8 ms·

> When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying? That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. Everybody who's ever hired engineers kn

> When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying? That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. Everybody who's ever hired engineers knows from experience that a simple Fizzbuzz test is still, unfortunately, a very usable candidate filter. A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out?

LandR 9y ago
> A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out? So true, sadly.
- warrenm 9y ago
  That's because 95% of software development IS NOT CODING It's thinking, puzzling, chewing over problems, solving political infighting between customers, management, and the frameworks in use
bg4 9y ago
It's also the reason why so many systems, at so many companies, are complete, utter shit.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  I agree but I don't think it's fair to put it all on the incompetence of devs/engineers... in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad. So because the devs don't have MBA's, and the MBA's don't talk well to technicals there is a huge culture gap in the average fortune 1000 workplace. I've seen the inside of companies where the cost cutting was so excessive the infrastructure was near crumbling... just due to sheer mismanagement. You want to know how many stories I've heard about a sysadmin requesting horizontal and structured cabling done by professionals and been denied? How many stories about IT departments not even having an actual budget and only getting approve/deny requests? So half of the infrastructure around companies is just cobbled together by some underpayed one man miracle show who if he is super lucky gets a full time t1 assist. At the end of the day, the buck should stop somewhere... and it does. With management. In the meantime, I think it's time for sysadmins/engineers/devs to start getting MBA's and going for CIO/CTO positions and start to push a shift.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    "in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad." I would say that's still management incompetence. They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions.
    - bg4 9y ago
      In my experiences, non-technical managers tend not to trust software engineers. This is partly due to a lack of true professional credential for software developers and a lack of their own technical chops to call out any bullshit. To put it simply, they don't feel comfortable saying: "Well... you're the Doctor".
    - warrenm 9y ago
      >They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions. Nope - they've gotten burned by being talked down to like the cliche mechanic telling a girl her SUV's hammenframas needs to be replaced, and it's $1600. If you as a software developer cannot speak coherent English sentences (with a small handful of management jargon) to management without devolving into technical shorthand, you are a failure. Not management. You. You have to explain what is going on in a manner your audience can understand. You should not expect managers to be technical (they might be (and good for you if they are)) - they're accomplishing a different task from you and need solid, understandable, actionable data to take to their management and customers.
aquadrop 9y ago
What do they do on their 'real work'?
- xboxnolifes 9y ago
  >write something "does it work? no." >googling... >copy code block "does it work? kinda..." >googling...
  - hinkley 9y ago
    At my job we have so many libraries in different parts of the code trying to do the same thing that I don’t even try to memorize anymore. I just look it up. What’s the order of arguments on this one? Does it modify the data passed in or create a new one? How does it handle nulls? It’s cheaper to look it up than to debug. So that’s what I do.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
It's the selection effect: only a small fraction of coders can't fizzbuzz, but those few make up a majority of people looking for work...
Klathmon 9y ago
A few years ago I was approached about a new opportunity, and through the course of the interviews I was given a generic fizzbuzz-like coding challenge and I completely bombed it. I got flustered, I got stuck on something trivial, and I ended up running out of time with not much to show for it. It was in a language that I had been using for 5+ years at that point, using a framework that I had just finished architecting a whole application for, had multiple open-source projects in, and the challenge itself was something that I genuinely felt should have been extremely easy, but I miserably bombed it. I'm almost positive to them I looked like a giant fraud, and to be honest I felt like one too, but after some thinking I really feel that it was just a bad day combined with being uncomfortable without my editor/tools that I use in my day-to-day job that ended with me getting stuck and failing horribly. I don't know a perfect solution, but when I was later in a position to hire new devs, I avoided coding challenges because of that experience. I feel that you can get MUCH more insight into a developer by just having them talk about what they have done, go into details about problems that they solved, or how they would approach problem X without any writing of code anywhere except maybe some drawings on a whiteboard if necessary. Coding Challenges to me test 50% "knowing the syntax and not making mistakes" and 50% "knowing how to solve the problem". We have tools and compilers and linters and syntax highlighting and good editors to solve the former in most cases, it's the latter that I'm looking for in a good developer, so why would I use a test that evaluates both of them equally?
- mrfusion 9y ago
  I think this is most people who “can’t code”. Just nerves I’ve been in that situation myself.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    It was like waking up and not knowing your own name, it was such a strange feeling to watch myself fuck up so badly, and be utterly incapable of stopping during the interview. And I wasn't even particularly nervous about getting or not getting the offer either! They approached me, and I wasn't fully sure if I would even like the job yet!
  - yojex 9y ago
notyourloops 9y ago
FizzBuzz? I find it hard to believe that FizzBuzz is being used as an actual screen, because realistically you'd have too many people passing. If anything, the interviews I've been on have been four or five 45-minute whiteboard sessions, usually about data structures and algorithms or object oriented design. Nowadays that also seems preceded by a homework assignment and a 3rd party coding quiz. FizzBuzz would be refreshing.
alacombe 9y ago
> That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. The industry expect people to lie... "Do you have 5 years experience in <3-years-old-tech> ?"... "Yes, sure".

LandR 9y ago

> A lot of candidates with years of real work experience simply cannot write code. How else can we find this out? So true, sadly.

warrenm 9y ago
That's because 95% of software development IS NOT CODING It's thinking, puzzling, chewing over problems, solving political infighting between customers, management, and the frameworks in use

bg4 9y ago

It's also the reason why so many systems, at so many companies, are complete, utter shit.

arca_vorago 9y ago
I agree but I don't think it's fair to put it all on the incompetence of devs/engineers... in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad. So because the devs don't have MBA's, and the MBA's don't talk well to technicals there is a huge culture gap in the average fortune 1000 workplace. I've seen the inside of companies where the cost cutting was so excessive the infrastructure was near crumbling... just due to sheer mismanagement. You want to know how many stories I've heard about a sysadmin requesting horizontal and structured cabling done by professionals and been denied? How many stories about IT departments not even having an actual budget and only getting approve/deny requests? So half of the infrastructure around companies is just cobbled together by some underpayed one man miracle show who if he is super lucky gets a full time t1 assist. At the end of the day, the buck should stop somewhere... and it does. With management. In the meantime, I think it's time for sysadmins/engineers/devs to start getting MBA's and going for CIO/CTO positions and start to push a shift.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad." I would say that's still management incompetence. They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions.
  - bg4 9y ago
    In my experiences, non-technical managers tend not to trust software engineers. This is partly due to a lack of true professional credential for software developers and a lack of their own technical chops to call out any bullshit. To put it simply, they don't feel comfortable saying: "Well... you're the Doctor".
  - warrenm 9y ago
    >They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions. Nope - they've gotten burned by being talked down to like the cliche mechanic telling a girl her SUV's hammenframas needs to be replaced, and it's $1600. If you as a software developer cannot speak coherent English sentences (with a small handful of management jargon) to management without devolving into technical shorthand, you are a failure. Not management. You. You have to explain what is going on in a manner your audience can understand. You should not expect managers to be technical (they might be (and good for you if they are)) - they're accomplishing a different task from you and need solid, understandable, actionable data to take to their management and customers.

aquadrop 9y ago

What do they do on their 'real work'?

xboxnolifes 9y ago
>write something "does it work? no." >googling... >copy code block "does it work? kinda..." >googling...
- hinkley 9y ago
  At my job we have so many libraries in different parts of the code trying to do the same thing that I don’t even try to memorize anymore. I just look it up. What’s the order of arguments on this one? Does it modify the data passed in or create a new one? How does it handle nulls? It’s cheaper to look it up than to debug. So that’s what I do.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

It's the selection effect: only a small fraction of coders can't fizzbuzz, but those few make up a majority of people looking for work...

Klathmon 9y ago

A few years ago I was approached about a new opportunity, and through the course of the interviews I was given a generic fizzbuzz-like coding challenge and I completely bombed it. I got flustered, I got stuck on something trivial, and I ended up running out of time with not much to show for it. It was in a language that I had been using for 5+ years at that point, using a framework that I had just finished architecting a whole application for, had multiple open-source projects in, and the challenge itself was something that I genuinely felt should have been extremely easy, but I miserably bombed it. I'm almost positive to them I looked like a giant fraud, and to be honest I felt like one too, but after some thinking I really feel that it was just a bad day combined with being uncomfortable without my editor/tools that I use in my day-to-day job that ended with me getting stuck and failing horribly. I don't know a perfect solution, but when I was later in a position to hire new devs, I avoided coding challenges because of that experience. I feel that you can get MUCH more insight into a developer by just having them talk about what they have done, go into details about problems that they solved, or how they would approach problem X without any writing of code anywhere except maybe some drawings on a whiteboard if necessary. Coding Challenges to me test 50% "knowing the syntax and not making mistakes" and 50% "knowing how to solve the problem". We have tools and compilers and linters and syntax highlighting and good editors to solve the former in most cases, it's the latter that I'm looking for in a good developer, so why would I use a test that evaluates both of them equally?

mrfusion 9y ago
I think this is most people who “can’t code”. Just nerves I’ve been in that situation myself.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  It was like waking up and not knowing your own name, it was such a strange feeling to watch myself fuck up so badly, and be utterly incapable of stopping during the interview. And I wasn't even particularly nervous about getting or not getting the offer either! They approached me, and I wasn't fully sure if I would even like the job yet!
- yojex 9y ago

notyourloops 9y ago

FizzBuzz? I find it hard to believe that FizzBuzz is being used as an actual screen, because realistically you'd have too many people passing. If anything, the interviews I've been on have been four or five 45-minute whiteboard sessions, usually about data structures and algorithms or object oriented design. Nowadays that also seems preceded by a homework assignment and a 3rd party coding quiz. FizzBuzz would be refreshing.

alacombe 9y ago

> That's the kind of thing that happens when people lie. The industry expect people to lie... "Do you have 5 years experience in <3-years-old-tech> ?"... "Yes, sure".