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I have done about a dozen or so interviews. I can totally imagine some people not being able to do a simple fizz buzz from scratch. But when they have full inte

by wmkn 12y ago

I have done about a dozen or so interviews. I can totally imagine some people not being able to do a simple fizz buzz from scratch. But when they have full internet access and no one is watching them. "Solving" fizz buzz is then as simple as performing a search and copying the results. I'll probably get down voted because it seems people on HN are incredibly attached to the FizzBuzz story. Possibly I am totally wrong and I am too positive about the skills of people with a CS degree. But it seems the crazier the anecdote (full internet access, coding at home, etc.) the more eager people are to believe it.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Some people don't even know how to do Google searches. This suggests a productive interview question: ask your candidate a question that they could not possibly answer on their own, then provide them with an internet-connected box, and see whether it even occurs to them to use web search. It's not just programmers; I devoted twenty years to asking medical professionals why I have a constant, raging, unquenchable thirst. That's a symptom of the very worst kind of diabetes, so of course they'd order a fasting blood sugar test. "No doctor, it could not possibly be diabetes. If I had diabetes, I would have been dead twenty years ago." When the tests came back normal, the doctor would lose all interest in talking to me, then refuse to investigate further. Just a few years ago an emergency room resident who I never personally met, but was a member of one of the other websites I frequent, diagnosed it as Psychogenic Polydipsia - "Thirst of the Mind" - which is an uncommon side effect of the medicine I take for my schizoaffective disorder.
nolok 12y ago
I'm the parent who said the story (although parent I answered to was also using fizzbuzz it seems, which shows just how real it is) . And I totally understand what you mean, in that before I ran interviews I would probably never have believed it myself. Truth is, I think a lot of people in this field are not "bad" or "stupid", they simply don't care. That's what struck me the first couple of times, not that they failed fizzbuzz or to understand how simple of a problem it's supposed to be, but that they don't even copy it. At first you think it's a couple of bad apples, then you think you're really bad at choosing interviewee, then you get that no matter what, almost half of the people you see shouldn't even be working in that field. Frankly, it might not be politically correct to say that but running interviews had to be one of the best thing of my career for my self esteem.
nolok 12y ago
I'm the parent who said the story (although parent I answered to was also using fizzbuzz it seems, which shows just how real it is) . And I totally understand what you mean, in that before I ran interviews I would probably never have believed it myself. Truth is, I think a lot of people in this field are not "bad" or "stupid", they simply don't care. That's what struck me the first couple of times, not that they failed fizzbuzz or to understand how simple of a problem it's supposed to be, but that they don't even copy it. At first you think it's a couple of bad apples, then you think you're really bad at choosing interviewee, then you get that no matter what, almost half of the people you see shouldn't even be working in that field. Frankly, it might not be politically correct to say that but running interviews had to be one of the best thing of my career for my self esteem.

by wmkn 12y ago

MichaelCrawford 12y ago

Some people don't even know how to do Google searches. This suggests a productive interview question: ask your candidate a question that they could not possibly answer on their own, then provide them with an internet-connected box, and see whether it even occurs to them to use web search. It's not just programmers; I devoted twenty years to asking medical professionals why I have a constant, raging, unquenchable thirst. That's a symptom of the very worst kind of diabetes, so of course they'd order a fasting blood sugar test. "No doctor, it could not possibly be diabetes. If I had diabetes, I would have been dead twenty years ago." When the tests came back normal, the doctor would lose all interest in talking to me, then refuse to investigate further. Just a few years ago an emergency room resident who I never personally met, but was a member of one of the other websites I frequent, diagnosed it as Psychogenic Polydipsia - "Thirst of the Mind" - which is an uncommon side effect of the medicine I take for my schizoaffective disorder.

nolok 12y ago

I'm the parent who said the story (although parent I answered to was also using fizzbuzz it seems, which shows just how real it is) . And I totally understand what you mean, in that before I ran interviews I would probably never have believed it myself. Truth is, I think a lot of people in this field are not "bad" or "stupid", they simply don't care. That's what struck me the first couple of times, not that they failed fizzbuzz or to understand how simple of a problem it's supposed to be, but that they don't even copy it. At first you think it's a couple of bad apples, then you think you're really bad at choosing interviewee, then you get that no matter what, almost half of the people you see shouldn't even be working in that field. Frankly, it might not be politically correct to say that but running interviews had to be one of the best thing of my career for my self esteem.

nolok 12y ago