5 ms·

> The Idiotic "Most People Cannot Program" Myth despite the fact that the specific problem has been memed to death, i can still reliably wash out 70% or so of

> The Idiotic "Most People Cannot Program" Myth despite the fact that the specific problem has been memed to death, i can still reliably wash out 70% or so of the interview cohort i’ve interviewed by fizzbuzzing. it’s shocking every time.

scruple 4y ago
Yeah, I've seen it, too. It's terrifying. Some of the candidates I've rejected over the years have verifiable years of experience yet can't actually produce very, very basic working code.
- giaour 4y ago
  What's more likely: that they managed to fool their boss and colleagues for years only to be found out by you, a complete stranger, in a 45 minute interview? Or that they were nervous, made a small mistake, and then panicked/ froze up?
  - icelancer 4y ago
    My first reaction despite how you worded it was that the former is far more believable in my experience, but I think it's pretty close either way.
  - andromeduck 4y ago
    I've seen some people who appear only capable of adding to or changeing existing logic - essentially relying on mimickry. They have a strong tendency to rely on hardcoding, sometimes pasting one loop 5x instead of just adding an outer loop. It's absolutely wild.
  - scruple 4y ago
    I've worked with these people "on the inside." My belief is that, yes, some of them do fake their way in and manage to hang on for a shockingly long time. I also agree that some of them panic from the induced stress of interviewing. I try to keep my interviews very cordial, I've been there before, too, so I'm sympathetic, and I also suffer from horrible imposter syndrome, because I am a CS college dropout, despite the fact that I've had a wonderful career with dozens of major victories over the last 16+ years. I really do get it. Despite that people who cannot program find their way in front of me, interviewing for Senior+ roles. A recent example is a Senior Software Engineer new hire (I did not interview this person) who was tasked with moving a git repository to a new upstream as part of a larger migration in the engineering org. This person proceeded to try write a sprawling bash script to handle the process in order to "preserve history." Clearly this individual doesn't understand git at all. The script wasn't even doing anything. Their other tasks, which were application development tasks, demonstrated code that was also somewhere around an intern/associate level. I left that role very shortly after because when I brought this to my management team it was made clear to me that what we needed was warm bodies. That person is still employed by my former employer, over 9 months later, making a 6-figure salary with an annual performance bonus and stock grants.
    - giaour 4y ago
      > Clearly this individual doesn't understand git at all. The script wasn't even doing anything. Their other tasks, which were application development tasks, demonstrated code that was also somewhere around an intern/associate level. I think I must always take "can't program" a bit too literally, because it sounds like this person very clearly can program but doesn't understand git. I have worked with enough senior/staff engineers from exotic computing environments (mainframes, academic/scientific computing) that the idea of a senior engineer who doesn't know git is not surprising, but I would have expected such a person to ask for guidance/help. I found myself in similar situations when I joined MSFT despite having only used Linux/OS X for over a decade. I guess maybe I would suggest that you phrase your assessment of someone like that as, "this person is unfamiliar with a standard tool and does not produce work that meets my code quality bar" instead of "this person can't program," as the implies that they got and have kept their current job through deceit and/or outright fraud, and were caught attempting to defraud you.
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onion2k 4y ago
The number of people who find fizzbuzz hard makes me wonder if there's something that I find straightforward to understand in it that's actually harder than it appears, which makes me avoid it as an interview question. I want to find good devs, not good Fizzbuzz authors.
- atemerev 4y ago
  Yes. Fizzbuzz is redundant, perhaps by design. If you start thinking to optimize the redundancy away, like “why do I need to divide by 15, if I am already dividing by 3 and 5”, you spend some precious 30 seconds thinking, and look exactly like an idiot who doesn’t know how to program at all.
  - danparsonson 4y ago
    The secret there is to vocalise your thought process. Interview puzzles are as much about assessing the candidate's critical thinking skills as they are a filter for programming knowledge.
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spacemadness 4y ago
I’ve still never seen an interviewee that couldn’t pass fizzbuzz and I’ve interviewed a lot of folks, albeit mostly in the Bay Area. Not that I ever have asked fizzbuzz, but because the problems they attempt to solve are harder and already include similar concepts. Most do ok enough with those to easily pass fizzbuzz. Maybe I’ve been lucky.
lampshades 4y ago
It’s incredibly uncomfortable when a candidate can’t fizzbuzz. I used to use it as a warm up before hiring in big tech, where the process is very defined. I had one candidate take the entire first half of the interview to solve it, and I guided him very strongly the entire time. By the time he was half way through, he had so much sweat pouring from his face he looked like he was running a marathon. It was very awkward and uncomfortable for me. Like fishtoaster’s #3 above, these candidates came through recruiters where we specified the technologies we wanted.
fishtoaster 4y ago
I think this depends heavily on your candidate source. A few bits of anecdata: 1. A couple years out of college, I went back to my alma matter to recruit interns. I stood at a booth at a job fair and chatted with people. Anyone who seemed interesting I invited for a 30-minute interview the next day (9 people). The next day I had all 9 people do fizzbuzz on paper (I know, I know, I was young!) - every single one passed easily and it filtered out no one. 2. More recently, I was recruiting off of workatastartup.com for senior devs. I went through a few dozen first-round interviews and didn't once come across someone who couldn't code. 3. More recently still, I was working with some recruiters who would send resumes my way. I was looking for a specific combo of two common techs and I started out giving a first-round interview to anyone who listed any experience with both. I found that something like 60-80% of these candidates would *not* have, (in my opinion), been able to code fizzbuzz. It was interesting because, until #3, I'd never really believed the "most people cannot program" thing - at least not after my experience with #1. The lesson I took was that it totally depends on your pipeline. If you put a job listing on Indeed.com or whatever, you'll get a lot of people who cannot program. If you use other channels or do any other form of screening (implicit or not), you may get almost none.
GloriousKoji 4y ago
This question ALWAYS gets me a dumb founded look: "In the programming language of your choice, print the numbers one to one hundred." And I would roughly say 70% are stunned because they don't know what to do. The remaining 30% are shocked by how ridiculously trivial the question is.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  I mean something has to be going on here right? I've run 6 week programs for elementary school kids where at the end the pass rate for "and code something that prints the numbers 1-100" would be higher than that. Like there is no way only 30% of interviewees have taken a single programming class and that's miles ahead of printing 1-100 or fizzbuzz. Is it something with the interview process? Is it some freeze up because the question seems so easy people are doubting they understand what they need to do correctly? Is there some endless supply of software engineer candidates that don't know how to use a computer, cheated their way through school, but are sure they can land a position anyways if they just interview 50 times?
  - ido 4y ago
    I don't want to amplify stereotypes, but I can't help but notice there's a correlation between the candidate being in India or Pakistan (for a remote job) and not being able to program.

scruple 4y ago

Yeah, I've seen it, too. It's terrifying. Some of the candidates I've rejected over the years have verifiable years of experience yet can't actually produce very, very basic working code.

giaour 4y ago
What's more likely: that they managed to fool their boss and colleagues for years only to be found out by you, a complete stranger, in a 45 minute interview? Or that they were nervous, made a small mistake, and then panicked/ froze up?
- icelancer 4y ago
  My first reaction despite how you worded it was that the former is far more believable in my experience, but I think it's pretty close either way.
- andromeduck 4y ago
  I've seen some people who appear only capable of adding to or changeing existing logic - essentially relying on mimickry. They have a strong tendency to rely on hardcoding, sometimes pasting one loop 5x instead of just adding an outer loop. It's absolutely wild.
- scruple 4y ago
  I've worked with these people "on the inside." My belief is that, yes, some of them do fake their way in and manage to hang on for a shockingly long time. I also agree that some of them panic from the induced stress of interviewing. I try to keep my interviews very cordial, I've been there before, too, so I'm sympathetic, and I also suffer from horrible imposter syndrome, because I am a CS college dropout, despite the fact that I've had a wonderful career with dozens of major victories over the last 16+ years. I really do get it. Despite that people who cannot program find their way in front of me, interviewing for Senior+ roles. A recent example is a Senior Software Engineer new hire (I did not interview this person) who was tasked with moving a git repository to a new upstream as part of a larger migration in the engineering org. This person proceeded to try write a sprawling bash script to handle the process in order to "preserve history." Clearly this individual doesn't understand git at all. The script wasn't even doing anything. Their other tasks, which were application development tasks, demonstrated code that was also somewhere around an intern/associate level. I left that role very shortly after because when I brought this to my management team it was made clear to me that what we needed was warm bodies. That person is still employed by my former employer, over 9 months later, making a 6-figure salary with an annual performance bonus and stock grants.
  - giaour 4y ago
    > Clearly this individual doesn't understand git at all. The script wasn't even doing anything. Their other tasks, which were application development tasks, demonstrated code that was also somewhere around an intern/associate level. I think I must always take "can't program" a bit too literally, because it sounds like this person very clearly can program but doesn't understand git. I have worked with enough senior/staff engineers from exotic computing environments (mainframes, academic/scientific computing) that the idea of a senior engineer who doesn't know git is not surprising, but I would have expected such a person to ask for guidance/help. I found myself in similar situations when I joined MSFT despite having only used Linux/OS X for over a decade. I guess maybe I would suggest that you phrase your assessment of someone like that as, "this person is unfamiliar with a standard tool and does not produce work that meets my code quality bar" instead of "this person can't program," as the implies that they got and have kept their current job through deceit and/or outright fraud, and were caught attempting to defraud you.

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onion2k 4y ago

The number of people who find fizzbuzz hard makes me wonder if there's something that I find straightforward to understand in it that's actually harder than it appears, which makes me avoid it as an interview question. I want to find good devs, not good Fizzbuzz authors.

atemerev 4y ago
Yes. Fizzbuzz is redundant, perhaps by design. If you start thinking to optimize the redundancy away, like “why do I need to divide by 15, if I am already dividing by 3 and 5”, you spend some precious 30 seconds thinking, and look exactly like an idiot who doesn’t know how to program at all.
- danparsonson 4y ago
  The secret there is to vocalise your thought process. Interview puzzles are as much about assessing the candidate's critical thinking skills as they are a filter for programming knowledge.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

spacemadness 4y ago

I’ve still never seen an interviewee that couldn’t pass fizzbuzz and I’ve interviewed a lot of folks, albeit mostly in the Bay Area. Not that I ever have asked fizzbuzz, but because the problems they attempt to solve are harder and already include similar concepts. Most do ok enough with those to easily pass fizzbuzz. Maybe I’ve been lucky.

lampshades 4y ago

It’s incredibly uncomfortable when a candidate can’t fizzbuzz. I used to use it as a warm up before hiring in big tech, where the process is very defined. I had one candidate take the entire first half of the interview to solve it, and I guided him very strongly the entire time. By the time he was half way through, he had so much sweat pouring from his face he looked like he was running a marathon. It was very awkward and uncomfortable for me. Like fishtoaster’s #3 above, these candidates came through recruiters where we specified the technologies we wanted.

fishtoaster 4y ago

I think this depends heavily on your candidate source. A few bits of anecdata: 1. A couple years out of college, I went back to my alma matter to recruit interns. I stood at a booth at a job fair and chatted with people. Anyone who seemed interesting I invited for a 30-minute interview the next day (9 people). The next day I had all 9 people do fizzbuzz on paper (I know, I know, I was young!) - every single one passed easily and it filtered out no one. 2. More recently, I was recruiting off of workatastartup.com for senior devs. I went through a few dozen first-round interviews and didn't once come across someone who couldn't code. 3. More recently still, I was working with some recruiters who would send resumes my way. I was looking for a specific combo of two common techs and I started out giving a first-round interview to anyone who listed any experience with both. I found that something like 60-80% of these candidates would *not* have, (in my opinion), been able to code fizzbuzz. It was interesting because, until #3, I'd never really believed the "most people cannot program" thing - at least not after my experience with #1. The lesson I took was that it totally depends on your pipeline. If you put a job listing on Indeed.com or whatever, you'll get a lot of people who cannot program. If you use other channels or do any other form of screening (implicit or not), you may get almost none.

GloriousKoji 4y ago

This question ALWAYS gets me a dumb founded look: "In the programming language of your choice, print the numbers one to one hundred." And I would roughly say 70% are stunned because they don't know what to do. The remaining 30% are shocked by how ridiculously trivial the question is.

zamadatix 4y ago
I mean something has to be going on here right? I've run 6 week programs for elementary school kids where at the end the pass rate for "and code something that prints the numbers 1-100" would be higher than that. Like there is no way only 30% of interviewees have taken a single programming class and that's miles ahead of printing 1-100 or fizzbuzz. Is it something with the interview process? Is it some freeze up because the question seems so easy people are doubting they understand what they need to do correctly? Is there some endless supply of software engineer candidates that don't know how to use a computer, cheated their way through school, but are sure they can land a position anyways if they just interview 50 times?
- ido 4y ago
  I don't want to amplify stereotypes, but I can't help but notice there's a correlation between the candidate being in India or Pakistan (for a remote job) and not being able to program.