4 ms·
An issue is that a lot of mediocre people got into decently ranked positions and are now mediocre interviewers, too.
by gaze 4y ago
An issue is that a lot of mediocre people got into decently ranked positions and are now mediocre interviewers, too.
- rockemsockem 4y agoI think FizzBuzz and other easy questions being asked is a symptom of the opposite issue. The field of interviewees is so mediocre that if you start with a reasonably difficult interview question a lot of them will flounder and will never get it. When I interview I like asking tiered questions. They build on each other conceptually and get harder. The first one I ask takes good candidates 10-15 minutes at most. I've had some solve it in 2 minutes. You can write a not-too-ugly 1-liner in Python to solve it. Some candidates spend a full interview on that question and never get it. The question isn't a trick question, it requires a basic knowledge of data structures and directly translates to the (mostly simple) code people write every day. If someone solves this question it basically tells me that they're good enough for the second question, not much else. But man, is it painful to interview someone who can't answer that first question with a harder problem to start with. I don't know if you've ever interviewed someone who just didn't get it, no matter how many hints you drop, but it is an uncomfortable experience. That is why we have FizzBuzz. Asking a harder question first to a shockingly large number of candidates is a waste of effort. So we all have to FizzBuzz and then (hopefully) answer some real questions.