Great, so is this justification for 8 hour marathon interviews that pile the bullshit higher? I bet it is.
We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
41–50 of 156 posts
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
I agree about FizzBuzz. But how often do interviewees showing up with gross clothes, swear, or be rude to interviewer? I'd say almost 0?
Not being rude to the interviewer is to social norms and personality as FizzBuzz is to programming skills.
It's so simple you wouldn't expect people interviewing to fail it, but it still happens.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…
You wouldn't be asked to "fizzbuzz". You would be asked to write an extremely trivial program, which would take you about 3 minutes. Also, if you have guaranteed years of experience, fizzbuzz isn't for you. However, a suprisingly large number of applicants who can write an impressive looking CV can't write it.
I've also "heard" that the ratio of people who fail at fizzbuzz is truly disturbing even if they have impressive CV's.
It makes me wonder, though. Has anyone ever just admitted they failed at fizzbuzz here on HN?
I can imagine someone bombing it if they're nervous or if they forgot the modulo operator in their language of choice and got lost doing it an "ugly" error-prone way because they were too embarrassed to change tack once started.
If someone reasonably competent were to spend years working with some limited api's, on a codebase that has hundreds of man-years on it, could they fail at fizzbuzz when asked out of the blue? I think so.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a "no worries" situation if you just left one job for another only to find out the culture isn't a good fit.
Particularly if you relocated.
Had that happen to a co-worker once. He moved (on his own dime) from Chicago down to Dallas, then got let go just three months later. He wasn't even bad, he just wasn't performing at the level I guess they wanted him to. I never imagined back when I was in school that programming, of all professions, would be as cut-throat as it is.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
Two of those things is not like the other.
They are all in the same category when you consider basic professionalism.
Working is getting along in a social environment, not just coding.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#46Obviously interviewing isn't 100% accurate. Almost nothing is. You definitely can't tell in 60 minutes whether someone will be a success at your company. But you often can tell, with very very nearly 100% confidence if someone will not be a success. And that is the purpose of the interview. To filter out the "definitely not"s — the programmers who can't write fizzbuzz. And yes, I have seen plenty of these. And interv…
An awful lot of programmers have very high and entirely unjustified view of their programming abilities. I'm sure they find the hiring process weeding them out to be very frustrating.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me. EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accompli…
FizzBuzz is much less of a game and much simpler of an algorithm than e.g. looking up something in a sorted binary tree. Do you have a problem with the latter as an interview question?
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for extreme outliers it is not clear that it's possible to tell with much confidence in either case. Why do you think it's possible to have such high confidence in one case but not the other?
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
I cannot recall the last time I interviewed someone for a position other than intern who could not at least muddle through a FizzBuzz problem. I'm talking hundreds of candidates. The likelihood of a "lucky streak" as long as that if "can't FizzBuzz" is common (i.e. not an outlier) is small.
Usually when I dig into a person claiming "can't FizzBuzz is common" the result is I find what they're calling "FizzBuzz" is nothing of the sort, but is actually a more tricky data structures or algorithms problem.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#49Post author here: My new company helps companies fill contract software positions. We're a lot like a recruiting or staffing agency, but trying to do it in a new, less spammy way. It's been REALLY frustrating working with hiring managers. I used to be one of these frustrating hiring managers so I guess I had it coming. I had a hiring manager tell me that he can tell in the first 15 min of an interview if someone is a…
I agree, a 60 minute judgment may just be a random gut feeling, but...
Your new service offers to connect ex-Google, ex-Facebook, ex-YadaYada with work. It’s all pedigree. Pedigree in my face, on page and in the website title tag.
And... I’m none of those.
So... I personally prefer a world in which I have a chance to be misjudged to a world where I have no chance at all. Maybe it’s just me though...
I think you got the observation right. The solution, no so much so.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#50Post author here: My new company helps companies fill contract software positions. We're a lot like a recruiting or staffing agency, but trying to do it in a new, less spammy way. It's been REALLY frustrating working with hiring managers. I used to be one of these frustrating hiring managers so I guess I had it coming. I had a hiring manager tell me that he can tell in the first 15 min of an interview if someone is a…
Thank you for this. You have the right problem statement. I hope you can solve it! I suspect it will be a tough battle, but it sounds like you have no illusions about that. Best of luck to you!