4 ms·

For what it's worth on the hiring side, applicants lie (or more charitably, wildly overestimate their own abilities) all the time. Of resumes I see, 50% of them

For what it's worth on the hiring side, applicants lie (or more charitably, wildly overestimate their own abilities) all the time. Of resumes I see, 50% of them will not show up on time to their interview. Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. Past companies and open source contributions are not perfect indicators. I've seen people with stellar resumes fail to even know the syntax for an 'if' statement in any language of their choosing. I've had people absolutely ace takehome exams, yet in person don't know how to write a function. False positives are also much more expensive than false negatives, so companies would rather accidentally weed out good candidates than risk hiring bad ones.

rachofsunshine 5y ago
To put some hard numbers to this: further down this thread, there's a post about how "any engineer" could answer a question the poster thinks is too easy. I looked up the question in our back end and, in fact, barely a third of people who take our quiz get it right (the correct answer isn't even the most common one!). That's maybe a little unfair (plenty of people who aren't engineers take our quiz out of curiosity), but the basic point here - that companies are frustrated because they keep getting fizzbuzz-incapable applicants - is more-or-less accurate. That has been (and continues to be) a big part of our offering on the other side of our platform: in the same way that we can provide data about company behavior to engineers, we can provide independent verification of an applicant's skills to companies.
driverdan 5y ago
> Of resumes I see, 50% of them will not show up on time to their interview. Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. Wow, sounds like you either need to change your sourcing or improve your early screening. If that many poor candidates are making it to the interview stage something is wrong with the process.
- hellcow 5y ago
  I should have clarified, the first interview is just a code screen. People submit resumes, and we test them with fizzbuzz. 90% of applicants are removed at this first filter.
  - andrewnicolalde 5y ago
    How many (if any) of that 90% are just non-replies?
    - hellcow 5y ago
      Probably 5%. It's extremely low. Most either don't show up on time or fail fizzbuzz.
dvt 5y ago
> Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. If this is actually true, which I highly doubt (I've interviewed people, too), your process is terrible at preselection. I've heard so much about this "programmer charlatan" that lies on his resume and ends up blowing up million dollar systems, but have yet to see any tangible proof. > Past companies and open source contributions are not perfect indicators. This is self-contradictory: how/why would any open source project let someone that doesn't know fizzbuzz contribute to their codebase? I run a tiny throwaway open source project (~600 GH stars) and even my reviews are pretty stringent. This point of view is not consistent. It's like saying "I know people that ran in marathons, but couldn't even run for half a mile in my interview."
- curryst 5y ago
  > If this is actually true, which I highly doubt (I've interviewed people, too), your process is terrible at preselection. I've heard so much about this "programmer charlatan" that lies on his resume and ends up blowing up million dollar systems, but have yet to see any tangible proof. I've seen similar. I wouldn't say 80%, but somewhere in the 20% range of people on phone screens. If I ask a similar modulo question that isn't obviously a rephrased FizzBuzz (i.e. "write a function that returns every 4th item in a list"), that percentage goes up dramatically. A lot of candidates memorize FizzBuzz without actually understanding what's happening and how to use it. > This is self-contradictory: how/why would any open source project let someone that doesn't know fizzbuzz contribute to their codebase? I run a tiny throwaway open source project (~600 GH stars) and even my reviews are pretty stringent. This point of view is not consistent. It's like saying "I know people that ran in marathons, but couldn't even run for half a mile in my interview." There are no time constraints, and no way to tell how much of their contribution is from their own knowledge and how much is copied from StackOverflow/other open source projects/etc. The point of view is consistent; I can't run a marathon, but I can walk 26 miles. That's fine for the local charity marathon, but it's not going to cut it if I want to do competitive marathons. The constraints and expectations are wildly different.
  - dvt 5y ago
    > There are no time constraints Even ignoring the fact that you keep moving the goalposts and are taking my "marathon" analogy way too literally, the argument that any kind of real-world coding involves "time constraints" akin to a 30-minute stress-ridden whiteboard interview is just bonkers.
robocat 5y ago
> 50% of them will not show up on time to their interview. Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. Of the people that turn up late to the interview, what percentage pass fizzbuzz?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

rachofsunshine 5y ago

To put some hard numbers to this: further down this thread, there's a post about how "any engineer" could answer a question the poster thinks is too easy. I looked up the question in our back end and, in fact, barely a third of people who take our quiz get it right (the correct answer isn't even the most common one!). That's maybe a little unfair (plenty of people who aren't engineers take our quiz out of curiosity), but the basic point here - that companies are frustrated because they keep getting fizzbuzz-incapable applicants - is more-or-less accurate. That has been (and continues to be) a big part of our offering on the other side of our platform: in the same way that we can provide data about company behavior to engineers, we can provide independent verification of an applicant's skills to companies.

driverdan 5y ago

> Of resumes I see, 50% of them will not show up on time to their interview. Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. Wow, sounds like you either need to change your sourcing or improve your early screening. If that many poor candidates are making it to the interview stage something is wrong with the process.

hellcow 5y ago
I should have clarified, the first interview is just a code screen. People submit resumes, and we test them with fizzbuzz. 90% of applicants are removed at this first filter.
- andrewnicolalde 5y ago
  How many (if any) of that 90% are just non-replies?
  - hellcow 5y ago
    Probably 5%. It's extremely low. Most either don't show up on time or fail fizzbuzz.

dvt 5y ago

> Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. If this is actually true, which I highly doubt (I've interviewed people, too), your process is terrible at preselection. I've heard so much about this "programmer charlatan" that lies on his resume and ends up blowing up million dollar systems, but have yet to see any tangible proof. > Past companies and open source contributions are not perfect indicators. This is self-contradictory: how/why would any open source project let someone that doesn't know fizzbuzz contribute to their codebase? I run a tiny throwaway open source project (~600 GH stars) and even my reviews are pretty stringent. This point of view is not consistent. It's like saying "I know people that ran in marathons, but couldn't even run for half a mile in my interview."

curryst 5y ago
> If this is actually true, which I highly doubt (I've interviewed people, too), your process is terrible at preselection. I've heard so much about this "programmer charlatan" that lies on his resume and ends up blowing up million dollar systems, but have yet to see any tangible proof. I've seen similar. I wouldn't say 80%, but somewhere in the 20% range of people on phone screens. If I ask a similar modulo question that isn't obviously a rephrased FizzBuzz (i.e. "write a function that returns every 4th item in a list"), that percentage goes up dramatically. A lot of candidates memorize FizzBuzz without actually understanding what's happening and how to use it. > This is self-contradictory: how/why would any open source project let someone that doesn't know fizzbuzz contribute to their codebase? I run a tiny throwaway open source project (~600 GH stars) and even my reviews are pretty stringent. This point of view is not consistent. It's like saying "I know people that ran in marathons, but couldn't even run for half a mile in my interview." There are no time constraints, and no way to tell how much of their contribution is from their own knowledge and how much is copied from StackOverflow/other open source projects/etc. The point of view is consistent; I can't run a marathon, but I can walk 26 miles. That's fine for the local charity marathon, but it's not going to cut it if I want to do competitive marathons. The constraints and expectations are wildly different.
- dvt 5y ago
  > There are no time constraints Even ignoring the fact that you keep moving the goalposts and are taking my "marathon" analogy way too literally, the argument that any kind of real-world coding involves "time constraints" akin to a 30-minute stress-ridden whiteboard interview is just bonkers.

robocat 5y ago

> 50% of them will not show up on time to their interview. Of the 50% that do, 80% cannot pass fizzbuzz. Of the people that turn up late to the interview, what percentage pass fizzbuzz?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]