7 ms·

Is FizzBuzz cargo cult? I had my own company in 1995. We tried to hire programmers. The candidate would come in and we'd spend an hour interviewing. 9 out of 10

Is FizzBuzz cargo cult? I had my own company in 1995. We tried to hire programmers. The candidate would come in and we'd spend an hour interviewing. 9 out of 10 could not program at all and effectively wasted our time. So, we switched to "here's a short test, go in this room and do the test". Then we'd look at their answers. If the answers were wrong/poor we'd thank them for their time and excuse them. This way, less of our time was wasted. That test included an extremely small task like FizzBuzz. If you can't answer it you can't program, period! It filtered out the 9 out of 10 applicants who should never have applied in the first place and saved us a bunch of time. At a big company the phone screen is supposed to do that but phone screens still take a hour or more of some engineer's time.

dharmab 5y ago
Agreed, a team I worked with added a very short (few minutes) screener quiz because we had about 10-20% of candidates make it past phone screen who struggled to write a simple function.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> So, we switched to "here's a short test, go in this room and do the test". Then we'd look at their answers. If the answers were wrong/poor we'd thank them for their time and excuse them. I remember about a dozen years ago taking one of these tests at an interview. Interviewer takes me to a room and says "We've got this little test, I'll be back in 2 hours.". I take the test. Guy comes back in and says ok, we'll look this over and let you know... Crickets. Didn't hear back so I figure I must've bombed the test. 2 years later that guy calls me up and asks if I want to come in for an interview. I say "I never heard back so I figured I bombed your test" He says "No, you did great, we just got kind of busy". I politely declined to interview with them again.
- ratww 5y ago
  That says a lot about the company and nothing about the test. Also 2h is not exactly FizzBuzz territory.
prepend 5y ago
I had a similar experience in the late 90s. We had people who couldn’t program but represented that they could. We would give them a quick screen of “write in one of the languages this position requires a program that takes in a string, reverses it and prints it out.” And we changed it to any language once we started working with novel stuff like JavaScript that any programmer could pick up. It was so weird how many people would fail this test. I always wondered how other industries dealt with people just flat out lying on resumes and applying for positions they shouldn’t. Programming is lucky that we have some litmus tests. I feel bad for people who freeze up and can’t even write a three line program on paper.
- paxys 5y ago
  People who complain about software interviews being a high barrier to entry have never dealt with any other high-skilled high-paying profession. Want to become a doctor? Study for 12-15 years. Lawyers, accountants, pilots, actuaries all have similar multi-year licensing requirements. Places like investment banks and consulting firms will put candidates through a multi-week interview process involving stuff like case studies which make a 1 hour technical interview seem like a joke. And on top of it all you still have to "make an impression" which involves networking and ass kissing the right people in the chain. Being able to walk into any company with just a 4-5 hour mostly objective interview is one of the best parts of the software industry.
  - 0des 5y ago
    Investment banks might not have been the greatest example here, many of them hire whoever under the auspices that while during incodtrination they work a play portfolio for free and those in the cohort who profit above a certain deviation and who can justify the strategy behind it get hired, the rest don't.
    - auntienomen 5y ago
      Investment bankers don't manage portfolios. They do paperwork for companies which want to sell stocks and bonds. What you're describing is a trading operation and a crappy one at that.
zahllos 5y ago
Not in my opinion no, and I don't mind people asking me simple questions either. There are quite a few people who simply don't understand basic concepts and cannot actually write code. Higher qualifications are usually weakly positively correlated with competence, but there are plenty of outliers and exceptions. I do generally agree with the cargo cult sentiment, but not in this case. The main thing I dislike about the 7+ interviews is that I dislike interviews and there are 7 of them to get through. I once did four in one day, back to back, and I was extremely tired afterwards. So my big fear as a candidate is that either 7 interviews will happen over 1-2 days and I'll be absolutely fried after the first 2, or they'll be so hard to schedule it'll take 6 months just to have them all. I'm also a bit afraid they'll cargo cult some of the interview questions and I get a bit sick of "please recite 1st year CS algorithm" questions (I never ask these personally) but otherwise 7 interviews is fine, if they accept I am a human candidate and I'm not really comfortable in the process anyway.
ratww 5y ago
FizzBuzz is definitely not in the cargo cult category. It is merely extremely popular. It literally takes a few minutes and is great for weeding bad candidates. It is a win-win for everyone involved.

dharmab 5y ago

Agreed, a team I worked with added a very short (few minutes) screener quiz because we had about 10-20% of candidates make it past phone screen who struggled to write a simple function.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> So, we switched to "here's a short test, go in this room and do the test". Then we'd look at their answers. If the answers were wrong/poor we'd thank them for their time and excuse them. I remember about a dozen years ago taking one of these tests at an interview. Interviewer takes me to a room and says "We've got this little test, I'll be back in 2 hours.". I take the test. Guy comes back in and says ok, we'll look this over and let you know... Crickets. Didn't hear back so I figure I must've bombed the test. 2 years later that guy calls me up and asks if I want to come in for an interview. I say "I never heard back so I figured I bombed your test" He says "No, you did great, we just got kind of busy". I politely declined to interview with them again.

ratww 5y ago
That says a lot about the company and nothing about the test. Also 2h is not exactly FizzBuzz territory.

prepend 5y ago

I had a similar experience in the late 90s. We had people who couldn’t program but represented that they could. We would give them a quick screen of “write in one of the languages this position requires a program that takes in a string, reverses it and prints it out.” And we changed it to any language once we started working with novel stuff like JavaScript that any programmer could pick up. It was so weird how many people would fail this test. I always wondered how other industries dealt with people just flat out lying on resumes and applying for positions they shouldn’t. Programming is lucky that we have some litmus tests. I feel bad for people who freeze up and can’t even write a three line program on paper.

paxys 5y ago
People who complain about software interviews being a high barrier to entry have never dealt with any other high-skilled high-paying profession. Want to become a doctor? Study for 12-15 years. Lawyers, accountants, pilots, actuaries all have similar multi-year licensing requirements. Places like investment banks and consulting firms will put candidates through a multi-week interview process involving stuff like case studies which make a 1 hour technical interview seem like a joke. And on top of it all you still have to "make an impression" which involves networking and ass kissing the right people in the chain. Being able to walk into any company with just a 4-5 hour mostly objective interview is one of the best parts of the software industry.
- 0des 5y ago
  Investment banks might not have been the greatest example here, many of them hire whoever under the auspices that while during incodtrination they work a play portfolio for free and those in the cohort who profit above a certain deviation and who can justify the strategy behind it get hired, the rest don't.
  - auntienomen 5y ago
    Investment bankers don't manage portfolios. They do paperwork for companies which want to sell stocks and bonds. What you're describing is a trading operation and a crappy one at that.

zahllos 5y ago

Not in my opinion no, and I don't mind people asking me simple questions either. There are quite a few people who simply don't understand basic concepts and cannot actually write code. Higher qualifications are usually weakly positively correlated with competence, but there are plenty of outliers and exceptions. I do generally agree with the cargo cult sentiment, but not in this case. The main thing I dislike about the 7+ interviews is that I dislike interviews and there are 7 of them to get through. I once did four in one day, back to back, and I was extremely tired afterwards. So my big fear as a candidate is that either 7 interviews will happen over 1-2 days and I'll be absolutely fried after the first 2, or they'll be so hard to schedule it'll take 6 months just to have them all. I'm also a bit afraid they'll cargo cult some of the interview questions and I get a bit sick of "please recite 1st year CS algorithm" questions (I never ask these personally) but otherwise 7 interviews is fine, if they accept I am a human candidate and I'm not really comfortable in the process anyway.

ratww 5y ago

FizzBuzz is definitely not in the cargo cult category. It is merely extremely popular. It literally takes a few minutes and is great for weeding bad candidates. It is a win-win for everyone involved.