One FizzBuzz Interview so far.... News flash... The moment I am asked to write FizzBuzz during a technical test I intentionally stop and ask the questions from there on out. I've done this a couple of times. And you know what I learned... I learned a whole lot more about the interviewer and their processed than they found out about me.
Let me take you back to a technical interview I had about five years ago.
I drive up to the building, it is way out in the sticks; just about still in my home county, but so obscure it's in a part I have never ever been in.
I pull up and the building is like a box of black glass, no character, no soul, just a box. The non-native tree species planted around it to discourage birds actually using the tree's and the austere grass puts me off.
Things don't get any better, for I walk through the door and there's no secretary, no desk, nothing... The lights aren't even on; this doesn't bode well. I look around for a buzzer, a phone even a limp notice of what to do. When a door opens and a man approaches offering me a hand to shake. He leads me to a similarly deserted corridor with a chair in it and I'm left to my devices once again.
I read some inane notice about some award some member of the staff had received (this is important later in the interview) and I read the fire evacuation notice. It's quiet, quiet and silent. There's one door nearby with a few people within and another which is a closed office piled with stacks of desks..... Empty corridors - which would be dev spaces, massive rooms with a few people in them, no secretary and piles of desks? What have I walked into?
About ten minutes later I'm ushered into this room, I've brought my CV a few piece of detail about me and some references to my technical projects at home; as well as references to some of the discussions I have on these very pages and my github. You know actual technical things, which you can see me achieving.
I can't talk about my current work with them... Heck I can't talk to you guys about my work now. But I do it, and I pay a mortgage; that's all the proof I can proffer.
Anyway, I seat myself and a lady explains their technical lead will come and perform the technical test, he enters a moment later with a massively overpowered gaming laptop. I hate gaming laptops.
I much prefer a simple sleak laptop, a decent screen, nice keyboard and plenty of battery life; and I do my work on a remote machine via SSH or whatever machinations you wish. I do not generally work on my laptop, it's a portal onto other more powerful machines which are tethered, and this way I can go take my laptop with me anywhere and get amazing performance from it, as I'm only interested in a bit of internet, RAM and then remoting into other services.
Anyway, he plonks this behemoth down and proceeds to tell me about test driven development... TDD.
I HATE TDD.
Now, I know test have a place, heck I really like doctest, including tests into code you've written, to ensure it is within specification is perfect, and validates your progress.
My hatred comes from writing tests up front, I find this backwards logic, and I don't think you could ever persuade me otherwise. Define the scope of your input, validate it in your code (I often assert up front when data is unexpected or malformed, or at the very least bail early) and then you run your code, and then TEST the result. I do not believe you should write a test and then further write the code to fulfill that test.
You will miss something, you will be thinking about the test as the solution, rather than the solution itself.
If anything writing the test and then producing the code to meet that test may very well be called TDD today, but when I was a lad it was called Prototyping. And though I'm sure we can all agree prototyping is best done in a language different to your final product, it is not really prototyping when you are not producing the product, you're producing a test.
I find it wasteful of time, and often ignores enough scope, for instance I've seen a fair few hundred thousand up front tests written and then the code to meet them in my time, never have I seen a validation of the input data, the input has generally been hard set into the test. That's not as wise a test-scope of ensuring the result after the fact.
(This does not mean test suits after the fact are the best, I just think they're the best for my style; not least as they are opt-in, for those times you are in a swing, and easy to add later).
So, TDD... Why is he telling me about TDD?
He does, he explains they have a method and that method is structured, he does not offer me any test framework specifically, instead he opens notepad and asked me to write FizzBuzz.
And the interview stops there; I don't think the guy realised it, but I stopped being interviewed at that point, I was not going to accept their job even if offered, but I wanted to see where this lad (and he was young) was going with his thinking.
This half empty hulking building and they're trying to hire engineers, and he is going on about TDD but FizzBuzz?
So I play total dumb, I simply start to write "int main"... And he surprises me.
"No No, start with the test".
Ohkakkkakay....
I have NO idea what test suites he has installed, I don't use G-Test or Boost-Test, I use doctest. So I write a SCENARIO; he blinks and just takes the laptop off of me and starts to open some other window... I didn't know he would allow me to open some other window, this isn't my machine, I don't know what he has installed.
This sort of sums up TDD to me, the tools aren't easily defined.
Anyway, twenty minutes later and I just about have it Buzzing on 5's and I'm not very interested, I've come to a conclusion.
He isn't impressed; rightly so, but he has no idea he's just been investigated by an older and more cynical mind than his.
He leaves and no less than three people come into continue the conversation, and boy do they, they talk to me for a solid 120 minutes; I timed it... I was so bored. But I engaged a little when they talked about their award winning technology.
I recall the poster for the lady who had won this award and mention her, by name.
"What, how do you, who has been talking to you?"
This is very strange, "no" I assure them "no-one, I saw the poster on the notice board". One of the two girls flanking the chap in the middle here makes a note.
They talk to me about the company a bit more, they talk about their re-shuffling engineering and wanting to press their position forward to a virtual machine the customer hosts on hardware; previously they had been providing a dedicated box.
I'm terminally not interested in this boring black blocky building which now perfectly reflects the boring blocky people inside.
And I give up, I lean forward, elbows on the table, and I gather the copies of my CV from the hands of the three people and I say:
"Look, I've spoken with your technical lead, and I'm scared to my core of your processes, I don't like what I've heard, it seems you're struggling to recruit and there are reasons for this you will have to identify yourselves; I don't think I can help you"
They are scowling a little here, I'm sure they're far more used to candidates who want the job.
"Indeed, I think somewhere you have a beige room with ranks of screens and engineers in stuff suits not talking with a great board or wiki with all the failing builds traffic lit from your little test driven development board...."
At this point the lady on the left looks at the guy in the middle, who has a little switch to his eye.
"And such a stifling, control freak, desperate development environment is not one I wish to be part of"
They thank me, and I thank them sincerely. And I leave.
As I come out of the building the sun has come around, the black glass face of the building is now not so black, instead I can see inside, there are three long benches of PC's all facing a pair of chaps at the front sporting bluetooth ear phones in one ear. Above their heads is a large TV screen with a list of running continuous integration tasks and each has a traffic light. As I watch one goes red, one of the two larger men touches the headset at his ear and an engineer on one of the benches glances up and starts to scrabble about on their machine.
It is a sweat shop. I was not only right, but so happy I'm driving off.
I felt like going and knocking on the glass and cooing at them "Come, follow me, be free, be free".
But instead I just drove home.
Prior me: Just coming into edit this before it goes live on Friday, guess what I'm watching...
And I disagree with the approach of analysing FizzBuzz; analyse the interviewer.
No comments:
Post a Comment