We've gotten complaints about this username, and I think I agree with them. Trollish usernames aren't allowed on HN, because they effectively troll every thread they post to. If you email us with a better name, we'll be happy to switch it over for you and unban the account, but I've banned it at least for now.
It seems to me this is actually of an example of it used in aggregate, removing pollutants across whole populations, rather than on the individual. I might also sooner say the lesson is if you can unambiguously use the metric to lift people up, that's good. You still have to be very careful about what that means.
Sure, and now everyone knows to shred documents more thoroughly than Enron did.
Although I agree. A company should be managed such that moral transgressions that happen in lower levels should not be possible. That's exactly the reasoning they applied to Joe Paterno and it should apply to every company as well.
To what end? Xi Jinping can just wait until the next president to negotiate away the tariffs. The public certainly hates them. Right or left, I don't see how anyone can see these surviving through another administration.
> The public certainly hates them. Right of left, I don't see how anyone can see these surviving through another administration.
Citation needed. Free traders certainly hate the tariffs, but only a tiny fraction of the public are committed free traders. Also Democrats are dispositionally far more favorable to tariffs and protectionism than Republicans, so unless Trump doesn't run or the Libertarians win the presidency (ha!), I don't see the next administration being much of a swerve in the direction of free trade.
This affects some of my family directly and has a very noticeable impact on local businesses who had become accustomed to and were investing pretty significantly in attracting Chinese interest in their products (California wine industry). While the industry existed for a long time before the Chinese market became a factor, starting in the recession their was definitely a push to attract Chinese individuals to california wine, to the point where many major tasting rooms were recruiting people who speak mandarin, and some folks I know regularly had relatively wealthy recent Chinese college graduates working harvest jobs. I have not been aware of a Chinese intern in our circle for years, and also haven't seen a listing looking for Mandarin in months if not longer.
First of all, once factories leave China, they don’t go back. China’s wage is already at a level similar to Mexico, and is more expensive than Southeast Asia.
Second, both Democrats and Republicans leaderships are anti-China. Chuck Schumer, senate minority leader and a democrat, told trump to “hang tough” on the Chinese tariffs. Bernie Sanders slammed joe Biden when Biden made a remark about how China isn’t a threat.
Yes, exactly. Vietnam stands to reap the benefits. Factories are opening in Vietnam en masse. Once they're up and running, the lifting of tariffs against China won't matter. Chinese workers are higher paid than they used to be. Now China will have to make their way as an advanced, developed economy (with lower growth), just like everyone else.
I don't agree with that. Some, though definitely not all, manufacturing is moving back to the US. But even getting manufacturing to shift out of China to other countries is smart policy, because it reduces the US's concentrated economic dependence on its main strategic rival.
> 1.1 Structure of China's political economy system
So you're cheerleading, of all places, Vietnam?
> 1.2 Accusation of theft of intellectual property, technology and trade secrets
Will still take place.
> 1.3 Forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese entities
This only happens if you want to invest in China. It's a trade-off that's up to each individual firm doing it to make.
Also, I have a hard time believing that Trump's base give two shits about any of these things, beyond a bit of nationalistic ra-ra-ra. None of this has any impact on the life of someone pissed off that their best life prospects consist of collecting dole in the rust belt.
I'd rather Vietnam gain access to military-adjacent tech than China, or grow their economy with factories from US companies, etc - because while Vietnam's main threat is China, China's is the US.
A bunch of mid-strength countries is better for the US than a superpower competitor.
Depends on who the next president is. If Trump is reelected or the Democrats nominate a more populist candidates (i.e. Bernie Sanders), it might not matter who's in the Oval Office. After 8-12 years of tariffs, it might be too difficult to come back from for China and the US.
Arbitration keeps the court system less full. It has a purpose that everyone ignores. How about solving the underlying problem that brought about arbitration: courts being saddled by too many frivolous lawsuits?
Arbitration, when both parties agree to it, and both participate in choosing the arbitrator, is fine.
But contracts that require you to go though arbitration for any future disputes, and where you have zero choice of venue, are incompatible with due process.
>courts being saddled by too many frivolous lawsuits
Citation Needed.
This has been the argument for many deregulators since the 70's which has resulted in the current culture of Employees being treated as disposable cattle in the US but I have yet to see any strong evidence of it's necesity.
The only problem with elections right now is Citizens United. Does anyone honestly believe that the Democratic nominees on the left are all running because they think they can win? Or can we agree that the ability to raise endless money and garner publicity under the guise of an election could be what they're after?
I'm saying this more in regard to the current crop of candidates because it's more obvious and egregious that there are some running for President right now that are doing it for attention and money.
Although you're right. This is by no means exclusive to one side of the aisle.
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.
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.
Funny that this was brought up. I agree fully that it's rare. But...a friend of mine was "den mother" for graduate students in a top 20 comp sci program. The students were often doctoral candidates but could also be MS students doing a thesis. A large part of her job was prepping them for interviews with companies like Google, MS, Oracle, etc. Here are a few gems she had to remind/inform them of.
"Yes, you have to shower the day of an interview."
"It's never acceptable to pull out your lunch and eat in the middle of the interview, please don't do it again."
"Yes, you have to wear something other than the shirt you slept in."
It depended on the company. MS interviewers came in khaki slacks and buttoned down shirts. Google came in jeans with lots of ink and piercings on display.
Part of my friend's responsibility was to give feedback to the interviewers. Her students were passing over MS to go to Google, despite MS offering significantly more for a salary. Their interviewers asked her for feedback to figure out why. She had to politely say that Google was seen as cooler. (The cooler impression wasn't just the image gained from the interviewers, it was the problems Google was trying to solve. But, the interviewers added to the company's image of "coolness".)
She held this position probably a decade ago and left after a few years. Things may be different now.
Will they reject you for that? Probably not. Would a lot of employees of tech companies (particularly west coast) interpret it as a lack of familiarity with the industry? Probably. Jeans and a button down or a button down and slacks seems pretty standard in my experience.
I went to an interview in the UK (fancy add/marketing agency) and they (the interviewer) had such a dirty messed up t shirt on, that I would not wear to dig the garden.
There is an asymmetry in the reaction though - being turned down by a company is regarded as just something that happens, turning down a company once you've had an offer seems to cause genuine shock.
Wouldn't that be more because people would expect the rejection to happen pre-offer if it's about anything other than compensation(turning down for compensation is normal, e specially with multiple offers)?
I've been programming for 35 years and I can't fizzbuzz cause I don't know what it is. Yes, I've heard about it before cause it's mentioned on forums, and I even looked it up once, but I always consider such things childish. (I honestly don't remember anything about it.) Ask me about an algorithm and I'm there but don't play games with me.
EDIT: Just looked it up. Yep. A game. Now compare that to my years of accomplishments and you'll say asking me to write fizzbuzz childish, too.
Fizzbuzz isn't a trick questions that you have to have heard of. It's designed to be an EXTREMELY easy question, answerable by anyone with even a basic knowledge of programming. It's not a game. It's a way to weed out people that don't know anything.
If you have been programming for 35 years, you'll probably be appalled by how easy it is. Look it up.
No-one remotely confident would ever fail a candidate for not knowing what "fizzbuzz" means. But any competent interviewer would fail a candidate who, having have "fizzbuzz" explained to them, could not implement it.
In internet discussions, people say "write fizzbuzz" because it's a well known trivial problem.
In an interview, they ask you to print the numbers 0..n to the screen, while replacing numbers divisible by 3 with the string literal fizz, and numbers divisible by 5 with the string literal buzz. The biggest trick or gotcha is that they will also specify that numbers divisible by 15 should be replaced with 'fizzbuzz', but they'll probably say 3 and 5 instead of 15.
If your list of accomplishments is really as impressive as you say, you can write a loop, a conditional, and use the modulus operator. And honestly if someone couldn't figure out modulus, they might still be able to pass. (But I'd be VERY curious about their background)
Fizzbuzz is not a trick question. It's not a difficult question. It's not meant to make you look stupid if you know how to program. It is only meant to check whether you understand conditional logic and looping. It's intentionally chosen to be the lowest of low bars, because there are so many people who literally can't program but apply anyway. All it's meant to do is weed out the people who have never programmed in their life.
The OP said that one should know how to write a fizzbuzz. I said I couldn't cause I don't know what it is. That doesn't mean I couldn't once it was explained to me.
My point is that they clearly didn't mean you should be able to write one from hearing the word fizzbuzz. It's used by name online because it's fairly widely known around these parts. In an interview question it would be given to you as a set of requirements, not just the word fizzbuzz.
You wouldn't be asked to "fizzbuzz". You would be asked to write an extremely trivial program, which would take you about 3 minutes.
Also, if you have guaranteed years of experience, fizzbuzz isn't for you. However, a suprisingly large number of applicants who can write an impressive looking CV can't write it.
I've also "heard" that the ratio of people who fail at fizzbuzz is truly disturbing even if they have impressive CV's.
It makes me wonder, though. Has anyone ever just admitted they failed at fizzbuzz here on HN?
I can imagine someone bombing it if they're nervous or if they forgot the modulo operator in their language of choice and got lost doing it an "ugly" error-prone way because they were too embarrassed to change tack once started.
If someone reasonably competent were to spend years working with some limited api's, on a codebase that has hundreds of man-years on it, could they fail at fizzbuzz when asked out of the blue? I think so.
I've wondered before how many of the "OMG tons of candidates can't fizzbuzz" anecdotes come down to messing up syntax or forgetting the name of something in the language they're using and mixing in something from another language, or making a plausible but incorrect guess. I could definitely see doing those things in an interview, and I've usually been considered the "smart one" or one to come to with weird/low-level/architecty problems where I've worked. Hell I know for a fact I once used the wrong friggin' method invocation syntax in an interview. That stuff barely has any place in my long-term memory, I mostly rely on context to get it right when doing real work.
I can also see a lot of folks forgetting about the modulus operation and doing something uglier and smug interviewers deciding that means they're a fraud and/or an idiot. I've only used it a handful of times in real code, in... oh man, over 15 years. If it hadn't been (for some reason) among the first things I picked up when first learning to write code it might not be as relatively-well stuck in my head as it is.
It depends—when I was at one of the really visible companies, it wouldn’t have surprised me if as much as a third of the people I screened had lied on their resume. I’d ask folks to write functions to count the number of times the letter ‘a’ appears in a string, stuff like that. Did not need to compile or run.
I had a person break down and confess, and we spent the rest of the interview talking about how their codecademy lessons were going.
I really don't think it is very many. There are clear patterns of failure for fizzbuzz - the biggest is the "copy-paste programmer" who sees a blank canvass and just has no idea where to start. Then you have your people who can write conditionals but can't reason about them - they will very often end up with a solution that compiles, but always prints the number no matter what, or never prints FizzBuzz, or some other obvious error that should be apparent on a quick review of ones code. Most of these people also take 10-15 minutes to write it out, where competent programmers consistently bang it out in five minutes or less. (And yeah, some of them probably know it by heart by now. Oh well.)
Screening someone who just absolutely can't program at all is, IMHO, by far the worst part of technical interviewing.
Anyone who can claim to be able to code at least a bit should be able to implement FizzBuzz. As such, it's a childish joke for most programmers.
But the alarming thing is that I've read there are people coming to programming interviews who can't fizzbuzz despite the experience listed in their CV. While rather unbelievable, if it really is true then it only makes sense to ask candidates to write FizzBuzz in the first screen before they waste any more of the teams' time.
FizzBuzz is much less of a game and much simpler of an algorithm than e.g. looking up something in a sorted binary tree. Do you have a problem with the latter as an interview question?
You can't just choose to cut only the parts of the US budget you personally dislike. That's not how a budgeting in a democracy works. If you want a budget increase in one area, then that money has to come from all other parts of the budget. If 60% of the government spending is on social security and healthcare, then that suggests 60% of the spending in increasing the FAA budget is going to be coming from social security and health care.
