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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

The unfortunate truth is that there are fraudsters out there who will attempt to cheat or bullshit their way in. Fizzbuzz is so utterly trivial that you could bang it out in a few minutes. And yet it's amazing how well it weeds out non-programmers, no matter how much they bamboozled over the phone or built up a web of deceit online. You should treat fizzbuzz or the like as a secret handshake, where you write it and then everyone nods with a grin as a member of the fold is recognized, after which the real interview begins.

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Totally agree.

A shockingly small number of candidates I've interviewed have heard of fizzbuzz. The first time I mentioned it to someone, I assumed they already knew it and would just chuckle and crank it out. However, that's actually kind of rare.

When I do talk to a candidate and get that "knowing grin", my estimation of them jumps up a couple of notches. It seems to actually mean something outside of coder forums.

The real downer is how dismaying it as that candidates clearly have never prepared. How could they have done any research ahead of time and NOT seen fizzbuzz?

Actually I don't consider lack of exposure to fizzbuzz a problem. The whole point of it is that it's trivial to implement, even if you've never heard of it before. But a non-programmer (or a "programmer" with no grasp of simple algorithms) will struggle with it.

It's basically a "secret handshake" that non-programmers simply cannot do, and competent programmers can figure out in less than a minute.

Do you really think someone is going to fake a GitHub account, including thousands of commit messages? I just don't buy that. To me that's definitely enough.

If you take a look at my github account you might think it's nothing special. But what you'll also see is that I have several commits per day, despite working a 40 hour/week job and a 15 hour/week job. So at minimum it should be obvious that I really like coding. If you think my code sucks I'm fine with that, please don't invite me to your interview. But at least the company I apply for will know who I am going in.

I've examined a lot of github accounts while hiring, and seeing thousands of commits is rare. If I'm satisfied that there's no chance someone is faking, I'll forego fizzbuzz, but really in the end it's nothing more than a 5 minute formality (and I make a point of telling the candidate that it's just a formality and yes it's trivial, and we both laugh at the absurdity of the situation as he scribbles it up on the white board). At that point the real interview hasn't even started yet.

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