Okay if you are giving or plan on giving the FizzBuzz question please answer a few simple questions:
- Are you currently a software engineer?
- Does the majority of your job involve solving problems?
- Do you value your time?
There are so many ways to screen out the majority of wannabes that there is absolutely no reason you should be wasting your time interviewing people who may or may not be able answer such a dumb question. Coding quizzes, multiple choice forms.
You’re smart.. post an input set that requires a simple transformation to output a sequence. The candidate takes the sequence and it unlocks the resume posting mechanism. If you’re recruiting off of a big job site have some questions ready for the candidate that are part of your email. Give HR some multiple choice questions and answers and a minimum ammount that the candidate has to get right.
Be smart, solve problems, stop wasting time, that’s your job it’s what you get paid for.
Why Can’t Programmers… Program? Why can’t people do a good job at anything? Because they are too lazy or inept to use their brains and come up with solutions. Programmers are well known for being horrible at anything besides writing code. If they can’t write code they’re obviously not a programmer. And if a programmer can’t solve trivial problems like wasting their time with other idiots they’re either a idiot themselves or a glutton for punishment.
Need some concrete examples?
Many smaller game companies require a sample of your code or a solution to a small programming problem. For instance try ‘Mini-Queue‘ on for size.
ArenaNet wants you to submit some source code.
NCSoft Austin requires at a minimum that you pass a phone screens that with a series of object design and C++ coding problems before you get past HR and it’s a good thing too because even the majority of people who make it past that don’t get through later interviews.
Microsoft conducts pre-screening over the phone and you may get a problem to solve from HR. However, in my opinion Microsoft’s pre-screening HR interviews for engineeers are too focused on soft skills these days. I wasted way too much time interviewing smart sounding candiates who were crappy coders. Microsoft can afford wasting their employees time, but I still complained about it.
If you’re trying to get a job as a programmer stop wasting your time reading these idiotic blogs. Go read ‘Algorithms in C‘ and ‘The Pragmatic Programmer‘ and write some code… read some code.. and write some more code. You can do it, I know you can.