4 ms·

The problem is, there are people with those degrees who still can't even code fizzbuzz.

learc83 9y ago
I question that bit of common knowledge. I went to a large state school for undergrad and tutored people regularly. By senior year, even the bottom performing students wouldn't have had a problem with fizzbuzz or similar screening problems. We regularly had coding problems much harder than that on tests. Unless there were other factors involved like maybe the pressure caused by the weirdly adversarial hazing process that the tech interview has become.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  Yeah, I'd really like to know what colleges these people are coming out of - if they're real colleges and not just paper diploma mills, I'd have to question their accreditation. I didn't go to MIT - I went to a tier-3 (or 4...) school and you couldn't have graduated, with any GPA no matter how low, without having produced dozens of working programming assignments, many much more difficult than any take-home work assignment.
- marsrover 9y ago
  I personally went to college with someone who could not program at all when he graduated. He made a lot of friends and had a lot of help the entire way through. It's been 7 years and he has never worked as a developer.
  - learc83 9y ago
    >I personally went to college with someone who could not program at all when he graduated. If you mean can't program fizzbuzz or simliar, how did he make it through tests? Did he cheat? In most classes I had, tests were around 60% of your grade.
hinkley 9y ago
I got a TDD fizzbuzz question once. Later learned that the interviewer told people it was the best interview he’d ever done. But halfway through I got stuck. Something wasn’t clicking. This is stupid. I could do this in my sleep what’s going on? How much time do I have left? So I did the only thing I could do. I wrote more tests, figured it out and got the job. Became a lead. Conversely I’ve worked with many people who can handle trivial problem after trivial problem all day long without breaking a sweat. Give them data that isn’t arranged the way they need it though, and they crumble. Convoluted code full of redundant decisions or data rearranged in an inconsistent (or even data loss) fashion. Always had to be rewritten because we had five more features to add in the same place and you can’t build on sand.
Clubber 9y ago
That's a bunch of hooey used to justify crappy interviewing practices. Now there are people who say that have those degrees that don't, but that's verified by a simple phone call to the school.
GordonS 9y ago
This is true, although I've no idea how prevalent it is, outside of my own sphere. Over the years I have had several devs in my offshore team in India who had not just a Bsc, but an Msc in computing - and they are literally incapable of performing even the most basic of tasks.

I question that bit of common knowledge. I went to a large state school for undergrad and tutored people regularly. By senior year, even the bottom performing students wouldn't have had a problem with fizzbuzz or similar screening problems. We regularly had coding problems much harder than that on tests. Unless there were other factors involved like maybe the pressure caused by the weirdly adversarial hazing process that the tech interview has become.

commandlinefan 9y ago
Yeah, I'd really like to know what colleges these people are coming out of - if they're real colleges and not just paper diploma mills, I'd have to question their accreditation. I didn't go to MIT - I went to a tier-3 (or 4...) school and you couldn't have graduated, with any GPA no matter how low, without having produced dozens of working programming assignments, many much more difficult than any take-home work assignment.
marsrover 9y ago
I personally went to college with someone who could not program at all when he graduated. He made a lot of friends and had a lot of help the entire way through. It's been 7 years and he has never worked as a developer.
- learc83 9y ago
  >I personally went to college with someone who could not program at all when he graduated. If you mean can't program fizzbuzz or simliar, how did he make it through tests? Did he cheat? In most classes I had, tests were around 60% of your grade.

hinkley 9y ago

I got a TDD fizzbuzz question once. Later learned that the interviewer told people it was the best interview he’d ever done. But halfway through I got stuck. Something wasn’t clicking. This is stupid. I could do this in my sleep what’s going on? How much time do I have left? So I did the only thing I could do. I wrote more tests, figured it out and got the job. Became a lead. Conversely I’ve worked with many people who can handle trivial problem after trivial problem all day long without breaking a sweat. Give them data that isn’t arranged the way they need it though, and they crumble. Convoluted code full of redundant decisions or data rearranged in an inconsistent (or even data loss) fashion. Always had to be rewritten because we had five more features to add in the same place and you can’t build on sand.

Clubber 9y ago

That's a bunch of hooey used to justify crappy interviewing practices. Now there are people who say that have those degrees that don't, but that's verified by a simple phone call to the school.

GordonS 9y ago

This is true, although I've no idea how prevalent it is, outside of my own sphere. Over the years I have had several devs in my offshore team in India who had not just a Bsc, but an Msc in computing - and they are literally incapable of performing even the most basic of tasks.