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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?

#61

Post by pp13 »

eropple wrote: post #54
pp13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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 a…

His first question is very straightforward if you've ever encountered permutations in a math class (and you should have, if you're a programmer). Even if you haven't, it shouldn't be that difficult. His second is trickier, but solvable. And, no, I've never seen that (particular) question before.

My point was, his questions, doesn't really indicate if the candidate is a good programmer or not.

It could be the person studied up on all sorts of puzzles and famous algorithms online but hasn't really written or programmed anything.

Not all jobs require that much expertise. You could be doing some really simple programming work.

I think most interviewers ask these type of questions 1.) make themselves feel smart 2.) they get a kick out it

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

#62

Post by ajuc »

mikereedell wrote: post #34

While we don't ask FizzBuzz in particular we have a question my manager asks: If you could fold a piece of paper 50 times, how tall would it be (very rough ballpark figure)? Our success rate is surprisingly low.

What adventages this question has over asking candidate to write factorial, or FizzBuzz, or sth like that?

It only checks if you can estimate the thickness of paper sheet and know powers of 2. Anybody can know that.

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

#63

Post by eropple »

pp13 wrote: post #61
eropple wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His first question is very straightforward if you've ever encountered permutations in a math class (and you should have, if you're a programmer). Even if you haven't, it shouldn't be that difficult. His second is trickier, but solvable. And, no, I've never seen that (particular) question before.

My point was, his questions, doesn't really indicate if the candidate is a good programmer or not. It could be the person studied up on all sorts of puzzles and famous algorithms online but hasn't really written or programmed anything. Not all jobs require that much expertise. You could be doing some really simple programming work. I think most interviewers ask these type of questions 1.) make themselves feel smart 2…

That wasn't much of a point, on your part. The second question in particular requires some not-entirely-simple breaking down into subproblems. The first one can be handled in such a way if you're unfamiliar with the mathematics behind it; it's easier, as are many things, if you remember combinations and permutations from math class but not at all unsolvable if you don't. His questions aren't bad at demonstrating important aspects of a programmer's problem-solving approach.

And your complaining that "not all jobs require that much expertise" is unfounded. I consider those to be novice questions, personally--and even if they weren't, you don't know what he's hiring for.

He's not being unreasonable. You, on the other hand, seem to be, and seem to be doing so in a rather defensive manner.

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

#64

Post by pp13 »

noahc wrote: post #45
mikereedell wrote: post #34

While we don't ask FizzBuzz in particular we have a question my manager asks: If you could fold a piece of paper 50 times, how tall would it be (very rough ballpark figure)? Our success rate is surprisingly low.

1.8 Times?

1/2x +1/2(1/2x + 1/2(1/2x +1/2(1/2x + ... = y If x = 1, then the equation likes this: 1/2 +1/2(1/2 + 1/2(1/2 +1/2(1/2 + ... = y 1/2 +1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ... = y y = 1 = x y = x

source: http://library.thinkquest.org/J002235/hard.html

u mad?

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

#66

Post by ericb »

rmc wrote: post #55
ericb wrote: post #2

In the actual interview, I find that most give up after spitting out some pseudocode. About 40% have reasonable psuedo code that makes me think they'd get there (but these half-answers don't give me enough confidence to give them a thumbs up). Actual code that works (and running it from a terminal), we are seeing only about 15% tops maybe lower. We have started sending a fizzbuzz-ish question, a relatively easy css q…

a word-problem about performance Would you be able to share that? Simple programming/algorithm questions are a dime a dozen, but I'm curious what a word probably that's appropriate to coders would look like.

Sure thing:

Describe how you might approach researching, diagnosing, and reducing the page load time for a web page with poor performance.

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

#67

Post by schulz »

I did a ton of interviewing a few years ago ~ 100 interviews.

I found about 10% nailed it right away with code that would compile and run. These were generally people who had been coding a lot recently.

Half of the rest (say 45% of total) got close: Minor syntax errors, logic errors, stuff that an IDE/non interview situation would have fixed.

45% just spaced. Couldn't right the for loops, conditionals. Couldn't write basic code.

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

#68

Post by wladh »

dlikhten wrote: post #47
hga wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not about how expensive a laptop is or isn't. If somebody can't master the basic syntax of the language so that they can write a very basic algorithm without syntax errors and in such a way that it would run on the first try, they can't be very productive. And fizzbuzz is really the rock-bottom of the simple algorithms. Even a linked-list library would be a very reasonable thing to ask (if we're talking about C for instance). If somebody has to go through a few edit/(compile)/debug/change cycles for each simple thing, it doesn't sound very productive. Now, obviously if we're talking about an application that involves some baroque frameworks and class hierarchies, things are different, but simple things should be doable on paper.

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

#69

Post by ericb »

oscardelben wrote: post #20
ericb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is good advice. We are at just about every Boston Ruby Group meeting, though...

If you're considering remote employees or contractors I'd like to get in touch.

It is under consideration. If I can sell management on it (I'm senior dev here), I will be in touch.

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

#70

Post by pp13 »

pp13 wrote: post #61
eropple wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His first question is very straightforward if you've ever encountered permutations in a math class (and you should have, if you're a programmer). Even if you haven't, it shouldn't be that difficult. His second is trickier, but solvable. And, no, I've never seen that (particular) question before.

My point was, his questions, doesn't really indicate if the candidate is a good programmer or not. It could be the person studied up on all sorts of puzzles and famous algorithms online but hasn't really written or programmed anything. Not all jobs require that much expertise. You could be doing some really simple programming work. I think most interviewers ask these type of questions 1.) make themselves feel smart 2…

@eropple

So do you have data to back up your claims that; answering those questions determine if your a good programmer.

Yes, there are tons of programming jobs out there, that don't require much of those skills. Not all jobs are that innovative.

Most of the development jobs I have seen require you to come up to speed with the code base fast. So it's that code reading comprehension that I think is most prevalent.

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