4 ms·

FizzBuzz is a great way to see if the dev experience listed is total bullshit.

pawelkomarnicki 9y ago
yeah like that one company asking me to do Slack to work at their inventory management startup ;-) Totally related, in so many ways.
bphogan 9y ago
Not sure about that. FizzBuzz is an interview question you just expect. RosettaCode has every FizzBuzz solution out there. Tons of people know how to FizzBuzz. This is just "learning enough to pass the test" - a canned answer like the one you know you have for "How do you deal with multiple simultaneous high priority projects?" or "What's your biggest weakness?" You may be filtering out lazy lazy candidates with FizzBuzz. But just because they can do it doesn't mean they can ship code.
- lmm 9y ago
  The idea isn't that you hire everyone who can FizzBuzz, it's that you don't hire (or waste any more time interviewing) those who can't.
- dropit_sphere 9y ago
  What is the answer to those questions? I can Fizzbuzz in any number of languages, but the first response that springs to mind for the others is "Fuck off."
  - bphogan 9y ago
    Really? As a potential member of my team, I really do want those questions answered because how you answer them tells me about your character, personality, and thought process. I don't care what your biggest weakness is. You could have severe OCD or addiction. You could battle depression. You could be a chronic procrastinator. None of those matter. What does matter is if you give a solid straight honest answer, rather than some canned crap you read on a web site somewhere. Same goes for how you manage multiple high-priority things. Every job I've worked on, every team, it always happens that there are multiple high priority things. Do you try to do them all and then crash and burn? Do you do them half-assed? Do you fight to get priorities aligned? Do you call the sponsors together and share information about the deadlines? Do you under promise and over-deliver? Do you ask for help from your team? The way you answer is often more important than what you answer. Unless it's "Fuck off." :)
pklausler 9y ago
FizzBuzz itself is too well known, but the world is full of other trivial questions that can filter out the no-hires.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  I usually cook my own questions that involve a loop and an if statement. I kid you not, plenty of candidates cannot do simple stuff, and they're interviewing for a developer position. If you don't know how to reverse a string, or split an array of ints into two with even and odd ints, or write a while loop that terminates on a specific word - I have zero belief that you can fill the position I have available.
am8 9y ago
Not sure how knowing modular arithmetic and writing code are dependent.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  I'll gladly tell them how the modular arithmetic works, I just want them to fill out the rest. Many are unable to, which tells me that they don't know even the simplest constructs in programming.

yeah like that one company asking me to do Slack to work at their inventory management startup ;-) Totally related, in so many ways.

bphogan 9y ago

Not sure about that. FizzBuzz is an interview question you just expect. RosettaCode has every FizzBuzz solution out there. Tons of people know how to FizzBuzz. This is just "learning enough to pass the test" - a canned answer like the one you know you have for "How do you deal with multiple simultaneous high priority projects?" or "What's your biggest weakness?" You may be filtering out lazy lazy candidates with FizzBuzz. But just because they can do it doesn't mean they can ship code.

lmm 9y ago
The idea isn't that you hire everyone who can FizzBuzz, it's that you don't hire (or waste any more time interviewing) those who can't.
dropit_sphere 9y ago
What is the answer to those questions? I can Fizzbuzz in any number of languages, but the first response that springs to mind for the others is "Fuck off."
- bphogan 9y ago
  Really? As a potential member of my team, I really do want those questions answered because how you answer them tells me about your character, personality, and thought process. I don't care what your biggest weakness is. You could have severe OCD or addiction. You could battle depression. You could be a chronic procrastinator. None of those matter. What does matter is if you give a solid straight honest answer, rather than some canned crap you read on a web site somewhere. Same goes for how you manage multiple high-priority things. Every job I've worked on, every team, it always happens that there are multiple high priority things. Do you try to do them all and then crash and burn? Do you do them half-assed? Do you fight to get priorities aligned? Do you call the sponsors together and share information about the deadlines? Do you under promise and over-deliver? Do you ask for help from your team? The way you answer is often more important than what you answer. Unless it's "Fuck off." :)

pklausler 9y ago

FizzBuzz itself is too well known, but the world is full of other trivial questions that can filter out the no-hires.

hvidgaard 9y ago
I usually cook my own questions that involve a loop and an if statement. I kid you not, plenty of candidates cannot do simple stuff, and they're interviewing for a developer position. If you don't know how to reverse a string, or split an array of ints into two with even and odd ints, or write a while loop that terminates on a specific word - I have zero belief that you can fill the position I have available.

am8 9y ago

Not sure how knowing modular arithmetic and writing code are dependent.

hvidgaard 9y ago
I'll gladly tell them how the modular arithmetic works, I just want them to fill out the rest. Many are unable to, which tells me that they don't know even the simplest constructs in programming.