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The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

kranga.notion.site

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Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#321

Post by xboxnolifes »

vogr wrote: post #162
camel-cdr wrote: post #32

I'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 t…

> I've got a hard time imagining they were going for a solution other than you adjusting the base. I agree that this is probably what they were going for, but it still seems a bit ridiculous that the conversion from numbers to the chosen representation is not subject to the same rules (i.e., you can call `.toString(15)`, and this definitely uses numbers under the hood!). If this is allowed, then you could also encode…

The toString wasn't used in the solution. It was used in creating the solution. Encoding the numbers as your given string exceeds the max length of an encoded character per the rules.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#322

Post by jschoe »

bowsamic wrote: post #21
stevoski wrote: post #14

I 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

Europe has quite low salaries actually. While in the US you can very easily earn 200k++ as a completely average tech guy, that achievement is basically impossible in Europe.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#324

Post by JoeMattiello »

James_K wrote: post #269
cgriswald wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t accept an employee or a boss who thought this was a reasonable definition of a job.

Why? It is a simple fact that people only go to work because they get paid. You can verify this for yourself by seeing how many people continue to work for a company after it has stopped paying them.

Redditor energy.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#325

Post by kiviuq »

umvi wrote: post #251
kibwen wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I can't ask the candidate not to jump, and then complain that he didn't.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#326

Post by shiomiru »

stickfigure wrote: post #290
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…

I argue the contrary case - the interview style is pretty reasonable, but the interviewers screwed up the process (and ultimately, the grading). "Adding additional requirements which test a candidate's ability to refactor code" is a pretty good exercise. And it's ok to force candidates people down a specific development path. The problem is that the interviewers didn't do this. They let the candidate pick a strategy…

> * Author claims to speak English very poorly, but writes incredibly well! Maybe they leaned on LLMs, but this seems pretty good even for an LLM.

The author claims their pronunciation is poor. Writing is a completely different skill. (Especially in English with its insane spelling rules.)

> * Author says they have 2 years of work experience in a company that doesn't use Typescript, but then proceeds to create a solution ad-hoc that requires incredibly deep knowledge of the type system. Certainly not impossible, but I don't know anyone that could pull this off.

Self-study?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#327

Post by kmoser »

camel-cdr wrote: post #32

I'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 t…

I would have thought to create the matrix on the fly with a loop. Not as clever as changing the base, of course, but wouldn't that have been acceptable?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#328

Post by essnine »

stickfigure wrote: post #290
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…

I argue the contrary case - the interview style is pretty reasonable, but the interviewers screwed up the process (and ultimately, the grading). "Adding additional requirements which test a candidate's ability to refactor code" is a pretty good exercise. And it's ok to force candidates people down a specific development path. The problem is that the interviewers didn't do this. They let the candidate pick a strategy…

Looking up the domain shows that OP's write-up was posted on reddit by a similarly named account with relatively little activity, but history going back a good 8 years. Sometimes people just haven't gotten around to setting up a full website with a portfolio, which is fine.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#329

Post by moi2388 »

It’s not your technical skills.

I guarantee it’s due to you not living in the Netherlands and not being fluent in English.

No matter if the job offers says they accept remote people, in the Netherlands they really value face to face contact and good and open communication.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#330

Post by [deleted] »

James_K wrote: post #302
ryandrake wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, there is way too much “everyone below me in [skill | cleverness | intelligence | creativity] is a drone (or NPC)” attitude in tech. Not saying OP thinks this, but the word use is kind of icky.

I use it deliberately to invoke these negative connotations. I am not commenting on the skill, creativity, or any other aspect of the drones. I think it's just a fairly basic fact that most of us are drones. We go to work, we do what we're told, we get paid. There's no shame in it. Being a drone is an honest living. It just seems that many here are in denial of that. They think that every worker is going to be a spec…

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