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We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

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Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#21

Post by jerf »

dba7dba wrote: post #12
terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I agree about FizzBuzz. But how often do interviewees showing up with gross clothes, swear, or be rude to interviewer? I'd say almost 0?

"I'd say almost 0?"

It's definitely higher than that. It is a pretty easy thing to avoid, you'd think, but some people fail.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#22

Post by lukejduncan »

dba7dba wrote: post #16
larrik wrote: post #3

It's better to let good/great people slip away then to get a bad apple onto the team. Or worse, a mediocre one who never does anything wrong but also isn't contributing positively either.

I just read someone talk about job post on linkedin with over a thousand applications. Are people on linked in truly mediocre that not one out of a thousand can fill the position?

I think many companies don't have exactly 1 job posting for 1 seat. For example, I've seen large tech companies have a single "Backend engineer" req that is used for every backend engineering role in the company (or org). So the pure number of applicants in a LinkedIn job post may be misleading.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#23

Post by sureaboutthis »

terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6
sidlls wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for extreme outliers it is not clear that it's possible to tell with much confidence in either case. Why do you think it's possible to have such high confidence in one case but not the other?

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me.

EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accomplishments and you'll say asking me to write fizzbuzz childish, too.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#25

Post by tbirrell »

sagitariusrex wrote: post #5

Still relevant: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring

I'm going to speak with a potential employer quite differently than I will with a friend. Trying to artificially move yourself into that category is not going to work and will just make me even less sure of the process. At least with a standard interview format I know what the interviewer wants. If you flip that on me and put me in a position where I have no idea whats going on, it's not going to end well.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#26

Post by bvinc »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #23
terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…

Fizzbuzz isn't a trick questions that you have to have heard of. It's designed to be an EXTREMELY easy question, answerable by anyone with even a basic knowledge of programming. It's not a game. It's a way to weed out people that don't know anything.

If you have been programming for 35 years, you'll probably be appalled by how easy it is. Look it up.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#27

Post by bpyne »

dba7dba wrote: post #12
terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I agree about FizzBuzz. But how often do interviewees showing up with gross clothes, swear, or be rude to interviewer? I'd say almost 0?

Funny that this was brought up. I agree fully that it's rare. But...a friend of mine was "den mother" for graduate students in a top 20 comp sci program. The students were often doctoral candidates but could also be MS students doing a thesis. A large part of her job was prepping them for interviews with companies like Google, MS, Oracle, etc. Here are a few gems she had to remind/inform them of.

"Yes, you have to shower the day of an interview."

"It's never acceptable to pull out your lunch and eat in the middle of the interview, please don't do it again."

"Yes, you have to wear something other than the shirt you slept in."

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#28

Post by CJefferson »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #23
terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…

You wouldn't be asked to "fizzbuzz". You would be asked to write an extremely trivial program, which would take you about 3 minutes.

Also, if you have guaranteed years of experience, fizzbuzz isn't for you. However, a suprisingly large number of applicants who can write an impressive looking CV can't write it.

Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

#30

Post by yason »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #23
terryschiavo22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.

I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…

Anyone who can claim to be able to code at least a bit should be able to implement FizzBuzz. As such, it's a childish joke for most programmers.

But the alarming thing is that I've read there are people coming to programming interviews who can't fizzbuzz despite the experience listed in their CV. While rather unbelievable, if it really is true then it only makes sense to ask candidates to write FizzBuzz in the first screen before they waste any more of the teams' time.

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