4 ms·

Honestly, I'd probably fail it because I wouldn't believe they'd ask me something so trivial. I'd question the heck out of it looking for tricks. Then I'd prob

Honestly, I'd probably fail it because I wouldn't believe they'd ask me something so trivial. I'd question the heck out of it looking for tricks. Then I'd probably think "no they want something complicated. It can't be that" I'd probably totally fail it. I've been writing code every day for over 25 years but if you asked me that in an interview, I'd totally completely utterly fuck it up. I'd walk out and the interviewer would think me profoundly incompetent. Then I'd go home and have a terrible day thinking "wtf was that? All he wanted was that. You could write that when you were 7 on an apple 2, wtf were you doing?" So now I'm just enjoying my time contributing to open source. Whatever. It's a great time to not work, unemployment is lucrative.

collyw 6y ago
I got asked it one time and did it fine. Then they asked me to do it without a modulo operator. I had a mental block as it is so easy and obvious to do it with a modulo operator that it was kind of difficult to think about doing it another way. Likewise I got asked about python with 2 list comprehensions. Then I got asked to do the same thing without an intermediate variable. Basically they wanted a nested list comprehension. This was not a difficult task, but not something that I ever do, as I find nested list comprehensions terrible for readability - I always use an intermediate variable. It would be easy to mess this up under the stress of an interview.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  What's the demonstration trying to show here? Those things frustrate me in interviews, I can think of 4 ways to immediately do it but I know for a fact they only have 1 way written down and it's my job to guess it. If I say "you can make a field" and they have zero knowledge of number theory well my chances go right out the window. To them I obviously have a "wrong" answer. They ask you to be clever but only in some proscribed secret way that they have no intention of disclosing. Nonsense. If instead I respectfully show them the multiple ways, it's still naturally "combative" because there's no other way to reliably answer the question. They're just asking for experience to fail. They're looking for something who coached themselves, not someone who actually knows anything. No wonder silicon valley is awash in cargo cult driven shit software. Look at the process. Yet again an interview process that selects for dimwits. Might as well guess what number they're thinking of
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    That's only because the interview process is being run by people who don't know what they're doing. They may be able to code, but they're amateurs at interviewing. You could do the exact same thing, but with sanity. When you ask what they do without the modulo operator, you're looking to see if they just have a cookbook method memorized, or if they can handle having to adapt it. You don't have a "right" answer - if their answer works, it works. If it's kludgy, that might be a bit of a mark against them, but less so if they know that what they did is kludgy. And so on. It's not all like what you describe. There are people who can actually interview.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Whenever I've seen it used or had to use a fizzbuzz-type question as an interviewer, it has always been stated that it's a warm-up question for which a straightforward implementation is fine. People who are senior get a harder warm-up question but the same reassurance is given.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  What does that mean even? Are we saying "advanced" as in you contribute to gcc and kernels or advanced as in you can do JavaScript without jQuery? I have no idea anymore. If someone tossed me a 6502 assembly book (in case the candidate didn't know it) and a simulator and told me to implement fizzbuzz in that and create some test script, now we're talking. You never work with 6502? Even better! That's every new job: a bunch of new stuff. We leave the amorphous world where there's giant stratas of assessments and opinions and have a concrete problem

collyw 6y ago

I got asked it one time and did it fine. Then they asked me to do it without a modulo operator. I had a mental block as it is so easy and obvious to do it with a modulo operator that it was kind of difficult to think about doing it another way. Likewise I got asked about python with 2 list comprehensions. Then I got asked to do the same thing without an intermediate variable. Basically they wanted a nested list comprehension. This was not a difficult task, but not something that I ever do, as I find nested list comprehensions terrible for readability - I always use an intermediate variable. It would be easy to mess this up under the stress of an interview.

kristopolous 6y ago
What's the demonstration trying to show here? Those things frustrate me in interviews, I can think of 4 ways to immediately do it but I know for a fact they only have 1 way written down and it's my job to guess it. If I say "you can make a field" and they have zero knowledge of number theory well my chances go right out the window. To them I obviously have a "wrong" answer. They ask you to be clever but only in some proscribed secret way that they have no intention of disclosing. Nonsense. If instead I respectfully show them the multiple ways, it's still naturally "combative" because there's no other way to reliably answer the question. They're just asking for experience to fail. They're looking for something who coached themselves, not someone who actually knows anything. No wonder silicon valley is awash in cargo cult driven shit software. Look at the process. Yet again an interview process that selects for dimwits. Might as well guess what number they're thinking of
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  That's only because the interview process is being run by people who don't know what they're doing. They may be able to code, but they're amateurs at interviewing. You could do the exact same thing, but with sanity. When you ask what they do without the modulo operator, you're looking to see if they just have a cookbook method memorized, or if they can handle having to adapt it. You don't have a "right" answer - if their answer works, it works. If it's kludgy, that might be a bit of a mark against them, but less so if they know that what they did is kludgy. And so on. It's not all like what you describe. There are people who can actually interview.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

Whenever I've seen it used or had to use a fizzbuzz-type question as an interviewer, it has always been stated that it's a warm-up question for which a straightforward implementation is fine. People who are senior get a harder warm-up question but the same reassurance is given.

kristopolous 6y ago
What does that mean even? Are we saying "advanced" as in you contribute to gcc and kernels or advanced as in you can do JavaScript without jQuery? I have no idea anymore. If someone tossed me a 6502 assembly book (in case the candidate didn't know it) and a simulator and told me to implement fizzbuzz in that and create some test script, now we're talking. You never work with 6502? Even better! That's every new job: a bunch of new stuff. We leave the amorphous world where there's giant stratas of assessments and opinions and have a concrete problem