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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

#431

Post by AutistiCoder »

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…

As an AuDHDer, I can see myself having an especially difficult time.

This would be basically impossible.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#432

Post by mock-possum »

alok-g wrote: post #182
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…

In general, any made up problem (i.e., with no real utility) is just a puzzle and I would prefer to walk out unless I do need the/a job. What a pity when interviewers can't even think of a real world problem for an interview. Most interviewers are like that. No wonder, the industry has the candidates solve various coding problems, and once hired, all the candidates end up dealing with is company politics or other slo…

That strikes me as odd - I see engineering as primarily a matter of puzzle-solving. Why should solving a puzzle not be a fair test of your abilities?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#433

Post by ang_cire »

James_K wrote: post #309
cgriswald wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s absurdly reductionist and in my experience suggests either a poor work ethic or a lack of empathy or both. Additionally your argument isn’t logical. An unwillingness to do something for free isn’t equivalent not wanting to do it. You’ve moved the goalposts.

Well okay, let's walk the goalposts back. Suppose there was some radical UBI scheme in place and now you get paid the same amount for working as you would for not working. There is no financial incentive to do any piece of work, but also no financial punishment for not working. Do you think most people would still go to their jobs? I think no. Most people are only motivated to work by the financial reward they get fr…

The sheer amount of FOSS, free art, self-published literature, music, etc that exists trivially disproves the idea that people won't work without monetary compensation.

I agree that it's not good for people to be passionate about a job, but that's only because the company isn't equally passionate about you. That passion in today's jobs is a weapon to exploit your labor.

In a healthier form of work, where you and other workers actually own the company and share in its success equally, passion for the work and the org is great to have.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#434

Post by alok-g »

mock-possum wrote: post #432
alok-g wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, any made up problem (i.e., with no real utility) is just a puzzle and I would prefer to walk out unless I do need the/a job. What a pity when interviewers can't even think of a real world problem for an interview. Most interviewers are like that. No wonder, the industry has the candidates solve various coding problems, and once hired, all the candidates end up dealing with is company politics or other slo…

That strikes me as odd - I see engineering as primarily a matter of puzzle-solving. Why should solving a puzzle not be a fair test of your abilities?

I see problem-solving as closer to engineering than puzzle-solving. The two may be overlapping but not quite.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#435

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.…

> 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.

I don't understand this criticism.

His code only got weird and clever when he was told not to use numbers. That is a very reasonable consequence for such a huge restriction.

And then with the switch to base 15 his code went back to being nice and simple.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#436

Post by Dylan16807 »

qsort wrote: post #26
riffraff wrote: post #10

I 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…

> 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. I'd like to underline this just in case the author reads the thread. He really does seem great and I wish all the best to him, but reading between the lines is a useful skill regardless of this specific situation. He says he doesn't speak English well, that might have played a role in t…

They're 18 rules in and now they're going to "hint" that something isn't okay when the candidate directly asked yes or no? Fuck that.

And the reason for the hesitance was a worry that it would have trouble with future rules, which turned out to be completely unfounded.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#437

Post by Dylan16807 »

guccihat wrote: post #359
cornstalks wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

Yeah uh I guess you missed the SUM_TABLE part of the article? That's what they're doing. And that's why the rule against matrices was added.

That version of the code is 80% checking if "the sum of the individual digits is divisible by 3", 20% the rest of the fizzbuzz.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#438

Post by Dylan16807 »

joshribakoff wrote: post #346
zaruvi wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have failed this question badly. I'm curious, how would you check that without access to any number or math operations? I think I would try something similar to what he did with his sum_table, but that too was disallowed. They're constraints I've never had to deal with, nor seen before.

Math operators like division aren’t native to your (traditional) cpu, they are implemented in code, for example using similar algorithms as the ones taught to us in grade school to multiply big numbers one digit at a time on paper and “long division”. All math operations can be implemented with bitwise operators, too, i am pretty sure Likely the interviewer specifically needed the candidate to do that, implement the…

Bitwise operators work on numbers. That's against the rules.

And while division can be implemented as repeated subtraction, you are not going to find any CPUs 4 bits and up that don't have an adder. It would be ridiculous to try to handle addition/subtraction in software.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#439

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> But it shows OP is "one trick pony"

Pff.

Oh, you did a trick in the limited time of a single interview? You must only know that one trick, rejected.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#440

Post by Dylan16807 »

mgaunard wrote: post #50

Normally, you learn during high school that when you take any exam, you should not reply with the best or smartest answer, but with the answer the teacher expects. The same applies to interviews.

What do you think they expected when they said not to use numbers? Is there a "normal" answer to that? It seems like a very freeform kind of crazy restriction to me.
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