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Well you need at least a phone screen and a final interview. Ideally you’d meet with the team in there somewhere. And then for tests, you’d want a FizzBuzz (do

Well you need at least a phone screen and a final interview. Ideally you’d meet with the team in there somewhere. And then for tests, you’d want a FizzBuzz (doable in one minute or less) before the phone screen and then something more substantive before the final interview. 2 interviews/2 tests seems to be the minimum.

OkayPhysicist 2y ago
My CS degree should be more than adequate to show I can FizzBuzz.
- jimbob45 2y ago
  The goal of each step is to weed out the maximum number of applicants possible that you actually want weeded out. A quick FizzBuzz before the phone screen should clear enough of a number out to justify its existence. And, again, it should be something doable in under a minute. The best I've seen is a bonus screen on Indeed that has one of a dozen sample 20-line programs and you just have to point out which line is incorrect in the program.
- VirusNewbie 2y ago
  hahah. No...this is how we got into this situation. You'd be surprised how many CS grads can't do fizzbuzz, or maybe they can do fizzbuzz but they don't quite get recursion or graphs, much less harder concepts..
- w0m 2y ago
  [flagged]
- seneca 2y ago
  It should be, agreed, but you'd be shocked at how many CS degree holders can't do it. That's the thing with a lot of the nightmares in interviews. They're there because there is a huge number of people who apply, lie about their abilities, and need to be filtered. It's also incredibly difficult to fire poor performers in most modern companies, so managers are very touchy about who they hire.
- forgotusername6 2y ago
  Perhaps, but maybe your CS degree comes from a university I haven't heard of. Perhaps it was ages ago and you haven't coded in years. Perhaps it was an entirely theoretical degree with no coding at all. Perhaps you are lying. FizzBuzz takes considerably less time and effort to verify your basic coding ability than checking all of these things.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Sadly, it's not. It should be though. I know HN hates formal certification and licenses, but we really need some kind of reliable credential or signal that a candidate can program up to some very low baseline skill level. Not a signal of mastery or deep knowledge, just a very basic "this person has shown he can write a for loop and design a function with arguments and a return value." This would cut out all of the first round screens. I've interviewed people who claimed to be practicing engineers for 5+ years, and had big name companies on their resume, but became lost when asked to write a simple (no trick question) program in a language of their choice.
  - Paul-Craft 2y ago
    I once gave a person with a PhD and published papers in graph theory a question that could be straightforwardly solved using simple graph algorithms. This person couldn't pull off a for loop despite having other programming jobs on their resume.
    - Yoric 2y ago
      Could have been me at some point in my career. One time, I interviewed while on burnout (general startup stress + workplace bullying). The position was a perfect match, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't write a simple loop. I was rejected. After a forced health break, I applied at Mozilla, got hired, shipped code and specs that are currently used on most devices on this planet and at least one in orbit. So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of judging people from their performance in an interview.
      - Paul-Craft 2y ago
        I believe it. But, we also have no good way to distinguish between "guy who is so burnt out he can't write a for loop" and "guy who couldn't write a for loop under ideal circumstances." Even if we did, hiring someone that burnt out just doesn't seem like a great idea. You were a fundamentally different candidate after your forced health break. What do you think the odds are that, had you actually been hired while burnt out, that you could have succeeded at the job at Mozilla? Without the time off, I'm guessing those odds are low. I realize people have to make a living. Believe me, I do. And I don't think people ought to be as heavily penalized for needing to take extended amounts of time off work as they are. But, I also don't see what a company in a capitalist economy can do about it while still remaining competitive.
- asow92 2y ago
  "Trust, but verify"
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  The applicant who tries to pull "My CS degree" rather than take 3 minutes and write a half dozen lines of code is part of what FizzBuzz is filtering out. And yes, there are many people with CS degrees who can not, even with much help and prompting, FizzBuzz.

OkayPhysicist 2y ago

My CS degree should be more than adequate to show I can FizzBuzz.

jimbob45 2y ago
The goal of each step is to weed out the maximum number of applicants possible that you actually want weeded out. A quick FizzBuzz before the phone screen should clear enough of a number out to justify its existence. And, again, it should be something doable in under a minute. The best I've seen is a bonus screen on Indeed that has one of a dozen sample 20-line programs and you just have to point out which line is incorrect in the program.
VirusNewbie 2y ago
hahah. No...this is how we got into this situation. You'd be surprised how many CS grads can't do fizzbuzz, or maybe they can do fizzbuzz but they don't quite get recursion or graphs, much less harder concepts..
w0m 2y ago
[flagged]
seneca 2y ago
It should be, agreed, but you'd be shocked at how many CS degree holders can't do it. That's the thing with a lot of the nightmares in interviews. They're there because there is a huge number of people who apply, lie about their abilities, and need to be filtered. It's also incredibly difficult to fire poor performers in most modern companies, so managers are very touchy about who they hire.
forgotusername6 2y ago
Perhaps, but maybe your CS degree comes from a university I haven't heard of. Perhaps it was ages ago and you haven't coded in years. Perhaps it was an entirely theoretical degree with no coding at all. Perhaps you are lying. FizzBuzz takes considerably less time and effort to verify your basic coding ability than checking all of these things.
ryandrake 2y ago
Sadly, it's not. It should be though. I know HN hates formal certification and licenses, but we really need some kind of reliable credential or signal that a candidate can program up to some very low baseline skill level. Not a signal of mastery or deep knowledge, just a very basic "this person has shown he can write a for loop and design a function with arguments and a return value." This would cut out all of the first round screens. I've interviewed people who claimed to be practicing engineers for 5+ years, and had big name companies on their resume, but became lost when asked to write a simple (no trick question) program in a language of their choice.
- Paul-Craft 2y ago
  I once gave a person with a PhD and published papers in graph theory a question that could be straightforwardly solved using simple graph algorithms. This person couldn't pull off a for loop despite having other programming jobs on their resume.
  - Yoric 2y ago
    Could have been me at some point in my career. One time, I interviewed while on burnout (general startup stress + workplace bullying). The position was a perfect match, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't write a simple loop. I was rejected. After a forced health break, I applied at Mozilla, got hired, shipped code and specs that are currently used on most devices on this planet and at least one in orbit. So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of judging people from their performance in an interview.
    - Paul-Craft 2y ago
      I believe it. But, we also have no good way to distinguish between "guy who is so burnt out he can't write a for loop" and "guy who couldn't write a for loop under ideal circumstances." Even if we did, hiring someone that burnt out just doesn't seem like a great idea. You were a fundamentally different candidate after your forced health break. What do you think the odds are that, had you actually been hired while burnt out, that you could have succeeded at the job at Mozilla? Without the time off, I'm guessing those odds are low. I realize people have to make a living. Believe me, I do. And I don't think people ought to be as heavily penalized for needing to take extended amounts of time off work as they are. But, I also don't see what a company in a capitalist economy can do about it while still remaining competitive.
asow92 2y ago
"Trust, but verify"
rufus_foreman 2y ago
The applicant who tries to pull "My CS degree" rather than take 3 minutes and write a half dozen lines of code is part of what FizzBuzz is filtering out. And yes, there are many people with CS degrees who can not, even with much help and prompting, FizzBuzz.