FizzBuzz Interview Test
Discussions center on the FizzBuzz coding problem as a simple screening tool in programming interviews, with widespread surprise at how many self-proclaimed programmers and experienced candidates fail it. Debates include its effectiveness as a basic filter versus criticisms of it being too trivial or not indicative of real skills.
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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.
FizzBuzz is a reasonable way to find people who can't code. I've been surprised to find people with resumes that appeared decent who couldn't complete FizzBuzz even given 20 minutes of time to do it in.
Anyone who can claim to be able to code at least a bit should be able to implement FizzBuzz. As such, it's a childish joke for most programmers.But the alarming thing is that I've read there are people coming to programming interviews who can't fizzbuzz despite the experience listed in their CV. While rather unbelievable, if it really is true then it only makes sense to ask candidates to write FizzBuzz in the first screen before they waste any more of the teams' time.
Fizz buzz is a toy problem. I think it’s a mistake to read too much into anything but basic programming skills while using it as an interview question. If you want to test code quality and maintainability you are much better off with a more realistic problem.
They can’t do fizzbuzz in an interview.
I ask about FizzBuzz in coding interviews because (to my shock and horror), something like 90% of the applicants I've been handed to interview can't think through how to do it.
I presume you haven't submitted candidates to a fizzbuzz test. Try it. The test is well known and out there in the wild. It's almost part of programmer culture. Yet it is absolutely shocking how many candidates that apply to jobs that involve programming will fail that simple test or some minor variation of it. Almost as shockingly, they will also fail to spot their bug after producing a solution that doesn't work as expected.
You would be surprised how many people which call themselves programmers can't even solve fizzbuzz. This is good test to weed out really bad candidates. As I've said, it's good firstpass filter, not a good hiring test.
I was once asked fizz buzz in an interview and it made me sad that some people don't pass it.
You'd be surprised. That's basically why FizzBuzz test [1] usually works.[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/