6 ms·

> interviewing completely unqualified candidates who literally can't fizz buzz. Despite all the evidence to the contrary I still struggle deeply with accepting

> interviewing completely unqualified candidates who literally can't fizz buzz. Despite all the evidence to the contrary I still struggle deeply with accepting that this is allegedly a semi-common occurrence. It'd be like applying to work for Uber without ever touching a car before.

ok_dad 4y ago
Some people know how to put parts together but never learned algorithms and data structures. Most may have not learned discrete math, either. Those devs are still very effective but run into quadratic time problems a lot. I’ve met a lot of them in my work.
dijonman2 4y ago
I have over 20 years in software, only a few as a developer. I can provide value, but I can’t fizz buzz. If I studied for it I could. There’s a lot of stellar talent out there that won’t fit traditional boxes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- josephcsible 4y ago
  The point of FizzBuzz is that if you can't effortlessly solve it without studying for it in particular, then you're completely unqualified for any sort of software development.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  So I'm not going to belittle you, I'd actually like to get to the bottom of what's going on here. You say you're a developer, but then ... I'm wondering why you think you can't solve fizzbuzz? Do you have trouble with loops? With conditionals? Do you have trouble knowing where to start? What kind of programming do you normally do (what languages or tools or frameworks do you use)? How did you learn to program? Sometimes I've taught kids to program and they could solve it in a single lesson. Sometimes I've tried to teach people and they just couldn't learn at all. I'll probably end up teaching some more people in my time, so the better I understand, the better I can maybe help people in future. I hope you have a minute to help me out here!
  - dijonman2 4y ago
    I wrote network software in late 90s, including a cfengine replacement. Probably wrote a few hundred apps. I’m old school. All in C.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      Hi! Just wondering if you're still around? If you have a lot of C experience, haven't you written a lot of for and if statements? I'm still most confused.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      Ok, that confuses me even more! I was thinking maybe you relied heavily on javascript frameworks that do iteration for you. That might explain it. If you've written a lot of C code, did you somehow manage to do so without using 'for' or 'if' on a regular basis? (You can tell I'm very confused, because I thought 'if' and 'for' happen a lot in C). Just to be sure: maybe you're confusing 'fizzbuzz' with something else? Fizzbuzz was: print the numbers 1 to 100, but instead print "fizz" on every 3rd, "5" on every fifth, and "fizzbuzz" if both. (That's it, there's no trick question, and we don't care about things like typos or off by ones, because everyone makes those if you just ask out of the blue) Are you sure you've never written anything similar before in some function or other? (the original cfengine itself seems to have quite a number of functions that loop over something and filter it. )
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  A FizzBuzz is a for loop and if-elif-elif-else in the simplest implementation. If you can’t come up with code for it (given the full problem statement, of course), then you can’t program at all.
vikingerik 4y ago
It appears to be so common because it's a self-selected bias of observation. The people who can't fizzbuzz are the ones who don't get hired and are continually circulating among the applicant pool. The people who can will get jobs and remove themselves from the pool. If the question is why people who can't fizzbuzz keep trying anyway, well, Dunning-Kruger. They don't know what they don't know.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jmcz 4y ago
My hiring manager told me the other 2 candidates the interviewed (both of which allegedly had college degrees) didn’t even make it to the fizz buzz stage. They got stuck trying to calculate the rolling sum of an array. The amount of confidence needed to drive people around at high speeds is much higher than the amount required to join a zoom meeting.
more_corn 4y ago
I had a friend at google who got so sick of people who couldn’t code his first question was “write anything in any language on the board”. About 50% of interviews ended there. I question if that was a reasonable way to start since it is a terrifying social question (what’s the hardest thing I can reasonably do that meets his unknown criteria). It is therefore probably a better test of professional confidence (though that’s really great to have too). I went the opposite way. I got sick of adversarial interviews. (If you can do the job we’re on the same side. If you can’t you’ll be miserable here so we’re still on the same side). I started opening my interviews with “what did you have for breakfast?” To set the tone of at least everyone can answer the first question. The last guy I hired sheepishly said “I skipped breakfast” but I still counted it a pass.
- throwaway27727 4y ago
  It's better to actually give a dead simple question instead of leaving them guessing. When interviewing interns, we would start off with "print all the items in an array" - besides for instantly weeding out candidates who couldn't code at all, (and there were a surprising amount), it's also a great confidence booster for them before moving on to the real question.
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    I had an interviewer ask me "how do you copy a file in Unix". Which was a good intro to the rest of the interview... Which was, "let's brainstorm together other ways to copy files around until we run off the end of what you know". Was a fun one. It was too long ago to remember details, but I suppose the interview got as far as "the data link supports 16kbps, the far side doesn't have compression software, but you have to move 10e6 zeros in less than 30 seconds, how?"
- Aperocky 4y ago
  > write anything in any language on the board That is a horrible question that tells more about him then the interviewee.
  - 4y ago
pkteison 4y ago
I have given over 100 on site interviews for a large well regarded company, and I’d say about 20 percent can’t seem to program at all. I have only actually asked FizzBuzz once because it feels terrible to go with that simple a question, but they were failing another easy question and I wanted to calibrate if the easy question was too hard or they really couldn’t program. They completely failed fizz buzz - they started a for loop but couldn’t decide what to do in it, and the idea of directly translating each instruction in fizz buzz into a line of code in the for loop didn’t seem to gel with them. I know there is no way to know for sure, but it didn’t feel like just nerves - it really felt like they had no idea how to do word problems in math class, they couldn’t turn a description with a few bullet points into code implementing them. So, for what it’s worth, I’ve definitely seen it. I don’t even think it’s particularly uncommon.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  1/5 is the same ratio I was going to say. And that's people that make it past the initial pre-screen phone call. I've also never asked fizzbuzz, but some similarly easy things. Like reversing a list. No memory or complexity constraints.
  - rebeccaskinner 4y ago
    The candidate ratio I’ve seen has been all over the map depending on the company. At one place it was more like 90% of candidates who couldn’t write any code, another place it was closer to 50%, and I’ve worked at some places where nearly every candidate we got was at least somewhat competent as a programmer. The obvious answer is better pre-screening or candidate sourcing, but one of the places with generally high quality candidates was a small startup with no recruiting to pre-screen (although we mainly recruited from local meetups so perhaps that was good sourcing)
Aperocky 4y ago
At that time I was at a relatively traditional company whose hiring and sourcing practices does not involve leetcode puzzles.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  I'm not a fan of algo trivia either but fizz buzz is very far from leetcode imo. I genuinely would not be able to hire somebody who couldn't complete it, whereas some of the lc hards can be a bit problematic if your DSA is rusty.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    I always figured leetcode was just a slightly harder version of fizzbuzz (because fizzbuzz really is a bit too easy.) You can often puzzle out a solution based on experience alone, if you've been programming long enough. I guess the leetcode idea fell afoul of goodhart's law, and a lot of people just started memorizing algorithms instead?
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Fizzbuzz is a basic competency check, it really doesn't require any "clever" thinking. I haven't looked at many leetcode exercises but the ones I have so far definitely go beyond that, and often place "unrealistic" constraints (e.g. not being able to use standard library functions). Which isn't to say they don't test anything useful, but as someone involved tech-screening hires, I doubt I'd ever bother with a leetcode exercise. Mind you I wouldn't use Fizzbuzz either, but only because it's too well known and easy to regurgitate a standard answer for.
gumby 4y ago
A lot of people have the idea that “tech” (whatever that is) is the path to riches, and that they can just start out and learn as you go, just as you might for a manual labor job. I don’t mean this in any way condescendingly or to imply these people are dumb. Often parents/partners are telling them “go get a job”. The process is discussed a lot on HN, Reddit etc, but most people don’t know that job searching is itself a skill in and of its own. They don’t teach that in HS or college.
- Aleksdev 4y ago
  I think you can learn as you go with tech. It depends on where you start. If you are a humble hobbyist with a few projects under his belt then a junior position isn’t too far out of reach. As long as you pace yourself and are open to learn you can become a senior developer.
lumost 4y ago
A lot of people learn on the job, and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I suspect that this occurs as many people work adjacent to software roles, and know some code/read code regularly - the gap is that they cannot recall basic syntax and if/else ordering on demand when asked to generate code.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ok_dad 4y ago

Some people know how to put parts together but never learned algorithms and data structures. Most may have not learned discrete math, either. Those devs are still very effective but run into quadratic time problems a lot. I’ve met a lot of them in my work.

dijonman2 4y ago

I have over 20 years in software, only a few as a developer. I can provide value, but I can’t fizz buzz. If I studied for it I could. There’s a lot of stellar talent out there that won’t fit traditional boxes.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
josephcsible 4y ago
The point of FizzBuzz is that if you can't effortlessly solve it without studying for it in particular, then you're completely unqualified for any sort of software development.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
So I'm not going to belittle you, I'd actually like to get to the bottom of what's going on here. You say you're a developer, but then ... I'm wondering why you think you can't solve fizzbuzz? Do you have trouble with loops? With conditionals? Do you have trouble knowing where to start? What kind of programming do you normally do (what languages or tools or frameworks do you use)? How did you learn to program? Sometimes I've taught kids to program and they could solve it in a single lesson. Sometimes I've tried to teach people and they just couldn't learn at all. I'll probably end up teaching some more people in my time, so the better I understand, the better I can maybe help people in future. I hope you have a minute to help me out here!
- dijonman2 4y ago
  I wrote network software in late 90s, including a cfengine replacement. Probably wrote a few hundred apps. I’m old school. All in C.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    Hi! Just wondering if you're still around? If you have a lot of C experience, haven't you written a lot of for and if statements? I'm still most confused.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    Ok, that confuses me even more! I was thinking maybe you relied heavily on javascript frameworks that do iteration for you. That might explain it. If you've written a lot of C code, did you somehow manage to do so without using 'for' or 'if' on a regular basis? (You can tell I'm very confused, because I thought 'if' and 'for' happen a lot in C). Just to be sure: maybe you're confusing 'fizzbuzz' with something else? Fizzbuzz was: print the numbers 1 to 100, but instead print "fizz" on every 3rd, "5" on every fifth, and "fizzbuzz" if both. (That's it, there's no trick question, and we don't care about things like typos or off by ones, because everyone makes those if you just ask out of the blue) Are you sure you've never written anything similar before in some function or other? (the original cfengine itself seems to have quite a number of functions that loop over something and filter it. )
Kwpolska 4y ago
A FizzBuzz is a for loop and if-elif-elif-else in the simplest implementation. If you can’t come up with code for it (given the full problem statement, of course), then you can’t program at all.

vikingerik 4y ago

It appears to be so common because it's a self-selected bias of observation. The people who can't fizzbuzz are the ones who don't get hired and are continually circulating among the applicant pool. The people who can will get jobs and remove themselves from the pool. If the question is why people who can't fizzbuzz keep trying anyway, well, Dunning-Kruger. They don't know what they don't know.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jmcz 4y ago

My hiring manager told me the other 2 candidates the interviewed (both of which allegedly had college degrees) didn’t even make it to the fizz buzz stage. They got stuck trying to calculate the rolling sum of an array. The amount of confidence needed to drive people around at high speeds is much higher than the amount required to join a zoom meeting.

more_corn 4y ago

I had a friend at google who got so sick of people who couldn’t code his first question was “write anything in any language on the board”. About 50% of interviews ended there. I question if that was a reasonable way to start since it is a terrifying social question (what’s the hardest thing I can reasonably do that meets his unknown criteria). It is therefore probably a better test of professional confidence (though that’s really great to have too). I went the opposite way. I got sick of adversarial interviews. (If you can do the job we’re on the same side. If you can’t you’ll be miserable here so we’re still on the same side). I started opening my interviews with “what did you have for breakfast?” To set the tone of at least everyone can answer the first question. The last guy I hired sheepishly said “I skipped breakfast” but I still counted it a pass.

throwaway27727 4y ago
It's better to actually give a dead simple question instead of leaving them guessing. When interviewing interns, we would start off with "print all the items in an array" - besides for instantly weeding out candidates who couldn't code at all, (and there were a surprising amount), it's also a great confidence booster for them before moving on to the real question.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  I had an interviewer ask me "how do you copy a file in Unix". Which was a good intro to the rest of the interview... Which was, "let's brainstorm together other ways to copy files around until we run off the end of what you know". Was a fun one. It was too long ago to remember details, but I suppose the interview got as far as "the data link supports 16kbps, the far side doesn't have compression software, but you have to move 10e6 zeros in less than 30 seconds, how?"
Aperocky 4y ago
> write anything in any language on the board That is a horrible question that tells more about him then the interviewee.
- 4y ago

pkteison 4y ago

I have given over 100 on site interviews for a large well regarded company, and I’d say about 20 percent can’t seem to program at all. I have only actually asked FizzBuzz once because it feels terrible to go with that simple a question, but they were failing another easy question and I wanted to calibrate if the easy question was too hard or they really couldn’t program. They completely failed fizz buzz - they started a for loop but couldn’t decide what to do in it, and the idea of directly translating each instruction in fizz buzz into a line of code in the for loop didn’t seem to gel with them. I know there is no way to know for sure, but it didn’t feel like just nerves - it really felt like they had no idea how to do word problems in math class, they couldn’t turn a description with a few bullet points into code implementing them. So, for what it’s worth, I’ve definitely seen it. I don’t even think it’s particularly uncommon.

squeaky-clean 4y ago
1/5 is the same ratio I was going to say. And that's people that make it past the initial pre-screen phone call. I've also never asked fizzbuzz, but some similarly easy things. Like reversing a list. No memory or complexity constraints.
- rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  The candidate ratio I’ve seen has been all over the map depending on the company. At one place it was more like 90% of candidates who couldn’t write any code, another place it was closer to 50%, and I’ve worked at some places where nearly every candidate we got was at least somewhat competent as a programmer. The obvious answer is better pre-screening or candidate sourcing, but one of the places with generally high quality candidates was a small startup with no recruiting to pre-screen (although we mainly recruited from local meetups so perhaps that was good sourcing)

Aperocky 4y ago

At that time I was at a relatively traditional company whose hiring and sourcing practices does not involve leetcode puzzles.

intelVISA 4y ago
I'm not a fan of algo trivia either but fizz buzz is very far from leetcode imo. I genuinely would not be able to hire somebody who couldn't complete it, whereas some of the lc hards can be a bit problematic if your DSA is rusty.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  I always figured leetcode was just a slightly harder version of fizzbuzz (because fizzbuzz really is a bit too easy.) You can often puzzle out a solution based on experience alone, if you've been programming long enough. I guess the leetcode idea fell afoul of goodhart's law, and a lot of people just started memorizing algorithms instead?
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Fizzbuzz is a basic competency check, it really doesn't require any "clever" thinking. I haven't looked at many leetcode exercises but the ones I have so far definitely go beyond that, and often place "unrealistic" constraints (e.g. not being able to use standard library functions). Which isn't to say they don't test anything useful, but as someone involved tech-screening hires, I doubt I'd ever bother with a leetcode exercise. Mind you I wouldn't use Fizzbuzz either, but only because it's too well known and easy to regurgitate a standard answer for.

gumby 4y ago

A lot of people have the idea that “tech” (whatever that is) is the path to riches, and that they can just start out and learn as you go, just as you might for a manual labor job. I don’t mean this in any way condescendingly or to imply these people are dumb. Often parents/partners are telling them “go get a job”. The process is discussed a lot on HN, Reddit etc, but most people don’t know that job searching is itself a skill in and of its own. They don’t teach that in HS or college.

Aleksdev 4y ago
I think you can learn as you go with tech. It depends on where you start. If you are a humble hobbyist with a few projects under his belt then a junior position isn’t too far out of reach. As long as you pace yourself and are open to learn you can become a senior developer.

lumost 4y ago

A lot of people learn on the job, and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I suspect that this occurs as many people work adjacent to software roles, and know some code/read code regularly - the gap is that they cannot recall basic syntax and if/else ordering on demand when asked to generate code.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]