Ask HN: What is the FizzBuzz test for hiring an engineering manager?

There is no FizzBuzz test for an engineering manager. Managers are not chosen due to a measurable skill, they are chosen based on political factors, previous job titles, contacts, and a huge number of other reasons. Sometimes they are hired simply to fire people for a month or two, then are fired themselves. Measurable, productive work is what everyone else does.

I think management that can't code cannot evaluate or understand the products and outcomes of an engineering team.

However, in the spirit of the question: I ask them what do they do that ships. I mostly want to know if I can personally deal with them because communicating upwards is difficult, but I am most troubled by a simple answer (e.g. Scrum, Pair, etc).

I know a famous equivalent that has been used to hire a manager. The company back in the time was searching for a guy able to "think out of the box".

You'll find the answer on google in seconds if you search, so take a minute to think about it by yourself ^^

The question was simple : You are in the middle of nowhere, riding a two-seats car during a storm. Stopping to a stop sign, you see three people waiting at a bus stop. - the girl of your dreams - your best friend - an old granny on her way to die

What do you do?

It's a simple coding test that asks you to write s program that prints Fizz, Buzz or FizzBuzz, usually depending on the multiple of some number. I.e. multiple of 3 print fizz, multiple of 5 print buzz, multiples of both 5 and 3 print fizzbuzz. Usually it will ask you to do this for numbers from 1 to 100, or something like that.

It's basically a way to weed out people who don't know how to write any code.

So you want an equally bad way of hiring managers as fizzbuzz is for hiring engineers? Odd request...