Ask HN: Should all devops know how to fizzbuzz

1 points by 3minus1 9y ago ↗ HN

I believe fizzbuzz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz#Programming_interviews) should be dead simple to anyone who claims proficiency in coding or "scripting." Should it be a deal-breaker if a devops candidate struggles?

By devops I'm talking about someone who does things like automation (chef or puppet), cloud administration (AWS), configuring software (db, webserver), and troubleshooting some networking issues.

11 comments

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dbroberson 9y ago ↗

Yes.

angersock 9y ago ↗

Would you feel comfortable hiring somebody for automation who cannot provision a fleet of servers where every third server has a Cassandra node and every fifth server has a Redis instance?

3minus1 9y ago ↗

that's a essentially the same question, but also a ridiculous scenario that would never occur. what's your point

[deleted] 9y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

benologist 9y ago ↗

He applied fizzbuzz to a work scenario... maybe it's not very important in practice?

benologist 9y ago ↗

Your link calls fizzbuzz "a word game for children"... so probably not a useful criteria by itself.

3minus1 9y ago ↗

scroll down to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz#Programming_intervie...

edit: I fixed the OP

[deleted] 9y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

benologist 9y ago ↗

Lots of questions are used to probe for math and problem solving ability... but why would it be effective if it was the only question?

BentFranklin 9y ago ↗

"Everyone" knows of it, so if you don't you are not part of "everyone". That would not look good.

3minus1 9y ago ↗

well all the people I've asked in real life have never heard it and struggled.