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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?

#71

Post by ajuc »

I have question to recruiters:

if job requires "Hibernate" and I've used hibernate in my previous job, but have never configured it from scratch, only tweaked some models, wrote some EJBQL queries - does this count as "knowing Hibernate"? I've also never used Hibernate annotations, becasue we use hbm files, and we have templates to make the, so I'd have problems writing such file from scratch.

Do you check knowledge of required libraries on the blackboard? Do you assume people should know all the corners of such libraries, or do knowing some things and wanting to learn more if it will be needed suffices?

I use at work jboss, hibernate, jbpm, and many other technologies that are often mentioned in job offers, but I don't feel I can say I know them - only the parts that I needed to do the job. Is this considered not enough?

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

#72

Post by eropple »

pp13 wrote: post #70
pp13 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did not in any way, shape, or form claim that such questions determine whether or not a candidate is a good programmer. If you are going to respond to my posts, please respond to my posts and not what you think or wish I said in those posts.

No interview or interview question can determine conclusively that you are a good programmer. But they reduce the likelihood that you're not, and comments like your strident and hysterical analogy drawn between these really very simple problems and "write a SSL library!" are doing little to change my mind.

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

#73

Post by unshift »

ericb wrote: post #66
rmc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that question is a bit of a turn-off to me. obviously "benchmark it, see what's slowest, and make it faster" is a correct answer, and so is a 40 page essay about browser rendering, minification, full page caching, fragment caching, AJAX, etc. have you tried anything more specific?

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

#74

Post by ericb »

unshift wrote: post #73
ericb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

that question is a bit of a turn-off to me. obviously "benchmark it, see what's slowest, and make it faster" is a correct answer, and so is a 40 page essay about browser rendering, minification, full page caching, fragment caching, AJAX, etc. have you tried anything more specific?

If you have examples of more specific questions, I'm glad to hear them. I would accept either of your answers, btw. Answers I have seen include "It is always SQL" and "make it ajax--ajax is fast."

The purpose is just to verify that they can put some ideas into writing, have a mental framework for debugging in place, and can verbally demonstrate any sort of familiarity with the technologies involved. It isn't a gotcha-type question that expects a specific answer.

edit: That said, your feedback is good and I will amend it to give more of an idea of how long a response is desirable.

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

#75

Post by unshift »

pp13 wrote: post #49
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 a…

couldn't agree more.

if i had to come up with a permutation algorithm as part of writing code, you'd better believe i'd look one up so that i'm sure i'm doing things optimally. i wouldn't trust myself to come up with the exactly right algorithm on the first try.

if i had to deal with some weird half-sorted array, i assume i'd be working in the same context as the problem and wouldn't have to make up a solution on the spot with limited details. why do you have a weird-ass data structure like that to begin with? that's the first question i'd ask.

personally i always ask a couple of simple questions (like FizzBuzz) and then talk experience. if you want to see a code sample, ask for one -- written on a computer, without someone hovering over the candidate's shoulder. coding solutions to weird questions on a whiteboard doesn't help anybody.

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

#76

Post by mikereedell »

cantastoria wrote: post #57
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.

This is a pretty abrupt way to start off an interview. And I don't understand the point of this question w.r.t assessing someone's coding ability. Though I'd be curious to see if the success rate on that question and on a fizz buzz correlate.

It's generally asked at the end of the interview.

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

#77

Post by tomjen3 »

eftpotrm wrote: post #12

That sort of thing specifically, never actually tested it. The last test I did help administer was for a VB+SQL job, and the first question was to write an example of a valid INNER JOIN. I'd say at maximum 25% of the candidates could do this. Improving SNR? I did once have a potential employer get me to do a time-limited online test. If you wanted you could always stick your questions into one of them, so you can at…

I think the reason you got so bad responses on the first question wasn't that they couldn't write the join statement but that they had heard the distinction between the different joins once in college and then never considered them again.

I bet that if you had asked for an example of a sql code which would list all the employees born before 1980 along with the department they worked for and the name of the head of that department, you would have gotten a much more useful result out of that.

That query is, incidentally, much more difficult to write.

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

#78

Post by sungura »

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.

That's a pretty ridiculous question that's why its low.

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

#79

Post by tomwalsham »

albedoa wrote: post #38

This post by Jeff Atwood might be of interest to you if you haven't read it: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmer...

The fascinating thing about that post is the number of sneering comments, with their own (broken) implementations of FizzBuzz. At a glance only maybe 20-30% of solutions in the comments there actually work, and many are horribly suboptimal.

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

#80

Post by ig1 »

ajuc wrote: post #71

I have question to recruiters: if job requires "Hibernate" and I've used hibernate in my previous job, but have never configured it from scratch, only tweaked some models, wrote some EJBQL queries - does this count as "knowing Hibernate"? I've also never used Hibernate annotations, becasue we use hbm files, and we have templates to make the, so I'd have problems writing such file from scratch. Do you check knowledge…

Generally speaking you don't need to match a job description 100%, if you match 60-70% that's fine. Depending on the job description you can tell which things are key to the job (programming language, and specialist skills like machine learnings which are core to the job) but everything else is mostly optional.

The more of the description you can match the better it is, but 60-70% will get you an interview in most places.

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