A DBA I worked with had a good one-- just asked a question that was the textbook problem a left join solved.
Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
21–30 of 363 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#22Working for a web company. Our favourite JS question is, "What happens if you do this?" var func = function func () { // blah };
This is a bad FizzBuzz question, in my opinion.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#23I do grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies. [1] I usually ask for a couple of major commas rules. Sometimes for semi-colon rules or for a description of passive voice. Chances are good that anyone who is zero for three isn't very good.
A lot of writers and would-be writers also have blogs; it only takes one to three paragraphs to figure out who can sling a coherent sentence and who can't.
Like FizzBuzz, being able to sling a coherent sentence doesn't mean that one can write a coherent 50-page document, but those who can't write a coherent sentence can't write a coherent 50-page document.
[1] Try http://blog.seliger.com if you're curious.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#24I'm a mathematician, and sometimes I need to assess the level at which I'll pitch an explanation. Although I don't do this in a setting where it's possible to set a test, as such, I do ask this question: An equivalence relation is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. If E is an equivalence relation, and we know E(x,y) but we know !E(y,z), what do we know about E(x,z), and why? It seems a great filter for people who…
How often do you get people who apply but cannot pass that test? I always felt that CS gets a pretty large influx of people who are very fresh to programming (as isn't everyone!) but I would have thought a math fizz buzz would need to be harder to get signal.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#25I have been unable to think of one for Linux system administrators. :-(
Ask about disaster recovery, backups, penetration testing, what to do if a database/webserver breach occurs, or any form of generic networking/routing.
Not sysadmin specifically, but when I was working as a computer technician, questions we would ask to scope out the skills of people were along the lines of:
Q: "Something you have no experience with has broken and won't do a basic function, how will you go about fixing it?" A: Research, ask someone else etc.
Q: "X is missing their password for a system we have no admin rights on. How are you going to fix this?" A: Recovery Tools. Format device and set it up again. Use JS/Developer tools to get it in plain text from the browser.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#26I'm a marketer, and have yet to find a way to judge a marketer's competence better than: "Here's this app, here's what it does. How would you increase downloads?" A quick brainstorm session shows you how they approach the situation, what tricks they have in their bag, and what methods they feel confident using (or if they're just BSing). Interestingly enough, 50% of the time people answer "SEO," which is among the wo…
There's a difference between marketing and product design. A marketer should know how to get qualified leads for lowest cost to your app, and then it's your product manager who should worry about making the best impression with new users.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#27I have been unable to think of one for Linux system administrators. :-(
Here's a couple:
Grep a current running process.
Grep x file and copy it.
You'd be surprised how many "Sys Admins" I've interviewed who can't do basic things.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#28Applied math/scientific computing: If hiring someone, I would describe some practical scenarios problems involving the solution of finite-dimensional linear systems, and ask to see how they would suggest solving them in each circumstance (LU, QR, SVD, iterative methods, etc). More discussion oriented than in doing rote recital of algorithm structure, probably. I would do something similar for functional characterizat…
Do you have any example problem to share? I've taken a numerical analysis class and this interview-like questions are appealing.
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#29I'm a software developer, but the code I work does a lot of DB access. I always ask a "two joins and an aggregate question."
Given three tables:
authors books sales
---------- ---------- ----------
id id id
name author_id book_id
title date
price
Re: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "FizzBuzz" equivalent?
#30Applied math/scientific computing: If hiring someone, I would describe some practical scenarios problems involving the solution of finite-dimensional linear systems, and ask to see how they would suggest solving them in each circumstance (LU, QR, SVD, iterative methods, etc). More discussion oriented than in doing rote recital of algorithm structure, probably. I would do something similar for functional characterizat…
Interesting - this is exactly the kind of answer I'm looking to learn from. Are these really so utterly fundamental that someone could do them under pressure without thinking? Is it the case that someone who can't answer these near automatically is, in effect, incompetent (in this field)? I'm wondering if you've set the bar higher than FizzBuzz is in computing, or if this really is equivalent. Thanks!
I would agree with the op here. SVD in particular is so fundamental to the idea of data analysis I couldn't imagine talking to someone who even flinched at hearing it. Most other things fit at roughly the same level in my mind.
I feel like the mechanics of test selection biases against people who've specialized in Bayesian stuff—which might be very interesting! It's definitely a make-or-break kind of thing as to whether you can correctly formulate all the various moving parts and relate them correctly.