Hacker News Reader

Comment by filoleg | Hacker News Reader

HN is a bubble full of people grinding leetcode, working at a big tech company or a start up, and writing code in their spare time as a hobby.

Once you start interviewing people, you will realize how utterly incompetent most of them are. I am talking about people with multiple years of full-time experience in the field and a relevant degree who cannot even implement a basic FizzBuzz. And I am not exaggerating it for comedic value, I legitimately met many people like that by now. Prior to seeing this myself, I could've sworn this was just a joke people used to describe incompetent people, but this is real. And being able to pass FizzBuzz doesn't even scratch the surface of being competent, but a lot of people cannot manage to get past that stage.

View on HN

Honestly, it sounds like more of a problem with the test-givers than the test-takers.

People with experience have more dignity than to perform a dog-and-pony show for some startup on a whiteboard. Remember, in this market you need them more than they need you.

I mean, it isn't just startups that do whiteboard coding interviews. In fact, if you want to check my comments on HN, I said pretty directly that I do not work for a startup.

Every single engineer who was or is employed at any big tech company has went through whiteboard interviews. If you are trying to imply that big tech companies cannot manage to attract experienced people, then I question the validity of that.

There are certainly incompetent people in most any industry. But the reality is most organizations manage to keep their systems running and ship products with average or below average developers doing much of the work. How do you reconcile that fact with your observations?

Have you considered the possibility that you're asking the wrong questions? Or perhaps your organization isn't good at identifying candidates with low skills but high potential?

> I am talking about people with multiple years of full-time experience in the field and a relevant degree who cannot even implement a basic FizzBuzz.

I'm sure all of them can implement FizzBuzz, just not on the interview under pressure. It has absolutely nothing to do with competence, but understanding that requires just a little bit of background in human psychology.

If you're supposed to be a professional software engineer and can't do fizzbuzz under pressure that's same as saying you're a professional soccer player but you can't tie your shoe under pressure. That bar is so low that it doesn't matter whether there was any pressure or not.

This sounds like a problem in interviewing practices.

Why waste time interviewing incompetent people?

Just ask for code samples (github, stackoverflow, anything else) and make a 5-minute screening call via Skype to filter out incompetent people.

That really only works for entry level positions. Competent, experienced developers are likely to laugh at your request for code samples. You have to understand what type of candidates you're targeting and adjust the recruiting approach accordingly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com