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The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

kranga.notion.site

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Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#91

Post by raffraffraff »

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…

There is a power imbalance between interviewer and interviewee. If an interviewer really wants to, they can throw you the equivalent of "what number am I thinking of" and watch you struggle through 50 tries before your brain runs out of glucose and you go blank.

If I'm interviewing someone and they give me a right answer that wasn't even in my copy of "the teacher's answer book", I realise they're good and let them ace it.

It maybe be that there was a personality clash and they simply didn't think the candidate was a good fit for the team. Been there, and understand that. Or they maybe got butt-hurt that the candidate's answer broke their test. Either way, the candidate is better off not working there.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#92

Post by bowsamic »

tgv wrote: post #89
bowsamic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in Germany

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#93

Post by spuz »

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…

I admit, I don't understand how it works. But there are ways of making code understandable that doesn't require rewriting it. Let's assume that creating custom types is the perfect solution to the given problem, you can help your fellow devs to understand it with comments, tests, documentation or even presentations. If I wrote code that was this obscure in an interview I'd be sure to mention that in a real scenario I'd provide links to this supporting documentation along with the code.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#94

Post by yujzgzc »

It's not that the candidate is underqualified, it's that they demonstrated more hacking skill than programming skill in that interview. I feel like the rules about program length were mistaken for coding golf rules?

A small company hiring a programmer isn't looking for super clever type system hacks, they're looking for someone to crank out code to solve problems fast. It's not readable or efficient to use the type checking system as a general purpose computation system. If this is the code that your teammate wrote and now you have to debug it, good luck...

The candidate is certainly smarter than the average code monkey, just not "housebroken". Once they've worked at a team where they mostly get to fix and improve long-gone coworkers' code all day is when they gain more of an understanding of what programming is about...

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#97

Post by wbxp99 »

Your solution seemed very smart, and I have no doubt that you are an excellent programmer. However, I think you way over-complicated things by choosing to go the functional route. Here is my go in imperative Python. The base-15 trick is still needed, but the rest of it seems a lot easier to understand for someone reading the code later.

https://pastebin.com/trD9Ezf1

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#99

Post by makeitdouble »

tcbawo wrote: post #41
sjducb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The author’s answer was clever, but also unconventional. The company was probably looking for someone that would write code in a shared codebase that other developers will need to contribute to and maintain. Thinking outside the box and not following suggestions might have raised a red flag that this person might be a loose cannon. In a small company, hiring someone smart but unwilling to follow directions can be det…

Yes.

Also, this still properly fits the "you're interviewing the company as well" paradigm. If the author wanted a company that values cleverness or can deal with people who go unbeaten paths, they now know it wasn't the right place.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#100

Post by vkou »

317070 wrote: post #52
qsort wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah, it's an English thing. A literal translation in Dutch would mean "explain yourself here", and if you'd change tack because of the question alone, it would seem like you really lack self-confidence. But after living in the UK for a bit, in the UK that is most likely an order.

> and if you'd change tack because of the question alone, it would seem like you really lack self-confidence.

Or because the candidate realized that they've messed up, and by dropping the issue can at least salvage the next XY minutes of the interview by not going down the wrong rabbit hole.

"Could you tell me more about this?" and "Are you sure about this?" are invitations for providing the rationalization for your answers. "I'm not sure that's a good idea" is a very unsubtle, but polite way of hinting that the you have gone way off the map.

As an interviewer, I want my candidates to succeed. I want them to put their best foot forward. I've asked my question over a hundred times, and I've seen many ways that people have solved it, correctly or no. If I'm giving them this suggestion, it means that I know that they are going down one of the many, many wrong garden paths.

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