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

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#351

Post by stickfigure » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

flimsypremise wrote: post #333

stickfigure wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Been interviewing for over a decade. Tests like this do not really tell you whether someone is a good programmer, they tell you whether a person has spent a lot of time practicing problems like this. The only way to tell if someone is good at the job is to have a conversation with them and pay attention to how they answer your questions. Ask your candidate their opinions on API interface design or whether they favor…

I've been interviewing people for more than twice that long. I started with the conversational approach, and it worked poorly. There are too many people that are good at talking about technology but bad at actually doing.

My mature interview style is a pair programming session on a specific exercise (the same for everyone). It's inspired by the "RPI" (Rob's Pairing Interview) from Pivotal (well, Pivotal of old days). There are no gotchas to it, it's not hard. But it's definitely programming. Because that's what I'm hiring for. Not talking.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#352

Post by cgriswald » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:32 PM UTC

James_K wrote: post #342

cgriswald wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't moved the goalposts back. You just used more words to suggest that people won't be willing to do work for free. That doesn't speak to whether they want to do the work or not. People can want to have a job but also want to reap some external reward from that job. But I know, you've reduced it to such a degree that you can't think clearly about it any other way. So, to humor you: I know a woman who won the…

> I know a woman who won the lottery at a young age, but kept her job as a waitress for decades because she wanted to be a waitress This is a lovely anecdote, but practically speaking most people do not have such enjoyable jobs. The world needs septic tank specialists and web developers and telephone sanitisers and accountants. Most of the things that need doing aren't all that desirable to do on their own. This is n…

So, you still haven’t made your case for your original claim. You’re ignoring my argument I think because it’s not reductive enough for you to see. And you just sent a paragraph about a single example among several examples which I specifically disclaimed as exemplary and highly visible as if that somehow is negated by your hypotheticals.

You are following that up by, I guess, trying to convince me that I should ignore my experiences in favor of your reductive arguments that are based largely on definitions that I don’t agree on in the first place.

What are we even doing here?

What you experience internally is not evidence of what “the real world” is actually like. You may very well have an amazing work ethic and view your jobs as strictly transactional (and that’s irrespective of enjoyment which is reductive of the many reasons people want to do their jobs). Honestly, I believe that about you. But that internal view is far from universal regardless of work ethic.

I understand you’ve convinced yourself that the UBI and other hypotheticals are proof but they’re only proof if you’re already subscribed to those reductive views. “Wants” don’t work that way and if they did we’d be able to reduce them further and say that people do want to do their jobs evidenced by the fact that they do them.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#353

Post by mark-r » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:35 PM UTC

eieio wrote: post #316

mark-r wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, when was the FizzBuzz problem invented? And how did it get publicized to the wider world? If you can come up with a URL the Internet Archive will probably have a copy.

I was really curious reading this. Many years ago I read this blog post (from 2007!) by Jeff Atwood[1] that mentioned FizzBuzz, and I guess I had mentally filed away that Jeff Atwood invented FizzBuzz! But that is not true. Jeff's blog mentions Imran. Jeff's blog is still up, but Imran's isn't! However it is up on the internet archive, and Imran's post is also from 2007[2]. My sense is that Imran wrote a blog in Janu…

Thanks for digging that up! I'm quite sure that Jeff Atwood's blog is where I first heard about Fizzbuzz, but it never occurred to me that he had attributions.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#354

Post by catlifeonmars » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #350

catlifeonmars wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fizz buzz is a toy problem. I think it’s a mistake to read too much into anything but basic programming skills while using it as an interview question. If you want to test code quality and maintainability you are much better off with a more realistic problem.

Making convoluted solution by solving the problem with type system is showing that OP doesn’t have basic programming skills. Basic programming skill is also picking right tool for the job. What he did was worst approach possible.

On the contrary, it shows that the OP has a very good understanding of the type system. Plus, it’s an understandable approach given the code golf nature in which the original problem was presented. (Line length and character limits screams “code golf” to me)

I give lots of interviews and I try very hard to resolve ambiguity in the expectations and requirements. Up front I explain what the purpose of the interview is and what I intend to evaluate. It’s silly to assume everyone is equally able to read between the lines and coding interviews are already a very poor approximation of what a day to day software engineering job looks like, so I try my best to set expectations up front.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#355

Post by quietbritishjim » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:44 PM UTC

eieio wrote: post #316

mark-r wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, when was the FizzBuzz problem invented? And how did it get publicized to the wider world? If you can come up with a URL the Internet Archive will probably have a copy.

I was really curious reading this. Many years ago I read this blog post (from 2007!) by Jeff Atwood[1] that mentioned FizzBuzz, and I guess I had mentally filed away that Jeff Atwood invented FizzBuzz! But that is not true. Jeff's blog mentions Imran. Jeff's blog is still up, but Imran's isn't! However it is up on the internet archive, and Imran's post is also from 2007[2]. My sense is that Imran wrote a blog in Janu…

Thanks for digging out those links. I think Imran came up with it in 2006 or 2007, he was certainly experimenting with interview questions around that time, so the blog post was not long after. I had no idea at the time he had a blog and didn't see the post myself until a few years after that. In fact, I think I saw Jeff Atwood's first!

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#356

Post by stefs » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 8:54 PM UTC

looks like they failed this interview, not you.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#357

Post by ozim » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

catlifeonmars wrote: post #354

ozim wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making convoluted solution by solving the problem with type system is showing that OP doesn’t have basic programming skills. Basic programming skill is also picking right tool for the job. What he did was worst approach possible.

On the contrary, it shows that the OP has a very good understanding of the type system. Plus, it’s an understandable approach given the code golf nature in which the original problem was presented. (Line length and character limits screams “code golf” to me) I give lots of interviews and I try very hard to resolve ambiguity in the expectations and requirements. Up front I explain what the purpose of the interview is…

But it shows OP is "one trick pony" and interviewer told him it will not be proper approach but then he still went with it.

We also had some freelancers like that and one employee who lasted 3 months - and always it was company owners who wanted to "bring help to speed things up".

Those guys ignored everything and did code the way they knew how to do it. Results were always bad and 3 months guy instead of speeding anything up trashed all team productivity for those 3 months and I guess even 2 more when we had to do the cleanup of his worst inventions.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#358

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #81

pnw_throwaway wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the article did you read? They were looking for a senior, with more than twice the experience the poster has. Being able to pump out algos is only part of the job. While there a solution is clever, it’s not terribly maintainable and likely didn’t fit the bill. Beyond that, things like soft skills matter for senior roles. The author can write, there’s no denying that, but we don’t know how well they can ex…

>While there a solution is clever, it’s not terribly maintainable and likely didn’t fit the bill. Why invite him then? >Beyond that, things like soft skills matter for senior roles. Then talk . Ask him. Psychoanalysis of the solution of a stupid brain teaser will not answer your questions.

[deleted]

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#359

Post by guccihat » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #297

guccihat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> a number is divisible by 3 iff the sum of the individual digits is divisible by 3 And how do easily verify this divisibility when "Numeric types, number literals and their associated methods and operations are forbidden?"

Since I read the constraint to allow for single digit numeric values*, I guess they are looking for a solution similar to:

  function isDivisibleByThree(num: string): boolean {
      let mod3 = "012012012012";
      let modulo = "0";
      for (const digit of num) {
          modulo = mod3[Number(digit) + Number(modulo)];
      }
      return modulo === "0";
  }

If adding two single digit numbers is also prohibited it can be implemented with a lookup and keep everything in string representation.

"The programmer can use whatever representation they see fit with the only restriction being that it could only contain letters, numbers and symbols that could be typed with a single stroke"

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#360

Post by pnw_throwaway » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #81

pnw_throwaway wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the article did you read? They were looking for a senior, with more than twice the experience the poster has. Being able to pump out algos is only part of the job. While there a solution is clever, it’s not terribly maintainable and likely didn’t fit the bill. Beyond that, things like soft skills matter for senior roles. The author can write, there’s no denying that, but we don’t know how well they can ex…

>While there a solution is clever, it’s not terribly maintainable and likely didn’t fit the bill. Why invite him then? >Beyond that, things like soft skills matter for senior roles. Then talk . Ask him. Psychoanalysis of the solution of a stupid brain teaser will not answer your questions.

I feel like there’s a disconnect in this thread. The things I mentioned are pretty standard fare.

If you don’t mind me asking, are you a senior level engineer?