Facebook's Puzzles

A co-worker of mine pointed me to Facebook's Puzzle Page, a suite of challenging puzzles. The puzzles exist to find skilled programmers that Facebook might like to hire by letting those programmers sift themselves out, rather than taxing Facebook employees' time with trying to find wheat in the chaff of job applicants who come through normal channels.

But even if you're not interested in working at Facebook, they're a nice set of programming challenges. Especially if you're learning a new language and want some meaty exercises.

Even as someone who has challenged interviewees with logic puzzles — a standard practice for software companies — I find these types of puzzles to be interesting but not necessarily useful in finding good hires. Yes, it helps you find the bright folks who can figure out clever algorithms.

But those aren't necessarily the people who make good software engineers. Software engineering is about delivering quality code on schedule and within the budget. It's about writing code that other people will be able to work with and maintain, even years later. It's about debugging, but it's also about exposing bugs as early as possible. It's about understanding trade-offs, risks, and benefits. I spend a very small percentage of my time sussing out clever algorithms: I spend a very large percentage figuring out how to deliver scalable, high-quality features in a cost-effective way.

Being a good puzzle solver doesn't preclude those skills, of course, but it doesn't point to them, either. Puzzles test that you're bright in one way; they don't tell your employer if you can actually do your job.

On the other hand, Facebook is no doubt swamped with would-be employees, so these puzzles offer a way for someone to prove that they can be internally motivated (the only effective form of motivation) and self-starting. And they do test for one sort of programming intelligence. And, finally, I haven't yet figured out a way to test for the kind of programmer I look for, other than interviewing people.