8 ms·

> One of my potential colleagues interviewed me and gave me a fizzbuzz question. That should have been a big clue right there that it wasn't going to go well.

> One of my potential colleagues interviewed me and gave me a fizzbuzz question. That should have been a big clue right there that it wasn't going to go well. Based on their hiring criterion and culture, that they still do a technical interview like they were hiring junior developers is a bad sigh.

frostmatthew 12y ago
Jeff Atwood has a good post[1] on why something as simple as FizzBuzz is valuable when hiring engineers at any level. [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  That's assuming you respect Jeff Atwood's opinions at all.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
  For anyone above a jr level developer position, I would assume they'd have code or other artifacts you could review. If you weren't satisfied with their approach or style, don't interview further, or ask for clarification. If you can not find anyone at all with example code/projects, perhaps then start employing fizzbuzz on folks, but... I can't imagine it's too hard to find developers with at least a minimal portfolio that demonstrates something at least as complex, if not moreso, than fizzbuzz.
  - jedberg 12y ago
    The problem with sample code is that I have no idea if you actually wrote it. Maybe you copied it from Google, maybe your friend "helped" you. I have no idea. When I'm first interviewing you, I have no idea how honest you are. The only way I know for sure that you wrote the code is if I watch you write it in front of me. I really like Fizzbuzz because for someone who is a good programmer, whether they've ever seen it or not, they can do it in about two minutes, and then at least I can believe that their code sample is theirs.
    - dminor 12y ago
      I once skipped the "simple programming exercise" part of the interview process for someone who was senior, and severely regretted it when it turned out he struggled with basic programming tasks. He had a nice code sample (pre-github era).
      - cpeterso 12y ago
        Yes. I've interviewed "senior software engineers with 10+ years of C++ experience" that could not tell me the difference between a char and a char pointer.
        Iftheshoefits 12y ago
        How is that even possible? Are you sure they weren't just having (to be crude) a brain fart? Some of these stories about super experienced ("10+ years") developers not being able to answer the most basic of basic syntax or "algorithm" questions seem far-fetched to me.
        hkmurakami 12y ago
        I've also heard of a story where an "Expert in C" (verbatim from resume) thought that the * in the sample source code was a typo. I'm not sure how this is possible either, but the world works in mysterious ways.
        cookiecaper 12y ago
        Consider that most "valid" implementations of fizzbuzz are wholly dependent on awareness of the target language's modulo operator. Self-taught programmers can easily overlook that, and if a specific language is requested, it's easy to not know the syntax even if the concept is understood. Really I don't think those sort of on-the-spot tests/trivia questions are representative by themselves. They may be a useful part of a larger investigation. Two things to stop code sample plagiarism: choose a unique code challenge and, if you're really worried about it, give the client a laptop and tell them to bang something simple out right there and come back in 30-60 minutes to check. Honestly, though, I've rarely depended on either code samples or code trivia to determine if someone is a good hire. If you sit and talk about dev with a person, you can tell if they're on their game or not 90% of the time. The sample/on-the-spot tests can help weed out that extra 10%.
  - dingaling 12y ago
    > I would assume they'd have code or other artifacts you could review 90% of the code I've written, and all the clever stuff, is copyright of and property of corporations. There's no way I'd jeopardise my current job by showing someone else that code
- jghn 12y ago
  Sure, but you ask it or something like that very early on, long before the person even walks in the door. If you're wasting valuable interview time with FizzBuzz on anything other than an entry level position, you're doing it wrong.
- korzun 12y ago
  Every single 'code interview' question site/blog covers FizzBuzz problem ten times a year. Tests like this are a giant waste of time.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    They would be a waste of time, if every job seeker took advantage of such sites / blogs.
  - ionforce 12y ago
    I've interviewed people who didn't know their way around a loop. I would love to exist in a world where everyone could fizz buzz flawlessly.
jedberg 12y ago
I really like Fizzbuzz because for someone who is a good programmer, whether they've ever seen it or not, they can do it in about two minutes. I usually use it as my first question on the phone screen. And you know what? More than 1/2 the people that claim to be doing a job writing code right now can not do it. If you can't write a simple loop in your preferred language, I have to wonder how you are doing coding right now and being successful.
- jghn 12y ago
  I think part of the key with giving FizzBuzz is telling the candidate that any working solution is AOK and meaning it, in other words the dumbest brute force loop is a successful answer. My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they bobble it up a bit. That said, for FizzBuzz proper, one should have dozens of solutions memorized for these situations, but for similarly easy questions the candidate might not have come across that might end up being a big deal.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Plus, you can "scale up" the interview to harder questions so you can test the candidate without making them feel bad by bombing a touch problem at the very start of the interview.
  - kevan 12y ago
    > My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they bobble it up a bit. I've definitely felt that pressure as an interviewee. It's pretty disheartening to write a simple and obviously correct implementation only to have the interviewer express their disappointment that you didn't use a particular optimization. The most fun technical questions I've had start with making a functional algorithm and then massaging it to meet whatever time/space complexity requirements are asked for. Sometimes it results in a complete rewrite and that's ok, the real world works like that too.
ripter 12y ago
I've had senior developers, who came from a large respected companies, bomb fizzbuzz. I'll stop asking fizzbuzz when people stop failing it.
lawl 12y ago
Nope. At my last company I did all the technical interviews. Now, I have no idea how HR selected them, but I got their CVs on my desk and was asked to schedule a meeting with them. And so I did. And oh boy, there were a LOT of previous Fortune 500 Senior devs that could not write anything that even resembles a correct fizzbuzz solution in any language they like without time restriction (I had to kick a few people out after I left them alone for 30 minutes and they told me they need more time). All their CV's looked fine though. If I interview you, I'll ask you to write code, on any level. Usually I asked interviewees for ~3 code samples on paper starting with fizzbuzz moving up in difficulty to still beeing a relatively easy ~5 minute task. I've had one interviewee that started to laugh when I asked him for a fizzbuzz sample and he said, "well that's like asking a baker to bake a bun". he proceded to write a fizzbuzz solution down and is apparently one of the top developers at that company now. I don't care how senior you are. If you're offended by quickly writing down a fizzbuzz solution you're not senior enough to realize how much some people suck at programming. Obviously the actual only interview only started after they wrote fizzbuzz, fizzbuzz helped me stop wasting my time and I convinced HR to stop sending me CVs of people that played bullshit bingo in their CVs. Sure you could blame HR on this for not filtering good enough but HR aren't developers. Although I'm not saying HR couldn't have given me better CVs...
- herghost 12y ago
  I've had very similar experience hiring for information security roles. The volume of "good" CVs that landed on my desk was consistently high, but when we spoke to the candidates on their first telephone interview it became immediately apparent that they were not nearly as skilled at security as they were at writing CVs. In the end, we inserted a 10 minute quick-fire Q&A at the beginning of the telephone interview which was as basic as "Define: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability" and other such trivial security knowledge. It was terrifying the number of people applying for mid/senior level jobs, or contracts with high day-rates who couldn't get past this. What was most galling was when people were obviously googling the anwswers whilst we spoke - we countered this with simple "which is better, and why" type questions so that there was too many variables to google and you also needed to defend your answer. There were only a very small number of candidates who, when confronted with the Q&A responded in a "are you serious?" kind of way and just rattled off the basic knowledge in a couple of minutes. With these we could get down to the detail of the real interview pretty quickly.
snowwrestler 12y ago
Fizzbuzz is incredibly useful to quickly smoke out people who have lied or faked or exaggerated their way into the interview. However, that's all it's good for, which means it should be a single pass/fail question. Asking the candidate increasingly specific iterations of fizzbuzz would be a waste of time.

frostmatthew 12y ago

Jeff Atwood has a good post[1] on why something as simple as FizzBuzz is valuable when hiring engineers at any level. [1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

BrainInAJar 12y ago
That's assuming you respect Jeff Atwood's opinions at all.
mgkimsal 12y ago
For anyone above a jr level developer position, I would assume they'd have code or other artifacts you could review. If you weren't satisfied with their approach or style, don't interview further, or ask for clarification. If you can not find anyone at all with example code/projects, perhaps then start employing fizzbuzz on folks, but... I can't imagine it's too hard to find developers with at least a minimal portfolio that demonstrates something at least as complex, if not moreso, than fizzbuzz.
- jedberg 12y ago
  The problem with sample code is that I have no idea if you actually wrote it. Maybe you copied it from Google, maybe your friend "helped" you. I have no idea. When I'm first interviewing you, I have no idea how honest you are. The only way I know for sure that you wrote the code is if I watch you write it in front of me. I really like Fizzbuzz because for someone who is a good programmer, whether they've ever seen it or not, they can do it in about two minutes, and then at least I can believe that their code sample is theirs.
  - dminor 12y ago
    I once skipped the "simple programming exercise" part of the interview process for someone who was senior, and severely regretted it when it turned out he struggled with basic programming tasks. He had a nice code sample (pre-github era).
    - cpeterso 12y ago
      Yes. I've interviewed "senior software engineers with 10+ years of C++ experience" that could not tell me the difference between a char and a char pointer.
      - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
        How is that even possible? Are you sure they weren't just having (to be crude) a brain fart? Some of these stories about super experienced ("10+ years") developers not being able to answer the most basic of basic syntax or "algorithm" questions seem far-fetched to me.
        hkmurakami 12y ago
        I've also heard of a story where an "Expert in C" (verbatim from resume) thought that the * in the sample source code was a typo. I'm not sure how this is possible either, but the world works in mysterious ways.
        cookiecaper 12y ago
        Consider that most "valid" implementations of fizzbuzz are wholly dependent on awareness of the target language's modulo operator. Self-taught programmers can easily overlook that, and if a specific language is requested, it's easy to not know the syntax even if the concept is understood. Really I don't think those sort of on-the-spot tests/trivia questions are representative by themselves. They may be a useful part of a larger investigation. Two things to stop code sample plagiarism: choose a unique code challenge and, if you're really worried about it, give the client a laptop and tell them to bang something simple out right there and come back in 30-60 minutes to check. Honestly, though, I've rarely depended on either code samples or code trivia to determine if someone is a good hire. If you sit and talk about dev with a person, you can tell if they're on their game or not 90% of the time. The sample/on-the-spot tests can help weed out that extra 10%.
- dingaling 12y ago
  > I would assume they'd have code or other artifacts you could review 90% of the code I've written, and all the clever stuff, is copyright of and property of corporations. There's no way I'd jeopardise my current job by showing someone else that code
jghn 12y ago
Sure, but you ask it or something like that very early on, long before the person even walks in the door. If you're wasting valuable interview time with FizzBuzz on anything other than an entry level position, you're doing it wrong.
korzun 12y ago
Every single 'code interview' question site/blog covers FizzBuzz problem ten times a year. Tests like this are a giant waste of time.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  They would be a waste of time, if every job seeker took advantage of such sites / blogs.
- ionforce 12y ago
  I've interviewed people who didn't know their way around a loop. I would love to exist in a world where everyone could fizz buzz flawlessly.

jedberg 12y ago

I really like Fizzbuzz because for someone who is a good programmer, whether they've ever seen it or not, they can do it in about two minutes. I usually use it as my first question on the phone screen. And you know what? More than 1/2 the people that claim to be doing a job writing code right now can not do it. If you can't write a simple loop in your preferred language, I have to wonder how you are doing coding right now and being successful.

jghn 12y ago
I think part of the key with giving FizzBuzz is telling the candidate that any working solution is AOK and meaning it, in other words the dumbest brute force loop is a successful answer. My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they bobble it up a bit. That said, for FizzBuzz proper, one should have dozens of solutions memorized for these situations, but for similarly easy questions the candidate might not have come across that might end up being a big deal.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Plus, you can "scale up" the interview to harder questions so you can test the candidate without making them feel bad by bombing a touch problem at the very start of the interview.
- kevan 12y ago
  > My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they bobble it up a bit. I've definitely felt that pressure as an interviewee. It's pretty disheartening to write a simple and obviously correct implementation only to have the interviewer express their disappointment that you didn't use a particular optimization. The most fun technical questions I've had start with making a functional algorithm and then massaging it to meet whatever time/space complexity requirements are asked for. Sometimes it results in a complete rewrite and that's ok, the real world works like that too.

ripter 12y ago

I've had senior developers, who came from a large respected companies, bomb fizzbuzz. I'll stop asking fizzbuzz when people stop failing it.

lawl 12y ago

Nope. At my last company I did all the technical interviews. Now, I have no idea how HR selected them, but I got their CVs on my desk and was asked to schedule a meeting with them. And so I did. And oh boy, there were a LOT of previous Fortune 500 Senior devs that could not write anything that even resembles a correct fizzbuzz solution in any language they like without time restriction (I had to kick a few people out after I left them alone for 30 minutes and they told me they need more time). All their CV's looked fine though. If I interview you, I'll ask you to write code, on any level. Usually I asked interviewees for ~3 code samples on paper starting with fizzbuzz moving up in difficulty to still beeing a relatively easy ~5 minute task. I've had one interviewee that started to laugh when I asked him for a fizzbuzz sample and he said, "well that's like asking a baker to bake a bun". he proceded to write a fizzbuzz solution down and is apparently one of the top developers at that company now. I don't care how senior you are. If you're offended by quickly writing down a fizzbuzz solution you're not senior enough to realize how much some people suck at programming. Obviously the actual only interview only started after they wrote fizzbuzz, fizzbuzz helped me stop wasting my time and I convinced HR to stop sending me CVs of people that played bullshit bingo in their CVs. Sure you could blame HR on this for not filtering good enough but HR aren't developers. Although I'm not saying HR couldn't have given me better CVs...

herghost 12y ago
I've had very similar experience hiring for information security roles. The volume of "good" CVs that landed on my desk was consistently high, but when we spoke to the candidates on their first telephone interview it became immediately apparent that they were not nearly as skilled at security as they were at writing CVs. In the end, we inserted a 10 minute quick-fire Q&A at the beginning of the telephone interview which was as basic as "Define: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability" and other such trivial security knowledge. It was terrifying the number of people applying for mid/senior level jobs, or contracts with high day-rates who couldn't get past this. What was most galling was when people were obviously googling the anwswers whilst we spoke - we countered this with simple "which is better, and why" type questions so that there was too many variables to google and you also needed to defend your answer. There were only a very small number of candidates who, when confronted with the Q&A responded in a "are you serious?" kind of way and just rattled off the basic knowledge in a couple of minutes. With these we could get down to the detail of the real interview pretty quickly.

snowwrestler 12y ago

Fizzbuzz is incredibly useful to quickly smoke out people who have lied or faked or exaggerated their way into the interview. However, that's all it's good for, which means it should be a single pass/fail question. Asking the candidate increasingly specific iterations of fizzbuzz would be a waste of time.