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I have, personally, interviewed a lead software engineer candidate, claiming 8+ years of experience coding, who could not write a simple 5-minute exercise, in a

I have, personally, interviewed a lead software engineer candidate, claiming 8+ years of experience coding, who could not write a simple 5-minute exercise, in any language of his choosing. It wasn't FizzBuzz exactly, but if I'd thought to ask FizzBuzz, he'd have busted that as well. "Write a function that takes a list of numbers [array, list, or equivalent] and returns the average." That's it. Wasn’t that they got hung up on the details of whether the average of ints should be an int, float, or double, or how to handle overflow, but just couldn't even get started at all in any language. I was the third on-site interviewer. He'd BSed his way past the phone screen and two others and I caught a whiff of "Johnny can't code" and decided to check by asking him one of our (at the time) new college grad questions.

ionwake 3y ago
You remind me of many interviewers who had no idea who I was and asked me basic grad tests which I would struggle with mostly because I refused to be tested on fizzbuzz style questions I found it too easy to get caught out without recent revision which I often didn’t do as I was building critical software for paying customers. I’m not saying you may have thrown out competent coders and made a completely incorrect decision I’m saying many who interviewed me seemed to ( when they hadn’t checked my background ) and were quick to assume idiocy. I only typed this out for you mate.
jjav 3y ago
> just couldn't even get started at all in any language Let's apply Occam's razor. You have someone who has been programming 8+ years professionally. Maybe they did good work or bad work, we don't know, but we know they've been programming as a profession getting paid to do it for 8+ years. We also all know you can't really go through a week, or even usually a day, of programming without handling something as basic as an array or a list. So, which is actually more likely: a) Someone did 8+ years of programming without ever implementing an array loop or b) They know how to do it, but the test is flawed due to conditions (on a whiteboard in a high stress environment while being criticized). A lot of people with deep expertise in programming are completely incapable of putting on a whiteboard performance under stress. I can never believe the number of interviewers who go "Gotcha!! They don't know how to code despite doing it for years!" instead of considering the simple correct answer is usually (b).
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  What? The simplest answer by far is c) they haven't been programming for 8 years
  - jjav 3y ago
    See above answer. It is very easy to confirm they've held the job they claim on the date range they claim. If they have held a software engineering role for 8 years without getting fired, they absolutely know how to loop over an array.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      Reference checking almost always happens after the interviews. So no, the interviewer would not be expected to know this and should make an effort to confirm the person knows what they claim to know.
      - jjav 3y ago
        Reference checks and employment verification are different things. Reference check is done after the interviews, you ask the candidate for references (past managers and coworkers) and call them up. That takes a fair amount of other people's time, so it only makes sense to do it after you're fairly certain you want to make an offer. Employment verification is simply getting a statement from past employers that this person worked there from date to date and held these titles. That's quick and easy.
    - fargle 3y ago
      Ha! if only that were true... Maybe at a real modern "software" company. But there are plenty of places where 50% of their so-called software engineers couldn't write a simple program from scratch. In fact, as I think about the cases I've seen, it seems to get easier with senior "SWEs". They can exist going to meetings and delegating work until one day they forget themselves and apply at a company that actually expects SWEs to have a basic understanding of programming.
- 3y ago

ionwake 3y ago

You remind me of many interviewers who had no idea who I was and asked me basic grad tests which I would struggle with mostly because I refused to be tested on fizzbuzz style questions I found it too easy to get caught out without recent revision which I often didn’t do as I was building critical software for paying customers. I’m not saying you may have thrown out competent coders and made a completely incorrect decision I’m saying many who interviewed me seemed to ( when they hadn’t checked my background ) and were quick to assume idiocy. I only typed this out for you mate.

jjav 3y ago

> just couldn't even get started at all in any language Let's apply Occam's razor. You have someone who has been programming 8+ years professionally. Maybe they did good work or bad work, we don't know, but we know they've been programming as a profession getting paid to do it for 8+ years. We also all know you can't really go through a week, or even usually a day, of programming without handling something as basic as an array or a list. So, which is actually more likely: a) Someone did 8+ years of programming without ever implementing an array loop or b) They know how to do it, but the test is flawed due to conditions (on a whiteboard in a high stress environment while being criticized). A lot of people with deep expertise in programming are completely incapable of putting on a whiteboard performance under stress. I can never believe the number of interviewers who go "Gotcha!! They don't know how to code despite doing it for years!" instead of considering the simple correct answer is usually (b).

mvdtnz 3y ago
What? The simplest answer by far is c) they haven't been programming for 8 years
- jjav 3y ago
  See above answer. It is very easy to confirm they've held the job they claim on the date range they claim. If they have held a software engineering role for 8 years without getting fired, they absolutely know how to loop over an array.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Reference checking almost always happens after the interviews. So no, the interviewer would not be expected to know this and should make an effort to confirm the person knows what they claim to know.
    - jjav 3y ago
      Reference checks and employment verification are different things. Reference check is done after the interviews, you ask the candidate for references (past managers and coworkers) and call them up. That takes a fair amount of other people's time, so it only makes sense to do it after you're fairly certain you want to make an offer. Employment verification is simply getting a statement from past employers that this person worked there from date to date and held these titles. That's quick and easy.
  - fargle 3y ago
    Ha! if only that were true... Maybe at a real modern "software" company. But there are plenty of places where 50% of their so-called software engineers couldn't write a simple program from scratch. In fact, as I think about the cases I've seen, it seems to get easier with senior "SWEs". They can exist going to meetings and delegating work until one day they forget themselves and apply at a company that actually expects SWEs to have a basic understanding of programming.
3y ago