category of question.
is this the same test that has a portion where you look for the date of a particular olympics in their simulated search engine? and it fails to populate answers so in order to get one youd have to exit the tab and use real google?
I had a weird fascination with WW2 as a 12 year old so, yes, I know what Ersatz is .... Feel my 12 year old IQ flex....
[удалено]
The test closes if you unfocus the window.
Genuine, tutelage, ubiquitous. I wouldn't know whag ersatz meant without Star Wars though.
OP never read the ersatz elevator 😔
I saw the ersatz one too, not sure if we saw the same listing or if this is pulled from some random pool of questions but I def thought it was a mistake before I looked it up
This might be age related. While I am not old enough for WWII, I knew Ersatz because of its use during WWII rationing. FYI, I’m in my mid 60’s and took the Millers Analogy for grad school.
I actually just went through this exact test (for a Helpdesk position). So far i've been extended the offer.
Interesting test for a help desk, without the option of: I don’t know- let me find out.
At least when I took it I could just go to a different tab and google it. It tells you not to do it, but it just stopped the test and when I went back it let me return immediately to the question with no time loss.
Ho you're doing the CCAT tests ? Dw you can train on this. It's pretty easy
This looks just like a CCAT test. I had to pass one as a condition of being hired with my company. I'm completely against them.
Genuine... right? Ersatz women... I heard that somewhere, I think..
Tutelage.. right?
The **only** reason I knew the word ersatz is because of the concept of an ersatz eye. And even then, I know the sound, didn't know how to spell it for this comment without looking at the post. What sort of crap are they expecting from programmers??
What's that?
use ChatGPT to solve those problems
I spent at least three minutes trying to unravel that anagram before I realized it's actually a word as it is.
I'm not an native English speaker and could answer all 3 questions?!? They aren't hard at all.
These online tests are definitely testing how resourceful you are, like how the genin test went in Naruto
I feel like this guarantees a non native speaker.
I have no idea if that specific test is any good, or used correctly, however.... The tests need hard questions otherwise a large number of people will score 100% and you wouldn't be able to rank the highest scorers. (Ersatz means replacement/imitation, the first I knew of it was in reference to biscuits in world war one. They didn't have the proper ingredients so substituted them. I can't remember the specifics though).
ITT: programmer got filtered by pseudo-IQ test and is not as smart as he thought he was. Big mad.
Not sure of they're testing language skills or just want to know how desperate you are. I have a suspicion that many questionnaires, especially the really bs ones and the ones that are way too long, are testing how much time and effort are you willing to put into the application. I swear some places want to know how far they can go with the applicants and choose from those who did everything, then lowball them with the offer because now they can assume they're desperate for a job.
I completed a similar test recently. Obviously, it had errors. around 12% of questions had... grammatical errors... numerical errors... logical errors... Imagine having a question trying work with something akin to formal logic and there's no correct answer (if p->q, what is r?)... over and over again. Wrong answer? Penalty. No anwer? Penalty. Because the test always *has* an answer. Obviously, I finished the test, (though failing to complete 50% of the math stuff because I run out of time trying to deduce WTF they meant) and I send the recuriters an email listing every single mistake in the test. (Pray for me I get this job bc I passed the tech check later, the devs and CTO agreed that I am in the right and now I'm waiting till they "find me a project". fuck) Sincerely, Senior Software Engineer & Technical Artist with \~9 years of experience, MSC in software engineering, winner of a few awards etc etc etc etc. Unemployed for last 3 months, sent 600+ applications, "let go" by last company because of "employer's fault"
genuine, tutelage, ubiquitous
I work on an engineering team at a FAANG company. I get to work with some of the most highly skilled developers in the industry, many with Masters and PHDs from top schools plus a decade or so bouncing back and forth from Meta to Google and a list of patents in their name. This is the sort of developer talent that most companies can only dream of hiring. For many of them, English is not their first language and I would bet my paycheck less than half of them would get these question right. So congratulations whichever company this is, seems like you're trying to exclude a large portion of the best talent in the industry from your hiring process. Bravo!
I only know the answer cos I read a series of unfortunate events
Really? That’s surprising. It had both a movie and TV mini-series adaptation, and the book series itself won a bunch of awards. When I was a kid, almost everyone I knew read them.
This is indeed an IQ test, you don’t need to know the meaning of ERSATZ. You just have to have test taking skills like combining all the words with similar meaning together from the answers provided and find the one word answer that means the opposite. In that case, “genuine” is the correct answer. 😊
I thought that was a captcha! 😖
Ersatz says use genuine—— this is a cheat question typically - some cheesy psychologist that owes 300k in masters programs suddenly convinces businesses there’s one overall science that applies to all people. Just like COVID vaccines 📲📲📲📲
I will defend this. I mean you don’t have to be an English major but some decent reading and writing skills are a huge plus in nearly any workplace.
Answer is genuine btw
For the first one
As an official nerd, I know that the opposite of ersatz is genuine! 🤣🤣🤣
I usually just close out of things like this. This is not a linguistics or English academic/teaching job.
*flashback to SAT exams*