2 ms·

What's the aggregate result of testing for fizzbuzz? If you pass you go to the next stage, if not, you're out? The point of fizzbuzz is that it is so simple tha

What's the aggregate result of testing for fizzbuzz? If you pass you go to the next stage, if not, you're out? The point of fizzbuzz is that it is so simple that if you are capable of any programming at all, you cannot not pass it. When I say "filter", I'm talking about a negative filter: It will sort out the ones that can't program at all, it won't say anything at all about the ones that can. Perhaps 1 out of 200 is a little high, someone else mentioned 2 out of 20, which is probably closer to home for us. In order to give as many as possible of the 20 a fair chance, we need the 18 rejections to be as effort-efficient as possible. Evaluating a strangers Github portfolio is significantly more work than evaluating his answer to a problem the evaluators are familiar with. Your assertions about start-ups, large companies and creativity confuse me. We are slightly larger than a large start-up, but we very much want and screen for creativity, ideas and problem awareness. But if you can't code a solution to the very simplest imaginable of problems, we do not want you, and I don't see how it's not suicide for a start-up to think differently. The biggest difference in this regard between us and a start-up is that we have had some time and resources to develop, tune and make consistent our recruitment process. Do we miss good ones? It would be weird if we didn't. But a bad hire is orders of magnitude more damaging than missing a good hire. And that's twice as true for a start-up with smaller resource buffers to absorb the damage.

shioyama 15y ago
> What's the aggregate result of testing for fizzbuzz? If you pass you go to the next stage, if not, you're out? The point of fizzbuzz is that it is so simple that if you are capable of any programming at all, you cannot not pass it. My assertion is that an aggregate result of fizzbuzz and co. is to narrow the field in areas other than what you're explicitly testing for. "It will sort out the ones that can't program at all, it won't say anything at all about the ones that can." <- yes, and it will also say a lot to all candidates (for good or bad) about your priorities in hiring. Maybe that's fine, but for me at least (and judging from other comments in this thread, others as well) it would be a turn off. So you would potentially lose me and others as candidates, even though we would pass the test. That's my point. > But if you can't code a solution to the very simplest imaginable of problems, we do not want you, and I don't see how it's not suicide for a start-up to think differently. I'm sure you know much more about hiring for startups than I do. But in a very general sense, I don't see screening tests as encouraging creativity, if anything they do the opposite. Others have made similar points in this thread. Maybe they're necessary, but they have costs. I see your point though about a startup not having the same resources to absorb the damage from a bad hire.

shioyama 15y ago

> What's the aggregate result of testing for fizzbuzz? If you pass you go to the next stage, if not, you're out? The point of fizzbuzz is that it is so simple that if you are capable of any programming at all, you cannot not pass it. My assertion is that an aggregate result of fizzbuzz and co. is to narrow the field in areas other than what you're explicitly testing for. "It will sort out the ones that can't program at all, it won't say anything at all about the ones that can." <- yes, and it will also say a lot to all candidates (for good or bad) about your priorities in hiring. Maybe that's fine, but for me at least (and judging from other comments in this thread, others as well) it would be a turn off. So you would potentially lose me and others as candidates, even though we would pass the test. That's my point. > But if you can't code a solution to the very simplest imaginable of problems, we do not want you, and I don't see how it's not suicide for a start-up to think differently. I'm sure you know much more about hiring for startups than I do. But in a very general sense, I don't see screening tests as encouraging creativity, if anything they do the opposite. Others have made similar points in this thread. Maybe they're necessary, but they have costs. I see your point though about a startup not having the same resources to absorb the damage from a bad hire.