If we as an industry don't trust/value the stated experience of others, why do we continue to ask for it? Maybe tech companies should just stop accepting resumes then?
a) I won't believe you got your PHD legitimately, do fizzbuzz for me.
b) You're faking both your diploma and your 4 year experience at Megacorp, prove me wrong via fizzbuzz.
c) Alright your credentials check out, do this entirely unrelated to the job assignment to prove that you have what it takes to do the job.
d) Alright you aced your assignment which despite being entirely unrelated to the actual job, domain and language, convinces us you got what it takes. Now, tell me an example of when you resolved a conflict with a colleague and how you did it...
You think that they wrote those scenarios with their own voice, so you are misreading the point.
Had they articulated "A hiring might think" at the beginning or even anywhere in their post then yes it would have been clear.
Regardless you don't want to work for anyone - fellow team mate, hiring manager or company that harbors that level of suspicion towards candidates. It's a red flag. I did not miss the point.
Really though? You're going to be like that? You're going to be the guy that tells the person making the point they didn't mean what they meant, after failing at reading comprehension?
The post I responded to said:
"Why even ask for resumes if you're going to ignore them? I also get very annoyed when people ask about your experience, then in the very next breath pretend none of it matters and you should do fizzbuzz."
Which I called bullshit. Then I listed a bunch of things that are also bullshit of the same kind but they get incrementally more bullshitty, among them was this:
"Alright you aced your assignment which despite being entirely unrelated to the actual job, domain and language, convinces us you got what it takes."
Which somehow you took literally.
Because somehow, you believed, someone would actually not only do that, but they would actually think that. They would actually knowingly hand a candidate an assignment they know is entirely unrelated to the job opening, and they would go online and detail their though process on this.
Was this a one time incident or do you go responding to every piece of irony on the internet pointing out that the writer must have meant what they said.
You seem to have greatly over-estimated your articulation and communication. But rather than entertaining the possibility that your intent might not have been universally understood, you are going resort to condescension and ad hominem remarks. Not very mature or constructive.
Then I sat on the other side of the interview table too many times. If my company is going to pay you or (more importantly) if I'm going to trust the success of my project to you, I really do want to know you can do the job. If that offends you, I'm sorry.
We relied too much on the resume and mostly talked during the one hour interview. After hiring the person turned out that our new employee would have had serious issues with FizzBuzz. Maybe even looping through arrays...
When we interview people know we test for basics, regardless of their resume.
Again, it's flawed, but trying to find and attract talent at a small company who maybe can't pay top dollar makes people take risks like this.
At least that's my experience!
If you talk about past projects, they talk about architecture and project management. If you ask about code they have written, they say it's all proprietary.
Ask about some peculiarities of their favorite languages.
Have them describe a recent difficult bug (very insightful - in their description's wording, the scope of the bug itself, steps taken to solve, etc. - but could be 'proprietary').
I have no problem with short sanity checking exercises during interviews. The problem is when they expect a lot more unrealistic whiteboard code.
You can't just hire someone because they say they know something, you'd end up spending a fortune on employee turnover when everyone you've hired turns out to have exaggerated their resume.
1) Who cares if they've exaggerated their resume? The question is supposed to be whether they can contribute well to your code base/business right? I see this as a point towards getting rid of resumes -- maybe companies can stop bullshitting on what they "require" from candidates, and test more literally for what they want.
Don't take my resume, but if it's a backend position where the focus is erlang and postgres, test as specifically as you can for that, with fizzbuzz-like business requirements mixed in, for the best of both worlds.
2) I often wonder if there's anyway to lessen the costs of employee turnover. Obviously there's less you can do about time spent interviewing, but there's gotta be some cheaper way to figure out if someone is going to be a good employee while on the job? I mean that's the best test you could possibly have. Is it just the legal/logistical framework that's missing?
Also, I often wonder if running a company where it's hard for newcomers to ramp up and easy for newcomers to break things is a failing of the CTO and executives/managers all the way down to the newcomer (of course the newcomer is to blame as well if it's flagrant but I also think top-of-the-line tech orgs have (mostly) bulletproof process that evolved with them and got them to where they are (i.e. newcomer can't break your build if commits to shared branches/environments are gated by automated testing to begin with).
FizzBuzz is an interview question you just expect.
RosettaCode has every FizzBuzz solution out there. Tons of people know how to FizzBuzz.
This is just "learning enough to pass the test" - a canned answer like the one you know you have for "How do you deal with multiple simultaneous high priority projects?" or "What's your biggest weakness?"
You may be filtering out lazy lazy candidates with FizzBuzz. But just because they can do it doesn't mean they can ship code.
I don't care what your biggest weakness is. You could have severe OCD or addiction. You could battle depression. You could be a chronic procrastinator. None of those matter. What does matter is if you give a solid straight honest answer, rather than some canned crap you read on a web site somewhere.
Same goes for how you manage multiple high-priority things. Every job I've worked on, every team, it always happens that there are multiple high priority things. Do you try to do them all and then crash and burn? Do you do them half-assed? Do you fight to get priorities aligned? Do you call the sponsors together and share information about the deadlines? Do you under promise and over-deliver? Do you ask for help from your team?
The way you answer is often more important than what you answer. Unless it's "Fuck off."
:)
If you don't know how to reverse a string, or split an array of ints into two with even and odd ints, or write a while loop that terminates on a specific word - I have zero belief that you can fill the position I have available.
Fizzbuzz is cool. I am quite confident I can do it.
CV doesn't matter.