Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

kranga.notion.site

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 460 posts

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#81

Post by constantcrying »

pnw_throwaway wrote: post #75
yosito wrote: post #18

This article describes everything that's wrong with tech hiring these days. There is zero evidence that success on these arbitrary programming riddles have any correlation with success on the job, and yet we force candidates through a gauntlet of completely unrealistic brain teasers solving problems that they will literally never have to solve on the job. I've recently completed half a dozen 2-4 hour coding challenge…

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.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#82

Post by rokkamokka »

Interestingly, unlike many in this thread I would've avoided hiring this person based only on the code example.

This code is almost unreadable to me, certainly to most on my team. I would request changes it if it was a PR going into production (ignoring that the problem itself is made up). The code I would've liked to see would be easy to read, easy to follow, and would make me understand the underlying rules that made the code look like it is. This, I feel, achieves none of that.

But of course, everyone is different, and certainly many in this thread feel different. I just wanted to add my perspective :)

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#83

Post by MrDresden »

Honestly, reading these coding golf rules gives off the sense that they were written by a either very inexperienced or insecure individual. These are not a good way to measure a candidates abilities.

As has already been mentioned in other comments, these are clearly red flags and grounds for not taking the application process further.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#84

Post by lou1306 »

rokkamokka wrote: post #82

Interestingly, unlike many in this thread I would've avoided hiring this person based only on the code example. This code is almost unreadable to me, certainly to most on my team. I would request changes it if it was a PR going into production (ignoring that the problem itself is made up). The code I would've liked to see would be easy to read, easy to follow, and would make me understand the underlying rules that ma…

The code being hard to read may be partly a consequence of having to bend over backwards to fulfill the absurd requirements.

No numerical operations on a fizzbuzz problem? Give me a damn break.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#85

Post by em-bee »

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

really? i have seen very few positions in europe offering more than 50-70k a year, and i looked at hundreds. that includes seniors.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#86

Post by moffkalast »

> Changing the programming language after starting was also forbidden.

> Max of 30 lines.

> Max width of 100 characters.

Putting arbitrary rules where none are really required is actually quite informative. It shows how the company culture is set up and it's probably gonna be lots of long days working on things that make no sense because some manager is power tripping over pointless arbitrary decisions. You must be truly desperate to come to them for work.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#87

Post by strken »

sjducb wrote: post #17
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…

At work, would you rather have a boss that makes you implement dumb ideas? Or would you prefer a boss who recognises that your idea is better, then rewards you for it? You are interviewing them too. I would also have hired the candidate.

I probably wouldn't have hired the candidate, at least for the position as stated.

My reasoning is that the company advertised a position for a senior engineer with 4 years experience. Leaving aside title inflation and whether someone with 4 years experience is actually a senior engineer, and leaving aside the really dumb test, that position requires communication skills, common sense, maturity, and just generally knowing what's going on. A candidate who misreads the situation in an interview so badly that they can't take the interviewer's unsubtle hints is going to mess up other communication within the company, has likely never been on the other side of an interview before, and is at risk of allowing the kind of "clever" code that destroys companies.

Again, this is only a problem for a senior engineer. I want junior and mid-level engineers to be clever and enthusiastic. Senior engineers are meant to understand that I have five interviews this week and their attempt to channel Aphyr[0] is going to make my life harder when I want to talk about their thoughts on maintainability.

[0] https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#88

Post by mcherm »

rokkamokka wrote: post #82

Interestingly, unlike many in this thread I would've avoided hiring this person based only on the code example. This code is almost unreadable to me, certainly to most on my team. I would request changes it if it was a PR going into production (ignoring that the problem itself is made up). The code I would've liked to see would be easy to read, easy to follow, and would make me understand the underlying rules that ma…

If the requirements of the exercise had been "write FizzBuzz" then I would agree: doing weird tricks like this rather than writing straightforward code is a red flag.

But the requirements were "write FizzBuzz in ANY language. Then change it so it doesn't use use numbers (!!!). Stick to strict and unreasonable code length constraints."

The only POSSIBLE interpretation is that the interviewers don't WANT straightforward readable code, but want weird tricks instead. Which is exactly what the author gave them.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#89

Post by tgv »

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

50k for a junior dev isn't much, but it isn't low either. Software companies and larger ones might pay a bit more, smaller ones and those that have a small IT staff a bit less. That's the salary situation in the country. It's not the USA.
Post reply on HN