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The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

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Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#241

Post by kibwen »

umvi wrote: post #236

Am I the only one that thinks TypeScript types are a terrible choice? His solution is clever, but if that's indicative of how he's going to do engineering work at my company, I guess that means I can expect clever solutions for everything, which usually leads to esoteric, architect astronaut code bases that will be difficult for his non-clever colleagues to grok/maintain. "Now the easy part! I just have to encode the…

> His solution is clever, but if that's indicative of how he's going to do engineering work at my company, I guess that means I can expect clever solutions for everything

I think this is uncharitable. The interviewer's demands to not use numeric types or any mathematical operations is inherently preposterous, and at that point the author can't be judged negatively for whatever contortions they needed to perform in order to comply with them.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#242

Post by whstl »

revskill wrote: post #44

"Clever" alone is not enough. It's also about clarity and scalability. But it's a requirement for start.

"Clever" was a requirement.

If they wanted clarity, they would allow for fucking numbers and modulo operator.

They wanted a solution and the candidate produced one.

Or did they just want to know if he knows how to program? Because he also did demonstrate that.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#243

Post by cgriswald »

arp242 wrote: post #213
alkyon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing this interview saved the candidate from working for a crappy company, doubling their salary isn't really worth it. Why on earth would the interviewer think that 0 is not a multiple of 3 and 5?

It sounds like they're currently unemployed(?) But even if they weren't: going from 22k to 50k is a massive difference. People are willing to put up with a lot of bollocks for it. Dismissing that so easily is a really privileged attitude.

A person doesn’t have to be privileged to value things differently than you think they should.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#245

Post by ChosenEnd »

BearOso wrote: post #214
whstl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rule alone would make me walk out: "New rules will be revealed one by one. The candidate should note them as there won’t be shown again" This feels more like a Squid Game parody than an interview. I interview people from all walks of life. I would definitely not have hired some of the best engineers I worked with if I was trying to be too clever and quirky when giving out requirements.

Personally, I think it's literally unbelievable. It reads like fiction.

> I was never asked to write a fizzbuzz until last week. > A month has passed and I got no response, no feedback, nothing… It reads like fiction because it is.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#247

Post by alkyon »

arp242 wrote: post #213
alkyon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing this interview saved the candidate from working for a crappy company, doubling their salary isn't really worth it. Why on earth would the interviewer think that 0 is not a multiple of 3 and 5?

It sounds like they're currently unemployed(?) But even if they weren't: going from 22k to 50k is a massive difference. People are willing to put up with a lot of bollocks for it. Dismissing that so easily is a really privileged attitude.

"I could already see my salary doubling in front of my eyes"

Where do they mention that they're unemployed now?

A sufficiently strong candidate can afford to wait a litle bit more.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#248

Post by hnthrow90348765 »

guccihat wrote: post #103

I will go against the grain and say I do not consider OPs fizzbuzz solution to score particular well on readability or maintainability. And these were the only two stated core requirements. The solution is clever and demonstrates solid knowledge of TS. However, in my experience getting too clever with the type system is not always a good idea for ordinary application code maintained by a team of average TS developers…

>However, in my experience getting too clever with the type system is not always a good idea for ordinary application code maintained by a team of average TS developers.

If that's their code base, they shouldn't be asking these kinds of questions. They'd be better served by asking to debug a non-functioning component that looks like a real component you'd find in their code base.

Plus readability and maintainability are subjective

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#249

Post by kstrauser »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #164
constantcrying wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you figure these things out is talking about them. Plenty of people like to solve challenges in weird ways and might even see the suggestions that it is inappropriate as a challenge. >There are not really multiple ways to read "I don't think that's a good idea" in an interview. If your "technical depth" leads you to an inappropriate solution, it doesn't matter if it's right. Just because this solution worked…

>Plenty of people like to solve challenges in weird ways and might even see the suggestions that it is inappropriate as a challenge. That's absolutely not the way to approach an interview. "Let me try to do things the exact way you clearly don't want, just to see if we can." Is the candidate going to try to do their next job this way? What are you going to do when their egotistical attempts to solve problems in cleve…

I strongly disagree. I’ll take the opportunity to wildly diverge when the chance naturally presents itself. It’s how I can show the interviewer that I’m a creative person who comes up with interesting alternatives and can also be fun to work with.

For example, I was asked to do FizzBuzz once. I laughed, said we’ve both done this dozens of times, and would they like to have fun with it? We ended up building this wild thing with recursive Python generators and itertools and a state machine or something. I don’t remember the details a decade later, except that the interviewer thought it was hilarious, and I taught them some Python (“wait, that part there, does that actually work?!”, and they paused me to test it on their laptop).

I got the job.

As a candidate, you’re interviewing them, too. If the person is a martinet who can’t look deviate from the script even slightly, and you have other options, do you really want to work with them? That sounds joyless.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#250

Post by isaacremuant »

belter wrote: post #60
leoff wrote: post #15

I've created a joke Python library, hoping that I would get asked to code it in an interview. No luck so far https://github.com/leoffx/fizz

I get the point, but update your library to support entries higher than 100. :-)

I think the joke is that it's hardcoded. It's definitely easier to implement it for n numbers yourself.
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