Hacker News Reader

Comment by efbbbf | Hacker News Reader

>and descriptions that are not representative of the job they're trying to hire for.

The position is described as a UX engineer and designer, and the applicant is expected to be experienced with JS and various frameworks for it.

The story seems to be more about a person who can't read and feels entitled to a job position they're not fit for. They were unable to display knowledge of basic for loops and conditionals and they were unable to convert a timecode string into seconds. Both of which are basically tests for "does this person even understand programming". Which they obviously don't because they wrote "OMG MATH" to a problem consisting only of the most basic logical concepts.

Maybe next time they should apply for a job that doesn't require programming knowledge.

View on HN

I don't disagree with you that the job expected programming in their candidate. Nor should she have rationalized away the two lines that mentioned Javascript in description. However, I do believe that there is a communication error on the part of the company.

A UI/UX Designer/Engineer does not inherently require programming. In many startups, it does, as does wearing many hats. But if they're looking for someone to program, it should be outlined in the responsibilities. Knowing "HTML/CSS/JS" is different than building an entire application (just an example).

Not only that, but the line "Experienced with Object Oriented JavaScript and modern JavaScript libraries such as Ember, Backbone, or Angular." was placed under "Preferred Qualifications", which to me says "desirable but not necessarily required". If that's not what they meant, they should have clarified the importance.

My personal opinion is that if a job wants you to build stuff, they should outright say "You will be responsible for developing and maintaing a code base, in addition to designing and lending UI/UX expertise" rather than just loading a job listing with keywords.

I think the job posting clearly communicated that the applicant should at least have a basic grasp of JavaScript. On a related note, it's weird that the author claims to have experience with Ember/Angular.js or other similar frameworks without being able to write the FizzBuzz.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

That's not being fair. That's your own problem. I'm also a self-taught programmer, but I don't feel like I need to compare myself to her.

The point is that she didn't fit the requirements of the job.

As a result, she did not get the job. That's pretty much end of story. If the job requires her to be "experienced with JS", that means that they want her to know the language.

And it's not just modulo. She didn't know how to convert a timecode string to seconds.

I have no idea how someone like that would be able to understand the code. Nor why she would think that "it's okay" not knowing those things and yet be an engineer at their company.

To repeat what has been said - she was not applying to a job as a designer. She was applying to a job as an engineer and designer. She didn't meet at least half the criteria (and she didn't have degrees, which is probably why they even asked her those questions to test what actual knowledge she has).

Yeah, I guess I didn't quite make my point clear. All I meant was that it's easy to work inside frameworks without truely understanding the language.

I wasn't "comparing" myself to her. I was just explaining how it could happen. I agree that she wasn't qualified for the job and didn't deserve to get it. But I'd be willing to guess that if they job had a line like "This job will be 75% programming, 25% ui/ux design", she wouldn't have applied. I feel like she was looking for a design job but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview.

> To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild.

Knowing of an existing modulus operator/function isn't necessary to solve FizzBuzz; there's a fairly simple solution with just add/increment, assignment, and conditional logic without modulus.

Yeah, you're right about that. I was just trying to explain how you can work in an environment and make websites, but not necessarily grasp a full understanding of the language you're working in.

But my feeling from the post was that she is first and foremost a UI/UX designer, with some supplemental jquery/js knowledge. She applied for the job thinking it was a fit, but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview. She wasn't qualified for what they were looking for, but I can empathize with the ambiguity in some of the job listings requirements.

> A UI/UX Designer/Engineer does not inherently require programming.

I would argue that UI/UX Designer might not, but UI/UX Engineer inherently does.

> But if they're looking for someone to program, it should be outlined in the responsibilities.

It was.

> Knowing "HTML/CSS/JS" is different than building an entire application (just an example).

FizzBuzz doesn't test ability to "build an entire application". It tests fairly minimal ability to apply logical reasoning and apply it with a programming language.

If you can't solve FizzBuzz in a programming language, its not unreasonable for a company to see that as a strong negative signal for any job requiring proficiency in the language, and JS proficiency was advertised as a requirement for the job in question.

Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation. I feel like it's understandable to not have a 100% grasp on all the basics and still produce stuff.

I think the more damning thing in her case is her questioning the question and seemingly not giving it a thorough effort.

Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum qualification doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you. Familiarity? Proficiency? Master? Do you need to know how v8 interprets Javascript?

I'm not making the case that the job was right for her or that she was competent enough to handle it. I'm arguing that ambiguities in descriptions wasted both her time and the company's time.

>doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you. Familiarity? Proficiency? Master? Do you need to know how v8 interprets Javascript?

It says "experienced with OO JS". That's vague, but not so vague that it can mean "I don't even know the basic operators of the language".

And that from someone who claims they can "teach others to code". (http://notlaura.com/services/teach-me-to-fish/)

> Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation.

So? Like I mentioned in response to that, modulus isn't necessary for FizzBuzz.

> Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum qualification doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you.

FizzBuzz doesn't require much depth of knowledge in the target programming language. If you are can handle assignment, addition, conditional logic, and any one of iteration, jumping, or recursion (note that some language may not support all three of those, so which are available depends on language), you can do FizzBuzz.

What FizzBuzz does require (assuming you haven't already studied it and memorized a solution in the language given) is being able to think through a dirt simple problem and apply a programming language to it. It identifies people with minimal programming skills as distinct from those who are limited to cargo cult copypasta (well, again, except that memorization means it can produce false positives.)

Yeah, you're right. FizzBuzz does test a programmers mindset and it's pretty clear she didn't meet those expectations. I was focusing on a tiny aspect of it.

The main point I was trying to get at is that it doesn't seem to me like she identifies as a programmer. She's a UI/UX designer with a little bit of code experience. IMO, the whole point of it wasn't that she was upset that she didn't get the job or what they asked her. It was simply that based on the description, she went in thinking the primary focus was mockups, design and user testing rather than programming. Had the post been more clear about their expectations for the position, she wouldn't have tried for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com