I recently spent a year working for an "elite" Silicon Valley startup company. The VP engineering had read enough Joel Spolsky to get through the door.. but he didn't practice software literacy.

I would love to work for a shop, even in an underling capacity, that really gets software dev right. It would be worth delaying my startup dreams just so I can do it right at scale.

Count the number of people in senior mgmt and in all positions who can do fizzbuzz. Greater than 50% in all cases - great. Greater than 50 % for all but less than 20% in senior positions - get out. Anything less - run for the hills.

It's not saying its important - everyone in Hollywood says the story is the thing - but only Pixar seems to live by it. See any talk by Ed Catmull

VP Engineering is a parking title.

The role or the person performing it in most cases generally does nothing even remotely close to engineering. If you sit down and seriously grill the guy, he will have no clue what he is doing, why he is doing it or if he is even necessary.

There are a few good people who become VP's but such people are exceedingly rare. Most of the times, VP's are made and hired through politics, strong friend network, god fathers or sometimes sheer luck.

A person I know who has done a few successful start ups once told me, he purposefully avoids hiring anyone with 'director' or 'VP' titles from big companies. Often, they are the ones which take the highest compensation, while actually being the most useless people on the team.

Why do people say "doing fizzbuzz" rather than just programming? Fizzbuzz is just a trick question to see if new programmers know how to use the modulo operator or not.

I have been to student recruitment events at universities hiring software engineers for quite advanced level jobs. We give out a programming quiz (with a nice prize) at these events and we include the fizzbuzz puzzle. We allow solutions in any language and give out style points for nice solutions.

Our experience is that the answers to fizzbuzz are a good classification criteria in vetting who has got programming abilities and who has not. Most people who actually try can solve it, but the ones who are talented give out either a perfect and simple solution or do something elegant and go for the style points. The ones who don't give out a fumbling solution that is too long or shows signs of not being comfortable with the task at hand, even if they manage to write a computer program that produces the correct results.

As silly as it may sound, the fizzbuzz test is a good classifier for programmers. I didn't believe it until I saw the evidence from the quality of candidates we got.

Knowing how to fizzbuzz doesn't make you a good programmer.

But not being able to do it is a very strong signal that someone can't program in any professional setting, no matter what they pretend. It's a very simple and effective test to rule out people who think/pretend they can program, but really can't.

So... it's basically a bloom filter for developer aptitude? :)

Yes, yes it is.

You can solve fizbuzz without modulo operator:

    bool divisible_by(int a, int b) {
      return a==((a/b)*b);
    }

It doesn't require anything more than knowledge about what division means, and I think it's fair play to require such knowledge from programmers.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but wouldn't that always return true? (a/b)*b just cancels out the b right? Unless there is weird floating point stuff going on.

There's not floating point stuff going on, that's why it works. :)

a and b are ints, so a/b is truncated (rounded down) before applying *b.

It's integer maths. For example: a = 10, b = 3 10/3 = 3 3 * 3 = 9 9 != 10

Or even if you don't know anything about integer math, you can use repeated subtraction. Or ask for help on finding a multiple and do the rest of the structure yourself. Or keep a counter to 3 and a counter to 5 and reset them when they fill up.

Definitely not a gimmick question about whether you know about modulus.

Fizzbuzz isn't just modulo, as evidenced by the amusing number of incorrect solutions under the original article.

Fizzbuzz is a test for programming-ability. It's easy to explain, easy to grade, easy to run. If you wanna check if someone can programme, then someone else has already come up with a good test (fizzbuzz) to give them.

fizzbuzz I find is also used as slang for "Groks simple programming". I would say any fizzbuzz equivalent would be fine too.

"Stop working for companies that are not dedicated to software literacy. Schumpter will be round soon enough to have a word with them."

You wish. Once a company is a certain size, it can ignore market pressure by colluding with government (the company I work for should have been obliterated long ago, but there are artificial barriers to entry).

This isn't just about developers and hiring practices. This is about systemisation and bullshit metrics being used to make opaque and life-changing decisions.

This is about the same kind of shitty thinking that results in surveillance states.

"We can't employ/feed you/let you travel/let you have a mortgage/let you open a bank account, you are Invalid."

"Invalid, what do you mean?"

"We are not allowed to tell invalids why they are invalid. Report for reprocessing."

Edit: Oh, and psych tests are bull. It's pretty obvious what the "right" answers are - so all you actually succeed in doing is filtering the psychopaths in.

Which by the way is the same process you go through for college admissions. "We're sorry, we can't admit you" "Why?" "This email was sent by an automated system. For questions, please send an email to admissions@uni.edu" OR "Congratulations, you've been admitted" "Nice, but I'd like to know for what" "Well, we decided that way. You're in, why do you care?"