5 ms·

Having interviewed new grads from the west and new grads in China, I can guarantee you that a lot of the new grads in China had had exactly the education the OP

Having interviewed new grads from the west and new grads in China, I can guarantee you that a lot of the new grads in China had had exactly the education the OP described and were completely unable to do anything. It's not just venting, it's the reality. There are some great universities in China and there are definitely some who know their stuff but the average mid level university in China? Nope, completely useless. To be fair, this was in 2009 to 2014. I have left China since.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I can guarantee you that a lot of the new grads in China had had exactly the education the OP described and were completely unable to do anything. It's not just venting, it's the reality. Isn't it the foundational concept of fizzbuzz that a lot of applicants to programming jobs are "completely unable to do anything"?
- burnished 5y ago
  FizzBuzz isn't a programming challenge for interviews anymore, that was like ten years ago. Now its more like a data structures and algorithms exam.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Did the observation that "hey, a lot of our applicants can't even do anything" become less true?
    - burnished 5y ago
      Hell if I know, if I'm going to be frank I responded more from stress and wishing FizzBuzz was still a common test than anything.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      If it's still true, then why do the tests get harder and harder?
  - dbt00 5y ago
    FizzBuzz was never a programming challenge, it was just a very quick filter before getting to real challenges. Real tech interviews have always been about understanding and applying data structures and algorithms, with some emphasis on problem solving with those tools. A really long time ago, there used to be questions that were more like "do you know some very common C/hacker idioms", like write a one line strlen or reverse a linked list in place. I used to get asked stuff like that in the late 90s. (There were also the brainteaser style things, like how many golf balls fit in a 747, but those were often for non-programming roles where people were looking for your ability to problem solve in a vacuum with little information. Those were rarely aimed at engineers, but at engineer adjacent non-technical roles.)
- simonh 5y ago
  We're not talking about graduates not able to solve theoretical exercises. These graduates might well be able to solve an on-paper algorithms exercise like that, after all their teaching and assessment was all theoretical. The problem is they don't know how to actually compile and run a "Hello World" program, or write and run any kind of program on a physical computer, because they never had to do it as part of their computer science education.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I've never really done traditional interviews, but is this true? I've been able to do a fizzbuzz since I was like 14 years old :/
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ (internal link to https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ )
obmelvin 5y ago
I realize this may have changed, but at least at the time, was this partially due to access to computers at the university (i.e. lack of funds for computer labs)? Or just prioritizing the theoretical side?
- gommm 5y ago
  I think it was both of the factors you mentioned but also due to the fact that in early/mid 2000s, China increased the number of university student by an order of magnitude (almost ten fold). This caused some growing pains in universities in the late 2000s beginning 2010s which means that in the race to hire enough teacher to fill demand, not every teacher was competent (I've met some remarkably incompetent CS teachers when visiting universities) and there weren't necessarily enough funds to handle the influx of students. It was common knowledge that people who had graduated before 2004-2005 tended to be much better candidate and had received a better education. In the end, it was necessary for the country but any big systemic changes like this cause growing pains. I do not know what the current landscape in China is nowadays, I would assume that this is much less of a problem since time probably helped with those growing pains, on the other hand, as the PRC starts creating tighter and tighter restrictions, the best elements might be more likely to want to study abroad.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I can guarantee you that a lot of the new grads in China had had exactly the education the OP described and were completely unable to do anything. It's not just venting, it's the reality. Isn't it the foundational concept of fizzbuzz that a lot of applicants to programming jobs are "completely unable to do anything"?

burnished 5y ago
FizzBuzz isn't a programming challenge for interviews anymore, that was like ten years ago. Now its more like a data structures and algorithms exam.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Did the observation that "hey, a lot of our applicants can't even do anything" become less true?
  - burnished 5y ago
    Hell if I know, if I'm going to be frank I responded more from stress and wishing FizzBuzz was still a common test than anything.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    If it's still true, then why do the tests get harder and harder?
- dbt00 5y ago
  FizzBuzz was never a programming challenge, it was just a very quick filter before getting to real challenges. Real tech interviews have always been about understanding and applying data structures and algorithms, with some emphasis on problem solving with those tools. A really long time ago, there used to be questions that were more like "do you know some very common C/hacker idioms", like write a one line strlen or reverse a linked list in place. I used to get asked stuff like that in the late 90s. (There were also the brainteaser style things, like how many golf balls fit in a 747, but those were often for non-programming roles where people were looking for your ability to problem solve in a vacuum with little information. Those were rarely aimed at engineers, but at engineer adjacent non-technical roles.)
simonh 5y ago
We're not talking about graduates not able to solve theoretical exercises. These graduates might well be able to solve an on-paper algorithms exercise like that, after all their teaching and assessment was all theoretical. The problem is they don't know how to actually compile and run a "Hello World" program, or write and run any kind of program on a physical computer, because they never had to do it as part of their computer science education.
edgyquant 5y ago
I've never really done traditional interviews, but is this true? I've been able to do a fizzbuzz since I was like 14 years old :/
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ (internal link to https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ )

obmelvin 5y ago

I realize this may have changed, but at least at the time, was this partially due to access to computers at the university (i.e. lack of funds for computer labs)? Or just prioritizing the theoretical side?

gommm 5y ago
I think it was both of the factors you mentioned but also due to the fact that in early/mid 2000s, China increased the number of university student by an order of magnitude (almost ten fold). This caused some growing pains in universities in the late 2000s beginning 2010s which means that in the race to hire enough teacher to fill demand, not every teacher was competent (I've met some remarkably incompetent CS teachers when visiting universities) and there weren't necessarily enough funds to handle the influx of students. It was common knowledge that people who had graduated before 2004-2005 tended to be much better candidate and had received a better education. In the end, it was necessary for the country but any big systemic changes like this cause growing pains. I do not know what the current landscape in China is nowadays, I would assume that this is much less of a problem since time probably helped with those growing pains, on the other hand, as the PRC starts creating tighter and tighter restrictions, the best elements might be more likely to want to study abroad.