6 ms·

I don't like filters like that as they're too black and white. Your idiot filter might test something the interviewee is knowledgeable or not knowledgable about

by leros 4y ago

I don't like filters like that as they're too black and white. Your idiot filter might test something the interviewee is knowledgeable or not knowledgable about. I have questions with a variety of add-ons, so I can tune the difficulty to each person. A more junior person might take 30 minutes to give a complete answer while a more senior person might finish the base question in a few minutes so I need to add things on to make it more difficult. Some people might not have the ability to solve the problem at all. Either way, I try to get the interview to a place where the interviewee is beyond their ability to easily spit out answers. Then the interview should turn into a back and forth discussion where they're asking me clarifying questions and possibly getting completely stumped. Either way, now we're communicating and seeing how quickly they can learn and utilize new information. That might be providing them clarifying info or teaching them something they don't know yet. I don't care if someone can answer FizzBuzz or spit off facts about hash tables or anything like that. All that can be learned. If I'm interviewing a developer, I want them to be able to work on a project in a programming language they've never used and doing things they've never done before and become reasonably competent in a few weeks of learning.

zulban 4y ago
Sounds like you're thinking about filters the wrong way. You're not finding gold, you're quickly filtering out the poop. > I don't care if someone can answer FizzBuzz .... All that can be learned. Of course. But... sometimes it isn't. If a software engineer cannot do a question like FizzBuzz (and this does happen) then you can save a lot of time by cutting short the interview. If you're hiring SEs who cannot FizzBuzz, then I wish you the best of luck. This isn't some leetcode or data structures trivia question that excellent candidates might fail. This is a test that I cannot imagine any good candidate failing.
- chomp 4y ago
  I think people get optimistic about the quality of candidates out there. FizzBuzz winds up being "do you know what modulus is", which screens out so so many candidates. So many. There's a difference between a diamond in the rough who many not know $lang or $datastructure but is proficient elsewhere, and candidates that literally cannot put together a basic looping conditional. It's like hiring a network engineer that doesn't know what a network route is.
  - zulban 4y ago
    There's a ton of solutions to FizzBuzz that do not use modulo.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    I've seen two things here: People getting too optimistic about the quality of candidates, as you say, but also people in entry level positions with entry level knowledge dismissing basic interview questions outside of their aptitude as "useless leetcode/whiteboard coding". I've seen someone say they have never used a linked list, not even implemented themselves but used, and, on top of that, that they likely never will. I've also seen someone putting down the most basic knowledge about the most simple data structures (i.e. simple questions about what you can and cannot do efficiently with an array) as "premature optimization". That thinking worked for their job, so they thought that's universal.
- leros 4y ago
  (I'm copy/pasting what I answered to another similar comment) I don't disagree with your first point. The problem is that asking questions like FizzBuzz is also a filter in the other way. Higher quality candidates aren't going to bother answering your filter question and bail out of the process. I spent several years working on a large tech hiring platform and a thing we noticed again and again is that putting up any filters immediately drove away top tier candidates. They're just not going to jump through hoops when they have so many other options available to them. Now if you goal is to hire a more average quality candidate, then you can get away with filter questions, coding tests, etc.
  - zulban 4y ago
    I was offered a job that had no filter questions and I declined because of that. They were clearly hiring goofballs into senior positions.
  - pklausler 4y ago
    Experienced candidates know why these filter questions are necessary and are going to wonder what they're getting into if nobody is asking any.
- professoretc 4y ago
  > > I don't care if someone can answer FizzBuzz .... All that can be learned. > Of course. But... sometimes it isn't. Right, it goes both ways. If FizzBuzz is so easy to learn, it's reasonable to ask, why are you applying for this position without having already learned it?
  - zulban 4y ago
    Not sure if your question is rhetorical but... lots of people get a SE degree just to earn money and they don't even like programming. They still end up earning lots of money.
anyfoo 4y ago
Please be realistic. At some point, that's like saying "I don't care if a pilot for my airline knows what flaps are, they can learn". You want a network administrator to know what a routing table does, a C engineer to know basic pointer arithmetic, a web developer to understand URLs, and so on. Yes, those are all things that can be (and have been) learned, but if someone applies to an aforementioned position without that knowledge already, massive red flags should go off for all kinds of reasons. I've listed very basic knowledge, but the same goes for more deep knowledge in a particular field. The question here is about finding the line that is still useful. Categorically saying that no such line can be found because no question is basic enough to serve as an early filter is not useful to anyone, including the candidate. I do care if someone cannot solve FizzBuzz, because it's so bloodily excruciatingly simple that if a candidate cannot solve this, please take some time to learn the basics of your craft before wasting your own time with interviews.
- leros 4y ago
  I don't disagree your first point. The problem is that asking questions like FizzBuzz is also a filter in the other way. Higher quality candidates aren't going to bother answering your filter question and bail out of the process. I spent several years working on a large tech hiring platform and a thing we noticed again and again is that putting up any filters immediately drove away top tier candidates. They're just not going to jump through hoops when they have so many other options available to them. Now if you goal is to hire a more average quality candidate, then you can get away with filter questions, coding tests, etc.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    Forgive me for being glib, but if the candidate jumps off because they don't want to answer a very quick, simple, efficient question, that they should fully know is because it is beneficial to filter out complete duds, I'm not sure I want to continue with them anyway? I wouldn't even know how that happened in an in-person or video interview, or even phone screen. "I'm sorry, I do not want to answer your simple upfront question, because it is beneath me"? Well, good luck to your future endeavors then. To be clear, as I explained in my first post, my filter questions are not FizzBuzz, they are much more domain specific. At least if it's past the phone screen stage and for more than an internship. But they are still identifiable as trivial filter question for any serious applicant.

by leros 4y ago

zulban 4y ago

Sounds like you're thinking about filters the wrong way. You're not finding gold, you're quickly filtering out the poop. > I don't care if someone can answer FizzBuzz .... All that can be learned. Of course. But... sometimes it isn't. If a software engineer cannot do a question like FizzBuzz (and this does happen) then you can save a lot of time by cutting short the interview. If you're hiring SEs who cannot FizzBuzz, then I wish you the best of luck. This isn't some leetcode or data structures trivia question that excellent candidates might fail. This is a test that I cannot imagine any good candidate failing.

chomp 4y ago
I think people get optimistic about the quality of candidates out there. FizzBuzz winds up being "do you know what modulus is", which screens out so so many candidates. So many. There's a difference between a diamond in the rough who many not know $lang or $datastructure but is proficient elsewhere, and candidates that literally cannot put together a basic looping conditional. It's like hiring a network engineer that doesn't know what a network route is.
- zulban 4y ago
  There's a ton of solutions to FizzBuzz that do not use modulo.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  I've seen two things here: People getting too optimistic about the quality of candidates, as you say, but also people in entry level positions with entry level knowledge dismissing basic interview questions outside of their aptitude as "useless leetcode/whiteboard coding". I've seen someone say they have never used a linked list, not even implemented themselves but used, and, on top of that, that they likely never will. I've also seen someone putting down the most basic knowledge about the most simple data structures (i.e. simple questions about what you can and cannot do efficiently with an array) as "premature optimization". That thinking worked for their job, so they thought that's universal.
leros 4y ago
(I'm copy/pasting what I answered to another similar comment) I don't disagree with your first point. The problem is that asking questions like FizzBuzz is also a filter in the other way. Higher quality candidates aren't going to bother answering your filter question and bail out of the process. I spent several years working on a large tech hiring platform and a thing we noticed again and again is that putting up any filters immediately drove away top tier candidates. They're just not going to jump through hoops when they have so many other options available to them. Now if you goal is to hire a more average quality candidate, then you can get away with filter questions, coding tests, etc.
- zulban 4y ago
  I was offered a job that had no filter questions and I declined because of that. They were clearly hiring goofballs into senior positions.
- pklausler 4y ago
  Experienced candidates know why these filter questions are necessary and are going to wonder what they're getting into if nobody is asking any.
professoretc 4y ago
> > I don't care if someone can answer FizzBuzz .... All that can be learned. > Of course. But... sometimes it isn't. Right, it goes both ways. If FizzBuzz is so easy to learn, it's reasonable to ask, why are you applying for this position without having already learned it?
- zulban 4y ago
  Not sure if your question is rhetorical but... lots of people get a SE degree just to earn money and they don't even like programming. They still end up earning lots of money.

anyfoo 4y ago

Please be realistic. At some point, that's like saying "I don't care if a pilot for my airline knows what flaps are, they can learn". You want a network administrator to know what a routing table does, a C engineer to know basic pointer arithmetic, a web developer to understand URLs, and so on. Yes, those are all things that can be (and have been) learned, but if someone applies to an aforementioned position without that knowledge already, massive red flags should go off for all kinds of reasons. I've listed very basic knowledge, but the same goes for more deep knowledge in a particular field. The question here is about finding the line that is still useful. Categorically saying that no such line can be found because no question is basic enough to serve as an early filter is not useful to anyone, including the candidate. I do care if someone cannot solve FizzBuzz, because it's so bloodily excruciatingly simple that if a candidate cannot solve this, please take some time to learn the basics of your craft before wasting your own time with interviews.

leros 4y ago
I don't disagree your first point. The problem is that asking questions like FizzBuzz is also a filter in the other way. Higher quality candidates aren't going to bother answering your filter question and bail out of the process. I spent several years working on a large tech hiring platform and a thing we noticed again and again is that putting up any filters immediately drove away top tier candidates. They're just not going to jump through hoops when they have so many other options available to them. Now if you goal is to hire a more average quality candidate, then you can get away with filter questions, coding tests, etc.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  Forgive me for being glib, but if the candidate jumps off because they don't want to answer a very quick, simple, efficient question, that they should fully know is because it is beneficial to filter out complete duds, I'm not sure I want to continue with them anyway? I wouldn't even know how that happened in an in-person or video interview, or even phone screen. "I'm sorry, I do not want to answer your simple upfront question, because it is beneath me"? Well, good luck to your future endeavors then. To be clear, as I explained in my first post, my filter questions are not FizzBuzz, they are much more domain specific. At least if it's past the phone screen stage and for more than an internship. But they are still identifiable as trivial filter question for any serious applicant.