3 ms·

Anecdotally, I've worked in non FAANG orgs for like 15 ish years (just web dev though). Never once been asked an algorithm question. A few years into one job,

Anecdotally, I've worked in non FAANG orgs for like 15 ish years (just web dev though). Never once been asked an algorithm question. A few years into one job, my coworker (the one who interviewed and hired me) asked me over lunch "remember fizz buzz?", and I was like "No, what's that?" He explained the problem and I wrote a simple script with modulus and nested ifs that seemed to work. I asked him what the point of it was and he didn't know either. Then we went back to work and never talked about fancy algorithms again... But the flip side of this anecdote is that I'm still just a web dev. I would never call myself an engineer, software or otherwise. I also don't get paid much (by tech standards), even though my salary is high by my own standards ($25 to $50 an hour, hacking together PHP and now JS scripts). Terrible for an ivy league comp sci grad, not too bad for a self taught high school dropout.

markus_zhang 2y ago
I'd argue it is just that we were in the wrong time. If it was in the 80s/90s, every company was working on its own stuffs. You got multiple versions of BSD, Microsoft just got NT out of the door, and Linux was barely 1.0. Borland was still fighting Microsoft and seemed to be on the upper hand actually, and there were a bunch of other compiler/IDE products. Nowadays most of the lower level programming stuffs are gone. Sure you get to work on distributed systems, a whole new kind of stuffs, but it's not as exciting as OS, compilers and IDEs.
edabobojr 2y ago
The point of fizz-buzz was to serve as a simple filter at the front end of the interview process. It should be simple, but a surprising number of job candidates were unable to do it.
VirusNewbie 2y ago
Don't sell yourself short. I don't know if you're in the US, but if you are not having a high school or college degree will not disqualify you from the high paying FAANG type jobs. If you want to go deeper into CS or algorithms, you should give it a shot. I don't have a college degree and now I work at a FAANG after many years of transitioning from basic web dev to infra type work.

markus_zhang 2y ago

I'd argue it is just that we were in the wrong time. If it was in the 80s/90s, every company was working on its own stuffs. You got multiple versions of BSD, Microsoft just got NT out of the door, and Linux was barely 1.0. Borland was still fighting Microsoft and seemed to be on the upper hand actually, and there were a bunch of other compiler/IDE products. Nowadays most of the lower level programming stuffs are gone. Sure you get to work on distributed systems, a whole new kind of stuffs, but it's not as exciting as OS, compilers and IDEs.

edabobojr 2y ago

The point of fizz-buzz was to serve as a simple filter at the front end of the interview process. It should be simple, but a surprising number of job candidates were unable to do it.

VirusNewbie 2y ago

Don't sell yourself short. I don't know if you're in the US, but if you are not having a high school or college degree will not disqualify you from the high paying FAANG type jobs. If you want to go deeper into CS or algorithms, you should give it a shot. I don't have a college degree and now I work at a FAANG after many years of transitioning from basic web dev to infra type work.