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Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

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Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#41

Post by cantastoria »

DrJokepu wrote: post #24
cantastoria wrote: post #9

I'm curious what candidates are getting stuck on. Is it the testing for divisibility that's tripping them up?

Mostly they just don't know how to start. They can't break down the problem into subproblems. Once a candidate managed to break down the problem to subproblems, they can always do the rest easily (solving the subproblems, composing the solutions to solve the main problem).

Ok in that case then they're a no hire as that's just a fundamental part of developing software. Although I must admit that this problem surprises me more than people's inability to code. I mean if you can't break down problems you're just ill suited to the field.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#42

Post by patio11 »

pixeloution wrote: post #32
spamizbad wrote: post #27

4 candidates, 2 passed FizzBuzz. Oddly, the two that failed had a Masters in CS (albeit no BS in CS). Of those that passed: one had Masters in Library Science looking to change careers. The other was a fresh out of college CS major from Illinois State. Next batch, I think we'll add another trivial question: count the number of vowels (a, e, i, o, u) in a string.

Am I hired? Or do I lose cool points for PHP?

Every time FizzBuzz problems come up among engineers, people race to solve them and post their answers, then compete to see who can write increasingly more nifty answers for a question which does not seek niftiness at all.

I'm all for intellectual gamesmanship, but these are our professional equivalent of a doctor being asked to identify the difference between blood and water. You can do it. We know. Demonstrating that you can do it is not the point of the exercise. We do it to have a cheap-to-administer test to exclude people-who-cannot-actually-program-despite-previous-job-titles from the expensive portions of the hiring process.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#43

Post by dlikhten »

pixeloution wrote: post #6

Just curious if you expect perfect code on a sheet of paper or give them an IDE and say go for it. As I remember fizzbuzz (print numbers 1 thru x, then fizz if divisible by 3, buzz if divisible by 5, fizzbuzz if divisible by both) I did it in a text editor in under a minute. Got two errors because I did it without thinking, fixed it, and had a working solution in 90 seconds. It's taking me longer to write this respon…

There. I wrote it too. 3 minutes, 1 major error in initial impl due to lack of sleep (used / instead of %). 8 lines of ruby. I would be quite surprised if someone could not do this in < 20 lines (of assembly) :P. Damnit now I want to whip out my x86 assembler and muck around.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#44

Post by ColinWright »

We now insist on resumes being accompanied by the answers to set "homework." No answers, no interview.

We get about half our interviewees unable to solve problems that are similar or easier during interview. Whether that's nerves/stress or simply an indication that they got someone else to do the homework for them we don't know.

One candidate even phoned a friend during the coding part of the interview to get some answers. For some jobs he'd be hired, but not for most.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#46

Post by buro9 »

I think that the lower the percentage, the more you need to improve your screening prior to getting the candidate in. It's just wasting your time and theirs.

I would love to say that you can tell from a CV whether or not they could pass FizzBuzz, but it's not true. I've interviewed MScs and PhDs that could not do FizzBuzz. Seriously.

The phone screener is your friend.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#47

Post by dlikhten »

hga wrote: post #29
pixeloution wrote: post #6

Just curious if you expect perfect code on a sheet of paper or give them an IDE and say go for it. As I remember fizzbuzz (print numbers 1 thru x, then fizz if divisible by 3, buzz if divisible by 5, fizzbuzz if divisible by both) I did it in a text editor in under a minute. Got two errors because I did it without thinking, fixed it, and had a working solution in 90 seconds. It's taking me longer to write this respon…

Back in the days when I did this (1990s) we did the C/C++ reverse a linked list and compute the factorial of a number. And, yeah, people made mistakes on a dry erase board under interview pressure, but it was very clear who has a clue vs. who couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag. These sorts of tests are low pass filters, they're not designed to find good or great programmers, just confirm that the perso…

Give em a laptop. Those are a dime a dozen (we got a ton sitting around the office). Have em code in front of you. Hell I'd install any interpreter within reason to let em solve it.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#48

Post by buro9 »

pixeloution wrote: post #6

Just curious if you expect perfect code on a sheet of paper or give them an IDE and say go for it. As I remember fizzbuzz (print numbers 1 thru x, then fizz if divisible by 3, buzz if divisible by 5, fizzbuzz if divisible by both) I did it in a text editor in under a minute. Got two errors because I did it without thinking, fixed it, and had a working solution in 90 seconds. It's taking me longer to write this respon…

On paper, and without any syntax errors.

But, to their advantage, they can select any language that they want.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#49

Post by pp13 »

aplusbi wrote: post #31

I've never asked FizzBuzz but I do regularly ask coding/algorithm questions. They are usually more difficult than FizzBuzz. I'd say around 80-90% can at least come up with a solution in 45 minutes with some help. Probably less than 10% can come up with a good solution entirely on their own. I attribute this to two things, first I think our phone screenings work well enough to keep out people who really can't do FizzB…

@aplusbi

Let's say I interviewed you. I had asked to implement the fastest algorithm to give back the largest palindrome of words in English dictionary and compare it the largest palindrome of the french language. What the best solution you can come up with in 45 minutes.

After, that I asked you, write a simple ftp server, in the language of your choice. With your first solution, I asked you implement a SSL library and add it to the ftp server to make it sftp.

Based on that I can judge how good of a programmer you really are.

Sorry for being sarcastic, but I think most interviewers are on a power trip. They ask questions that if they heard for the first time, they couldn't come up with answers either.

I think your better off really talking about and going in depth with the programmers experience. If your experienced yourself, you should have no problem.

Re: Ask HN: What % of your job interviewees pass FizzBuzz type questions?

#50

Post by hga »

corin_ wrote: post #36

Can anyone explain how it is possible for people applying for these jobs to fail? I dabble in code, but am no where near the level I would have to be to do any job in this area, I mean seriously. Took my two minutes to do it with a pen and paper in PHP, same with in JS, same in bash scripting. How can anyone who isn't able to do this pretend to even have an interest, yet alone the ability to do the job?

Good questions. I'm not sure myself, but I suspect the lure of $$$. Someone who's good at playing a sort of game I loathe can prey on companies that don't do good screening and keep a job for as long as a few months and sometimes indefinitely.

Heck, look at how much cargo cult programming goes on at companies from top to bottom. PG pointed out that one of the main reasons for dot.bomb failure was not being able to technically execute (sure, the company may still have been hopeless, but they didn't even get to test their sales proposition).

And a lot if not most companies simply don't focus on technical excellence or even simple competance. E.g. look at how the powers that be at Friendser let it wither on the vine because they assumes the tech was in the bag while their persued big deals, all the while ignoring for years (I think) that the system had gotten so overloaded it was essentially useless.

And, heck, if I had the time to mentor you and you were interested, I might take you on even at your current level. You "know your own limitations" today, but you're still, say, better than 70% plus or minus of the people who call themselves programmers. If you can execute the little stuff, I can teach you the big picture (with the aid of a book or two and some hard work).

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