If this coding test was what they used to assess the quality of candidates, I would say that the author of this article dodged a very large bullet by not getting hired.
The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
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Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#32I've got a hard time imagining they were going for a solution other than you adjusting the base.
That seems to be what all restrictions, especially #7, lead to and it is a concept everybody that understands how module works should understand.
> 15. Hardcoding matrices is forbidden.
This was definitely meant to nudge you into the direction of adjusting the base.
The excessive number of rules was really weird, surely they could've just asked you to consider simpler a solution.
> 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
I suppose this might've been such a hint.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#33Crazy answers to fizzbuzz is a great genre of fiction, but there is so much backstory here I’m half believing this really happened.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#34I predict that very soon you are going to be offered a remote job paying more than €50,000/year. That’s due to this excellent post about your excellent abilities and reasoning appearing on HN. ¡Mucha suerte!
That isn’t much money, even for Europe
50k EUR/year for me would be like 2900 EUR/month after all taxes. Monthly expenses in the part of Spain I live in are ~800 EUR (rent + food + electricity + water + 1Gbps internet).
2900 - 800 = 2100 EUR to do whatever I want with. Even if I decide to put half of that into savings, that's still ~1000 EUR to spend freely, and any unspent money would go into savings too at the end of the month.
Or in other words: With a salary like that I would be able to pay a family member's full monthly expenses if they are in rough times, and still have leftover for myself.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#35Can imagine the interviewers squirming as they lose control to an OP candidate.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#36> ...the first time in life I spoke english. Well, there you go. Typescript can only get you so far. Unless you want to be a low-paid code monkey, time to learn natural languages. ps. I have many Spanish colleagues, and I have a hard time understanding them in general (when they speak English). Only one other nation is worse, the French...
> I have many Spanish colleagues, and I have a hard time understanding them in general.
As a Spaniard I'm curious, why's this?
I think I'm pretty well understood (worked remote for US and NL for years) but maybe just in case I can make life easier for my interlocutors.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#37I loved the article and would probably have hired this person. But as a suggestion to them: if an interviewer says "I don't think that will be a good idea" just take the hint that it won't be what the expect and change it. Also reminded me of my compiler class, we had some homework to write a pascal/C transpiler and a friend of mine somehow managed to implement it via bison errors(?). The teacher was not happy but ha…
Yeah I agree. You should be demonstrating how you would write code in the job. Based on devs I've worked with, I don't think a pure type solution as presented is very maintainable.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#38Very clever! Also, I’d steer absolutely clear of any company that does this. This doesn’t assess anything meaningful, it’s an ego trip for the interviewer. Ugh.
Disagree, this is a significant step up from the leetcode-style programming puzzles that other companies do. It doesn't bank on the interviewee knowing the specific trick that makes the puzzle work and instead tries to somewhat test the skills that are more significant for the job at hand like debugging, refactoring and dealing with changing requirements.
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#39Very clever! Also, I’d steer absolutely clear of any company that does this. This doesn’t assess anything meaningful, it’s an ego trip for the interviewer. Ugh.
Oh, I guess a few of these additional rules might prove helpful for weeding out people who just memorized FizzBuzz but don't know much more.
However, all of these "don't use the right tools" and "write extremely compact code" rules mostly select for people who are good in code golf, not for people who can solve actual business problems or write maintainable software.
And it seems like this was the only programming challenge in the whole interview?!
Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job
#40I predict that very soon you are going to be offered a remote job paying more than €50,000/year. That’s due to this excellent post about your excellent abilities and reasoning appearing on HN. ¡Mucha suerte!
That isn’t much money, even for Europe
It certainly is for those of us in Southern Europe, many people have no idea how good they have it.