Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xtracto 2072 days ago
Well, it is not FizzBuzz, but the challenge I ask as a "evidently bad" filter ( http://challenge.paystand.mx/challenge ) is just a couple of GET / POST requests .

You would not imagine how many people (fortunately) get filtered by this step.
2 comments
user5994461 2072 days ago
I can imagine an embedded developer unable to do that, they never do HTTP requests and it's a nightmare to implement in C or C++, a web developer in python/ruby/node should do fine.

It's selecting for languages and candidates with built-in support for HTTP and json and base64. It's far from a 1h problem if the candidate has to find working libraries for each of that.

link
theamk 2072 days ago
Depends on an embedded developer. It is very handy to know TCL or Python so you can script your hardware or create provisioning/testing scripts. And with the whole IOT thing, HTTP requests in C became much more common.
link
xtracto 2072 days ago
Deffinitely right. This is for positions in a SaaS company where the developer would be mostly doing backend or frontend code.
link
corytheboyd 2072 days ago
That looks like an excellent exercise, going to save that :)
link
xtracto 2071 days ago
Thank you! yeah. I designed it with a thought in mind: A lot of the "exercises" or "challenges" that I see people ask for interviews are mainly stupid leetcode type puzzles that do not really reflect what you will be doing on the job.

I wanted to do a challenge that really reflected the stuff that we are doing at Paystand. When you are building a Web based SaaS application, the majority of time you will be a) Interfacing with crappy APIs. b) Doing simple processing in your logic (hence the string processing and sorting), c) Dealing with GET and POST requests in JSON

That's all I tried to present in the challenge. And if you read it, you will see that it gives A LOT of hints. There's even people who have asked me why do I give so many "clues". But on the other side I have gotten candidates that email me to ask me why they API call is returning an error (it is there in the notes that you must use the proper HTTP header). People are lazy, people don't read, and those are not suitable candidates for us.

link
corytheboyd 2071 days ago
Totally agree on all points. I don’t think it gives too many hints at all, in fact it feels very much like a half-baked product spec that you’ll probably have to deal with on the job as well :p

Also the point isn’t to demolish the interviewee with a difficult question, it’s to get a feel for how they are to work with (and of course, if they know the basics at all)

link