Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

Re:Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews by BeetleB on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @12:33AM (#24489557)

I'm sure there exist jobs where its OK not to know that a mod operator exists, but none of mine were of those kind. I'm pretty sure my experience matches the majority by a pretty large margin.

> A fizzbuzz with fewer false-positive rejections might be something like "implement multiplication without using the multiplication operator".

While possibly a fair question, this is a whole order of magnitude more difficult than FizzBuzz. It requires more domain knowledge as well (lots of people have forgotten how to multiply).

> Allows the quality candidates lots of room to shine.

But this is precisely the opposite of FizzBuzz. The goal is to weed out horrible candidates, not identify great ones.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews by cellularmitosis on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @05:00AM (#24490845)

> this is a whole order of magnitude more difficult than FizzBuzz

Sorry, in my mind the input was restricted to positive integers. My fault for not making that clear.

    def mul(a, b):
        accum = 0
        while b > 0:
            accum = accum + a
            b -= 1
        return accum

You are correct that accounting for floating point would make this more complicated than fizzbuzz.

> But this is precisely the opposite of FizzBuzz. The goal is to weed out horrible candidates, not identify great ones.

This accomplishes both at once. That's a super set, not an opposite.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews by joks on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @12:11PM (#24494025)

It's even easier to do it with the inclusion of non-integers, though - `prod = a / (1 / b)`

Granted, that may be counter to the spirit of the question, but it's a valid answer lol

[ Parent | on HN ]