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Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

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Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#31

Post by jghn »

jfrbfbreudh wrote: post #30
Aurornis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now Where are you seeing LC hard questions? I’m in a fairly big Slack where people have been comparing notes on interviews for years. The number of people who actually get LC hard problems is extremely small. A lot of people will claim they got LC hards immediately after an interview when they couldn’t solve them, but when you ask them to des…

woops

It'd be better all around to tell them they were extremely rude and that's why they're being declined.

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#33

Post by onion2k »

Was the bar just higher?

In web dev interviews, in the UK, the bar was much lower. It was rare to be asked anything that resembled a leetcode question. Everything was focused around the technology stack you'd be using, the culture of the company, and 'agile' (before people called it that).

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#34

Post by vsuperpower2021 »

jghn wrote: post #31
jfrbfbreudh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

woops

It'd be better all around to tell them they were extremely rude and that's why they're being declined.

The comment you're replying to is almost certainly a power fantasy and not actual behavior from an interviewer. Basically, someone I had power over was rude to me, and I got revenge with a relevant programmer story.

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#35

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

jghn wrote: post #28
PlunderBunny wrote: post #22

We would give interviewees a little sample of code (e.g, a minimal string copy function using a loop in C) and ask how they would make it better, without defining what better meant. Some developers would try to optimise it, others would point out the bad variable names and lack of documentation, or talk about unit tests. It was a starting point for a discussion.

Not really. Some places did that sure. And some places do that now. But the cargo cutled nonsense before leetcode were the brain teasers. "How many ping pong balls can fit into a 747?". Also nonsense.

It depends where you live and apply. In France I never had whiteboards, leeetcode, or psychological puzzles. It has always been “let’s talk for an hour about this specific language that we use so you can prove you’re a good fit.”

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

vsuperpower2021 wrote: post #34
jghn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be better all around to tell them they were extremely rude and that's why they're being declined.

The comment you're replying to is almost certainly a power fantasy and not actual behavior from an interviewer. Basically, someone I had power over was rude to me, and I got revenge with a relevant programmer story.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#37

Post by swarnie »

hcfman wrote: post #18
subharmonicon wrote: post #16

In the 90’s when I was at Microsoft it was common for people to ask brain teasers and algorithm questions and expect people to be able to reason through the problems even if they walked in not knowing the particular algorithm or data structures involved. The interview was graded more on your thought process and ability to make forward progress with hints and less on getting to a correct answer in 25 minutes. People w…

Here’s an idea. What about using a computer, causes that’s what you are going to be doing. I’m just bitching about having to code a binary search using a white board at Google when I had previously written a search engine and indexed two country’s by a man who wears a cowboy hat to work. (To be fair it was a nice hat) I didn’t get the job, they claimed not good enough at coding, wtf! Well f*k them then.

Now sure but this was Microsoft software in the 90s, no one wanted to restart their interview for a third time because the f*king thing bluescreened again.

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#38

Post by mianos »

b20000 wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Too bad you prefaced this with 'Americans'. The rest is probably true. I feel some people love the feeling of power when they are interviewing someone.

If someone can not answer my trick question I want to know why not and what question can they answer that I don't know.

I am looking for people better than me and the inability not to answer my favourite question may not mean they are not better.

The ability to answer leetcode or build something great, from scratch, are without a doubt, not the same thing.

The only unfortunate thing, is many people are bullshitting about their achievements and expertise and leetcode does tend to filter out the worst of them quickly.

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#39

Post by cancerhacker »

Mid 90s at Apple, questions were often very specific to the platform. One manager I knew would bring a printout of a macsbug stdlog - basically current stack trace, disassembly around the pc and the state of various system globals, and have you work through how it got there. As platforms have exploded I wouldn’t expect that level of familiarity anymore, but if I’m hiring for a c / c++ engineer I expect you to be able to describe in hand wavey terms what a structure looks like, and be able to write an accurate memcpy (and I don’t care about syntax!)

Re: Ask HN: What were interviews like before Leetcode?

#40

Post by awill88 »

Leetcode?

I find it interesting that there’s an assumption that if you exist in this world as a professional software engineer and are successful by all reasonable measures that it somehow predisposes an exposure with leetcode.

I’ve never used it for interviews not because I put energy to avoid it, but because I don’t think it’s all that popular, or maybe I just don’t interview often enough. If I want a new job I wait until I’m emotionally done with the one I’m at and none of the places I have ever interviewed have used it. What, is it that if you’re not using it today then you’re somehow “behind”?

I don’t understand this post at all. What a loaded assumption. Does it do something only Leetcode can do? Is it some holy grail? I’m just burnt out on this tenor of the community here, as if any of these platforms are seated as some kind of hegemony of “the engineering scene” Yawn.

An interview is and will always be a balance of your technical skill and your ability to present your work and deal with timely feedback. That’s it.

So for people who wonder wtf this post is about, you’re not alone.

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