Comment by ionwake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ionwake | Hacker News Reader

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I completely disagree with you seanhunter ( and everyone else mostly) so please dont take offence I could be wrong but the following is my opinion.

I am thankful most companies are gatekept by people who think like you as I feel it gives me and my company an advantage. In the UK over the course of nearly 20 years I was asked by random interviews to do "fizzbuzz" which I always refused to do out of principle.

The problem being anyone who doesn't know how to code could just memorize it.

My problem was it wasn't a "starter" question it was the equivalent of asking me if I wear shoes on a daily basis and if so, to demonstrate it in an extremely concise way.

I felt it was offensive regarding my ability, indicative of narrow minded testing protocols for candidates, and a lack of respect for why they had chosen to interview me as it meant they probably were unaware of my portfolio, which many companies were.

I am not saying this to convince anyone on HN they are a bad idea as most of them rely on codemonkey exercises like these to prove their worth straight out of college, I am just saying I think they are idiotic.

I’m not taking offense but don’t think for a moment that you know me. I don’t “gatekeep” and don’t in fact ask leetcode questions when I interview. But I have been a software engineer for 20+ years in every possible role from a basic IC up to CTO, been part of small teams, run huge teams been a cog in a massive machine to being “the guy who has to do everything” and I am perfectly happy to do leetcode in an interview and wouldn’t consider it “humiliating” and what I’m saying here is if you think it’s offensive you should adjust your perspective. I personally don’t think it’s great signal in an interview for some of the reasons you say which is why I don’t ask these questions myself.

I don't think I said I know you. Cheers for your reply , maybe my perspective is wrong.

If I were given fizzbuzz as an interview question, I would say something like: "Sure, I'll do it. But I've got 40 years of experience, and I expect the rest of the interview questions to be on a bit different level."

Many people fail fizzbuzz. Most interview questions at big tech are not much harder than fizzbuzz. You are not qualified to be a software engineer if you can't write fizzbuzz after seeing it for the first time in your life.

"Many people" is an understatement. In my experience 70%+ of applicants fail basic fizzbuzz or reverse a string level questions. If you think these questions are beneath you, good, you've just made my job easier as an interviewer.

This was one of the most eye-opening truths of the industry revealed to me when I started interviewing candidates. There are so many software developers, even with long histories of well-known companies on their resume, who just cannot write code. Even Fizzbuzz. Even "write a for loop with an if statement" type problems. Under pressure or under no pressure. On a whiteboard or on a computer. This has been shockingly true about a pretty consistent percentage of candidates for every company I've worked with as an interviewer for 25 years.

This is why we have leetcode and Fizzbuzz. There are simply too many phonies applying and counting on their charm and charisma to get them the job, which sometimes works when you don't make candidates actually demonstrate their skills.

No, you’ve just optimized for a lazy metric. You’re filtering for people who can handle trivia under pressure, not necessarily good engineers.

If you are applying for a job in the front office of an NBA franchise, and I ask you "which team did Michael Jordan play for?", answering with "this is a useless trivia question, it is beneath me, I can easily google it, how does it matter?" will mean you are not going any further in the interview. You can then complain about it online all you want, but that's how it is.

Similarly, if I ask you "write a program in your language of choice that prints all even numbers from 1 to 100", you can either cry about it or take the 3 minutes and actually do it. If you can't, it's a pretty clear signal that you don't actually write code in your day job and aren't suited for this one.

Why would someone be under pressure when answering "basic fizzbuzz or reverse a string level questions"? Personally I like easy and quick warmup questions, they make me more calm

It's not trivia, it's basic problem solving skills of the trade.

FizzBuzz trips people up for all kinds of reasons: fear of ‘gotcha’ questions, nerves, overthinking, or even feeling insulted by how basic it is. Sure, some fail because they can’t program—but passing doesn’t mean much either. It just means they’re good at FizzBuzz, not necessarily at solving real problems.

Sure, some qualified people fail simple problems. More likely the applicant failed because they didn't pay attention in school and made a career of copy-pasting stuff from stackoverflow(or AI these days).

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