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> an arbitrary lines of code minimum, despite meeting all of their requirements.

There's no way this is true right? Why would anyone care about LoC for a coding challenge?

Some "old school" management styles measure LoC and make hiring/firing decisions based on that. Really.

Someone should enlighten them that less LOC is good in solving a problem, granted that the code is also more maintenable due to smaller surface area and no bad shortcuts were taken. Yes, it’s hard for management types to get that, perhaps because most of them want the problems entrenchability creates, and that for their own … benefits.

Perhaps tell them the story of the 10x carpenter.

Obviously, the one who uses the most wood wins! ;) If told right, they should easily figure out why LoC is a horrible metric.

Or airplane builder…

I had a recruiter ask me a few days ago, on behalf of the HM, how many lines of code I've written in my career. I told him that's a very weird question, and said nothing else. Needless to say, they're passing on me.

It might have been an estimation task, akin to a Fermi problem.

That's charitable, but leads to a new "how many manhole" questions - how many programmers in NYC will write fizzbuzz on a whiteboard this week?

If fizz buzz took you ten thousand lines, I'd care!

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