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I think CS i still very much a discipline we fail to teach - And no wonder when you look at the curriculums. In our last hiring round, we filtered a lot of app
by lbj 7y ago
I think CS i still very much a discipline we fail to teach - And no wonder when you look at the curriculums.
In our last hiring round, we filtered a lot of applications down to 5 individuals we wanted to interview. During the interview they were all asked to write their own implementation of Fizzbus in whatever language they desired. 3 out of 5 completely failed to arrive at a working function, the 4th was able but with massive help. The 5th were hired. All had 4+ years of education in CS.
- agumonkey 7y agoDevil's advocate: did you ask them to solve graph traversals or complex string algorithms rather than fizzbuzz ? I recently had a technical test, which I failed because I was depressed how boring it was so I missed many easy answers (say asking about private/public fields in OO).
- growse 7y ago> Devil's advocate: did you ask them to solve graph traversals or complex string algorithms rather than fizzbuzz ? Getting someone to regurgitate something they've been explicitly taught and memorized instead of trying to solve a problem they haven't been (does any CS course explicitly teach fizzbuzz) does not seem like good job selection criteria. > I recently had a technical test, which I failed because I was depressed how boring it was so I missed many easy answers (say asking about private/public fields in OO). If you're not willing to engage with a test because you think it's beneath you, you're going to have a bad time.
- agumonkey 7y agoThat's why I said "solve" not just "write down dijkstra" for my own anecdote, I'm taking responsibility for my own "tastes", I still find many HR process somehow inadequate if not insulting, it's a shallow game and considering the amount of effort, learning invested I just could not suffer it. Nobody likes to be gatekeeped by people less taught.
- scarface74 7y agoGetting someone to regurgitate something they've been explicitly taught and memorized instead of trying to solve a problem they haven't been (does any CS course explicitly teach fizzbuzz) does not seem like good job selection criteria. And how is that different than getting someone to regurgitate problems thet learned by studying leetCode? If you can’t code fizzbuzz even after being told about the mod operator, how can you be expected to solve harder business problems once given the requirements?
- growse 7y ago> And how is that different than getting someone to regurgitate problems thet learned by studying leetCode? It isn't. Which is why the trick is to find a problem that the person hasn't heard of and ask them that. > If you can’t code fizzbuzz even after being told about the mod operator, how can you be expected to solve harder business problems once given the requirements? I'm frankly bored of interviewing CS graduates who can give me a perfect definition of modulus but can't do fizzbuzz.
- scarface74 7y agoMost jobs need people who can translate boring business problems into code. If you can’t do the “boring work” you would probably spend most of the time over architecting. Most jobs don’t require hard CS.
- agumonkey 7y agoGood point. Maybe they were really not trained enough to organize a simple predicate/loop..