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Comment by tcbasche | Hacker News Reader

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tcbasche·

> But we also do a "technical interview" with some fizzbuzz stuff

Why does anyone still think this is a good interview technique that provides any valuable metrics?

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I look at FizzBuzz as a "assert" test before the thorough evaluation.

It should be logically impossible for an experienced developer to not pass a simple test like that. Those tests are not for metrics- they're just for prematurely weeding out corner cases.

Because there are still people who can look good on paper, and even talk their way through interviews, but can't actually code. You do not need the multiple-hour-whiteboard overkill that some places do, but you do need at least one coding gate to prove their resume is not a sham.

Because in the past we hired some programmers that were really good at BS-ing during interview and really crappy at programming.

So now we make sure we hire people who know what "a &= b" does in C and what a #define statement achieves.

I'm not saying you don't screen them at all with a technical task, but it should be something representative of what your organisation does, rather than some overdone toy problem

When I said 'fizzbuzz-like' I meant a simple program that is representative of what we do in the organization. Fizzbuzz is supposed to be a simple challenge as far as I'm aware. Stuff like flipping bits with & and |, or knowing how to use preprocessor macros (since we abuse macros a lot). Or awareness of function pointers.

I guess I missed that fizzbuzz now means things like fizzbuzz, rather than actual challenge

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