What's your go-to FizzBuzz-style interview question?

I never ask that kind of question because the candidate's ability to solve silly FizzBuzz-style problems tells nothing about their fitness to the jobs I hire for.

I typically have 2 multipart questions:

1) By looking at the resume I chose a prominent project they claim to have worked on, or for interns / recent grads ask them for about a major project: Please describe in detail what you did on this and what unique challenges? Looking for details and passion about working late to find some obscure problem, or the joy of completion. Trying to avoid the person who just added something that they attended meetings on or similar light contribution.

2) "so you know what a binary tree is?"

answer "oh yes it is a ...".

"Good, you know about balanced trees?"

answer "oh yes ..."

"and a b tree?"

Answer "yes"

"What is the difference?"

?

The answer I was looking for is: "I do not know".

Ideally followed with "but I know where to get the answer"

Ideally followed with the explanation, in their own words in the 'Thank you letter'

Demonstrates Honesty before Ego / Fake it till you make it etc

Thinking (but I know where)

Follow through - with thank you letter.

Anything they answer I would write down, because I could never remember the correct answer.

I have not done interviewing for a while as my job is different now.

I am currently interviewing a lot of data engineers and I use the following question:

Given a table that contains a history of spot readings from many different sensors

  readings(sensor_id bigint, reading_ts timestamp, reading_value decimal)

show me the latest known reading for each sensor.

Things I look at:

1. Does the candidate immediately reach for a window function?

2. Can they do it without a window function?

If the candidate fails at this stage, it's a no-hire, then I can use the same task to check their seniority.

3. Do they actually know the right window function?

4. Can they explain why a window function is better here than grouping in a subquery?

5. Can they do it in an imperative language?

If they can answer at least two out of three, they are a solid middle.

6. Can they suggest a way to store the data that makes the query take O(number of sensors) time?

Okay, this is a senior engineer.

idk, but imho. (!)

* coding-questions are mostly meaningless crap and nobody should rely on them

and more generally

* there is no "single & quick" solution for assessing the quality / abilities of a person

you have to come up with your own solution to determine if someone fits your needs ...

with experience in talking to people, someone gets a feeling / grasp of correlations who makes a good candidate and who wouldn't.

and you develop your own lets call them "signaling questions" on selected topics based the needs and on the feedback you get from your specialist-teams/-departments and colleagues.

but you have to seriously work on that!! ;)

just my 0.02€

ps. o.T here, but the same is true for applicants in assessing the quality of companies where they are applying for positions/projects... just saying ;))

I push a boiled egg and an egg cup towards the candidate and ask them to eat it like x86 processor.

- If they put the egg in the cup the upside-down, its a fail

- If its right-side up with solid rationale, I know its a senior. Without rationale - I know its a lucky junior.

- If they immediately grab the egg and swallow it without saying a word they are destined for management

- If they take out a cap'n crunch whistle and blow on it while giving me a red card, I have to resign and let them take over the reigns

Some random simple string processing task that involves opening a file, iterating and sorting through stuff would probably be fine.

If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be.

This is what happens when sycophants get promoted.

i hope i will never have to interview with you in my life