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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

#361

Post by catlifeonmars »

ozim wrote: post #357
catlifeonmars wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Two tricks. OP switched from programming to meta programming halfway through.

Also the reason given (not the right tool for the problem) was demonstrably false if we take the OP at face value. They solved it and their solution was robust to changing requirements.

We only know the OPs side of the story, but if we take it at face value it reads a lot like the interviewer wanted to jump them through hoops and they made the best of it. I would have politely declined the interview pretty early on if I was in their shoes.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#362

Post by James_K »

cgriswald wrote: post #352
James_K wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 igno…

> 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

Far from reductive, my theory is fully explanatory. People have a certain way they would like to spend their time (what they want to do) then for every step you take away from that, you need to compensate them with something (usually money). Obviously in the real world there is the threat of starvation when you don't work, so factoring that in a lot of people will be forced to accept a lower premium for their time.

> What you experience internally is not evidence of what “the real world”

This is not an internal experience. I interact with many people on a daily basis. They work in many places. Stocking store shelves, sales, secretaries, janitors, etc. These people all would rather be doing something else, but work because they are paid. Likewise many people do take joy in those same jobs, but if I ask them, there are other things they would rather be doing. The issue is that those things don't pay. It is my assertion that almost all jobs are like this. People sacrificing their time and enjoyment for money, which may then bring them more enjoyment in the future.

> people do want to do their jobs evidenced by the fact that they do them

My point is that people don't want the job, they want the money the job provides. If you gave them the money, they would start working a different job that they like better. The same way I don't really want to eat healthy, but I do because I like being fit. If I could be lean and eat like a pig, I would certainly do it. People will often do things they don't want to in exchange for rewards. This is the distinction between work and pleasure. Things you want to do vs. things you do for the reward. Then there are some things which are a mix. Where you are moderately happy doing them and so you don't need as much of a reward to be convinced to take that action. If we're going do discuss justifying original points, perhaps you should address yours: "I wouldn’t accept an employee or a boss who thought this [the exchanged of labour for money] was a reasonable definition of a job."

Can you at least see my objection? Someone who thinks a job aught to be pleasurable is breaking down the boundary between work and pleasure. This can very easily lead to abuse, where someone believes they are entitled to their employees' work and the employees should be thankful for being exploited.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#363

Post by ryandrake »

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…

There is no need to invoke negative connotations about an honest day's work. Obviously not everyone is John Carmack or Ken Thompson. Just because most of us are a small part of a large company, that doesn't mean we are drones.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#364

Post by wakawaka28 »

kstrauser wrote: post #249
wakawaka28 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Sometimes going off script is OK but that is not what they wanted here, it seems. Besides I guess that if this interview ever happened, the "solution" might not be the reason that they weren't hired. But the numerous hints that the candidate got suggest that they wanted a normal solution. Asking someone to deliver a solution within some reasonable constraints is not "joyless" and disregarding these constraints on purpose over and over is not "smart."

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#365

Post by wakawaka28 »

constantcrying wrote: post #179
wakawaka28 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>The whole point of the interview is to get hints about the candidate. Which it didn't accomplish at all, because the interviewers refused to do the single most important thing. Actually talking with their candidate about these things. Instead they are relying on psychoanalysis to divine some secret meaning in his actions. I am not arguing that your interview shouldn't try to figure out the personality or professiona…

You make it sound so much more mysterious than it is. The candidate rejected polite social cues to not go down the path he did. He came up with an oddball, brittle, and undebuggable solution. They said what they wanted for this fairly simple problem. It's not a guess at some secret, it's a simple observation that the candidate is not right for the job.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#367

Post by [deleted] »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #177
joshuaissac wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules that they added, like the ban on mathematical operations, made it clear that they were not looking for understandable code. His code could handle new rules without a problem, so extensibility was not a problem either.

Near the top of the article: >While the base algorithm is very simple, the point of the exercise is that the interviewer will add new rules to test how you update the code while keeping it readable and maintainable. As for this: >His code could handle new rules without a problem, so extensibility was not a problem either. Ok, now I want you to query a database at runtime and write the output to a file instead if the…

[deleted]

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#368

Post by thebruce87m »

bhaney wrote: post #121
darkwater wrote: post #115

Since I'm in the process of seeking a job, I would like to share a somehow related experience in one technical interview, this time for a senior DevOps role. So, after the initial introductions and talking a bit about infra as code with Terraform, they interviewer asked a question: "What would you use if you cannot use Terraform for a project?" To which I initially answered, since it was a SENIOR position, with a war…

> Although I was somehow offended No somehow to it, that's just offensive.

I’m no master of English, but I think “somewhat” is more commonly used here rather than “somehow”.

Edit: I’m no master of replying to the correct person either.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#369

Post by James_K »

ryandrake wrote: post #363
James_K wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no need to invoke negative connotations about an honest day's work. Obviously not everyone is John Carmack or Ken Thompson. Just because most of us are a small part of a large company, that doesn't mean we are drones.

I think by describing it in the starkest possible terms, one can elucidate the situation. What people object to here is the idea of being a drone, and I'm saying "you are and it's fine".

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#370

Post by adammarples »

jancsika wrote: post #255
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.…

The base 15 thing is a great example of thinking more deeply and then precisely solving the problem in its own domain of complexity
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