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by sidlls 2608 days ago
I cannot recall the last time I interviewed someone for a position other than intern who could not at least muddle through a FizzBuzz problem. I'm talking hundreds of candidates. The likelihood of a "lucky streak" as long as that if "can't FizzBuzz" is common (i.e. not an outlier) is small.

Usually when I dig into a person claiming "can't FizzBuzz is common" the result is I find what they're calling "FizzBuzz" is nothing of the sort, but is actually a more tricky data structures or algorithms problem.

3 comments

I have to assume you are doing some kind of very strict resume screening or your application form is behind a puzzle or something - I 100% guarantee if you post your job broadly and interview everyone who applies you will have a very bad fizz buzz rate (and probably go insane), and I believe that if you do filter but try to keep an open mind to non-traditional backgrounds you will have a pretty significant fizz buzz fail rate. (I too oversee the screening of hundreds of candidates out of thousands of applicants.)
I've gotten enough candidates who can't FizzBuzz to say you can expect to get at least a couple in a group of 100 candidates. More or less depending on what screening you do before interviews.

There is definitely a second line above the simple FizzBuzz many more candidates would have a lot more trouble with two nested loops.

Several years ago I asked a potential programmer candidate what their favorite operating system was and they replied "MS Office". I couldn't end the interview quickly enough.