The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job • Hacker News Board

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#251

Post by umvi » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #241

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 or…

That's fair, the interviewers did put unreasonable restrictions on the challenge that forced the overly clever solution. It was my kneejerk response from personal experience seeing candidates come up with overly clever solutions even to simple job challenges.

But even still, let's assume there is a problem out there with unreasonable requirements. And let's say an engineer architects a solution to that problem in 100% TS. How's that going to solve anything? When the inputs and outputs are types... how do you interface with such a solution? You can't because types only exist at compile time so there's no way to dynamically send in inputs and retrieve outputs (at least not without even more hacks/cleverness).

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#252

Post by grajaganDev » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

wakawaka28 wrote: post #142

grajaganDev wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would any developer be a good match for that company? My judgment is that this company has no idea of what they are doing. Not uncommon for companies with under 50 employees.

They know exactly what they're doing. The code, while clever, is bad for understandability, extensibility, and debuggability. They tried throughout the interview to get the candidate to do something else, and he ignored all advice and hints. If this even happened at all. It sounds like a "just so" work of fiction.

I am not sure that clean, extensible and debuggable code could be written for such a bizarre set of requirements.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#253

Post by thrance » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

whstl wrote: post #134

constantcrying wrote: post #61

What a genuinely terrible interview. Seems like a great way to learn absolutely nothing about the candidate. I would have walked out half way through. These types of questions are very telling of an organization which is extremely insecure in its own abilities. For anyone who is a somewhat experienced programmer it is not hard to tell if someone else knows what he is talking about. You do not need to waste 45 minutes…

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.

I think it's the opposite actually, Squid Game is a parody of this, with employers making you jump through hoops for their amusement so you can earn your keep.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#254

Post by jajko » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

lproven wrote: post #209

jajko wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. When I was junior decades ago, I saw all those cool one liners as some sort of holy grail and had huge respect for the authors, like we had 10KM HDDs so every char counts. Then I realized how hard they are to debug once codebase looks like this, and any serious production code will get debugged to hell, no doubt there. Also implementing changes require same mindset, which is rare in teams generally,…

I admire terse code too. I can relate. I'm also old. But: > we had 10KM HDDs so every char counts. Ten kilometre hard disk drives? It can't be 10kB. Hard disks were never that small. Floppy disks were never that small. Maybe it's not hard disk drives. It can't be length of tape, or of mercury delay lines. I am mystified.

I was just joking, sorry not a native english speaker.

What I meant was that disk space with code text was never an issue on modern PC, so optimizing for that doesn't make sense.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#255

Post by jancsika » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #61

What a genuinely terrible interview. Seems like a great way to learn absolutely nothing about the candidate. I would have walked out half way through. These types of questions are very telling of an organization which is extremely insecure in its own abilities. For anyone who is a somewhat experienced programmer it is not hard to tell if someone else knows what he is talking about. You do not need to waste 45 minutes…

> Seems like a great way to learn absolutely nothing about the candidate.

They learned that as the spec became more complicated and twisted, his code got more and more clever.

I guarantee that there were other candidates whose code got simplified and more commented as the spec grew.

They even gave both a general hint:

> An example of this was that a 50 lines solution with a line of 110 characters would be considered.

... and a custom-tailored hint directly to the candidate:

> Asked the interviewer if it was OK to rewrite it using only types, she asked her partner and he told me it was but that he couldn’t see the point of it and advised me it would not be the right tool for the problem given that there would be many more rules.

Be honest: if you were dealing with a monstrously complicated spec would you rather read straightforward code with comments like, "Have to special case -0 here, ugh" or see two lines that inexplicably make everything into base 15?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#256

Post by doctorpangloss » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

whstl wrote: post #237

skeeter2020 wrote: post #166

Did the interviewer caution about the candidate's direction because they cared about the candidate and wanted to help, or because the solution was unique, unfamiliar and made them feel uncomfortable? If you tightly script your interview, but then present it as open-ended and flexible: that's on you. My take if I was interviewing (and forced to use this approach): appreciate what a interesting interview this was, expl…

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the typescript solution was way beyond the skill level of the interviewer. Which is fine. But what's unacceptable is that a lot of people in our industry are not mature enough to admit when they don't know something, and instead just chalk it off as "unreadable" or some other adjective.

Every candidate who has ever shown me an interesting solution to a purposefully open ended programming question wildly exceeded expectations.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#257

Post by isaacremuant » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

mariomash wrote: post #76

You have the coding and reasoning part perfect (but maybe not straightforward to understand) and you also know the things you are missing. - University degree: not necessary, get certifications or equivalent experience (upwork)? - English: this part is really important. find or hire a native speaker and start practicing. - AWS/GCP/anything else... get certifications or free courses. My only complaint about your code:…

I'd say get hired at any role that pays what you want for your seniority and simply work and learn.

Courses won't matter that much if you don't implement something (might give you a point or two on an interview but don't overinvest) and upwork would be absolutely exploitative work and you probably would not gain as much as working with others who can share a thing or two. Having a shared codebase is critical for growing as a software developer and not being too clever.

OP should just work and learn. Bring his enthusiasm but also humbleness and grow. He can keep his options open and move companies rapidly if he is already there but getting stable work and improving his communication should probably be his first goals to achieve.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#258

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

guccihat wrote: post #136

spacechild1 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that they came up with this solution after the interviewers forbid the use of numeric types and math while still keeping a limit of 30 lines. What do you expect? I found the solution impressive given the circumstances. At this point I would have thrown the towel.

I think the interviewers were looking for the key insight that a number is divisible by 3 iff the sum of the individual digits is divisible by 3. That is easy to verify, even constrained to using single digit data types. To be clear, I am not saying this was a great interview question and I agree the solution OP came up with is impressive.

[deleted]

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#259

Post by whstl » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

thrance wrote: post #253

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.

I think it's the opposite actually, Squid Game is a parody of this, with employers making you jump through hoops for their amusement so you can earn your keep.

Damn, you're totally right.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#260

Post by doctorpangloss » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

James_K wrote: post #193

z3t4 wrote: post #168

I think this might be a troll post, but here's my comment anyway. The reason why you didn't get this job is because they filtered out themselves, it was not you that was bad, it was them thinking you where too smart for them. It took a lot of time for me to figure out this, that in a relation you want someone that are on the same level. I used to think that companies want to hire the smartest people... But no, they w…

I don't think this has much to do with intelligence. Imagine you were an interviewer, and you had two candidates. One passes the test using a well put together orthodox solution, and the other does so using an unorthodox one. Which would you hire? I think we like to imagine we would prioritise the more creative of the two, but practically you may struggle to run a business where everyone has their own ideas about how…

In my experience, everyone who has ever invoked "drones" to describe a subordinate hires the absolute worst candidates. They never get far enough in interviewing to the made up situation you are describing, they hired someone terrible long ago.