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Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

That's harsh because TFA does mention that they feel outright uncomfortable (even after 18 years!) how big a role luck played in them clearing that fizzbuzz interview question:

> I've struggled with this a lot over the years, but I finally decided to share my story. I don’t think I would have made it past the first round of interviews at Microsoft if I hadn’t gotten so lucky. So pretty much, my entire career is built on one amazing stroke of luck.

...which explains why they felt like they "cheated".

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Out of pretty much all the people I know, I can't think of any successful career not pivoting on one such fateful moment of "luck". One lucky question/answer, one fortunate encounter, one near miss. Of course we'll never know how the road not taken looks like. Any moment could actually be a pivotal one but most are very unassuming and only the memorable ones stick with us, making them feel more important.

Also, as someone who's been tested with this kind of questions (in the math and physics fields at least), I realized many times you aren't evaluated for knowing the answer but for how you go about trying to find it even if you fail.

This particular question is close to my heart as I was tested with it as a pupil in school. The teacher wrote this on the blackboard and asked me to come over and solve it (not having any prior knowledge). After a bit of fidgeting with the chalk I stared writing on consecutive lines 1, 1+1, 1+1+1 and after a few lines it dawned on me it looks like the "lower" half of a square of side n as cut by its diagonal. So I proudly concluded that the sum is n^2/2. Which was of course wrong, I forgot to add an n/2 to that since the "diagonal" is shifted right a bit. Still got top mark and maybe it was one of those moments that set me on a path. This went on through high-school, university, post graduate studies, and early career. It was only when I was knee-deep in real work that people started to care less about how I think and more about just the end result.

Preparing for this kind of question isn't cheating as long as you understood the answer.

Not disagreeing with your points.

> Preparing for this kind of question isn't cheating as long as you understood the answer.

TFA notes that because of lack of interview prep material in 2004, even when the author knew the question before-hand, it took them days to arrive at an optimal answer. And then it dawned on them that everyone else at the job fair, who may be seeing a question for the first time, only had 15 mins in a pressure-cooker situation to solve it.

TFA also notes that the author intentionally misled the interviewer as if they were solving the puzzle then and there: I casually explained how I could simply use a mathematical formula to calculate the sum of 1 to n (like, who doesn’t know the sum(1 to n) formula?) and compare that to the sum of the integers in the array. I slowly wrote out the solution I had come up with over days of thinking about the problem, being sure to pause periodically as if I was figuring it out for the first time. I talked through my thinking and made sure I had all the proper error checking in place. I double and triple checked my syntax. My handwritten code was perfect.

I understand that I just don't consider it cheating despite their reaction during the interview. I'm not going by any formal definition of "cheating" here. But this person took the question as a practice question, not with the knowledge that it will be asked. They also did the work on proving and understanding it.

Let's put it another way. If you take an exam after practicing with any kind of practice questions (something that has been done since the dawn of time and the education system) and happen to run into the same questions in the real exam, was that cheating or better targeted learning? Or if you find out about a job from a friend who works there, is it cheating because you have a significant insider advantage over people who never knew about the job?

In my opinion true cheating would have been made up of a) someone feeding them the real questions and/or b) someone feeding them the answers. It involves an unwillingness to put in effort and a premeditation that I didn't see in the story. This person was indeed in a conflict of interest but I wouldn't call them "a cheater".

P.S. If I were in that interview I would have provided the full answer almost instantly, not needing any kind of hesitation to "simulate" the thinking process. I know the answer without any relation to the interview. So there could be 2 outcomes: a) I get unfairly excluded under the suspicion of cheating justifying the need to fake the thinking to avoid this or b) I would have passed to the next stage making that whole charade effectively inconsequential.

Gotcha. Btw, I'm personally in agreement with you, as that's how I think about it all, too. TFA wasn't, and I merely attempted to point out why.

GP's claim that TFA might be over-exaggerating it a bit for marketing purposes may also be correct, given that it was authored by an exec at a recruitment firm.

I won't lie to someone's face but I've deliberately misled gatekeepers hundreds of times in order to grab the opportunity to deliver excellent work. People are judgy and scared, and we all know the exchange rate between false positives and false negatives is a farce, and when it comes to my ability, you're damn right I know better than they do. The idea that I have a moral obligation to gift them decisions about my future is laughable. I've never had any complaints and I've never lost a minute's sleep. If they don't like me after they've known me more than 45 minutes, they can put me in review and fire me. I won't cry about it.

> Out of pretty much all the people I know, I can't think of any successful career not pivoting on one such fateful moment of "luck". One lucky question/answer, one fortunate encounter, one near miss.

You are so correct (at proper timestamp): https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I?t=211

Gauss solved the same problem in a very similar fashion when he was a kid.

I remember this too, from our 4th-grade "G&T" math teacher telling us the story. Although I use the formula so rarely that I don't keep it memorized, whenever it does come up, I think back to that day in class and that moves the gears enough that I can derive it empirically pretty quickly from small-number examples and the knowledge that it involves two consecutive numbers.

If you like this kind of intuitive problem solving you might like "Proofs without Words". It was one of my favorite "math" books in highschool.

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