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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?

#51

Post by riffraff »

jaredsohn wrote: post #44
jghn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This book was about puzzle interview questions from Microsoft in the early 2000s: https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/03167784... Also, a famous question around that time was 'why are manhole covers round?'. (Thought there was a book from that era with that name but not seeing it; only found a newer book.) Remember doing interview prep at the time by trying to memorize the answers to a bunch of these…

The manhole cover thing was always confusing for me, as where I'm from manholes are all square.

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

#52

Post by porridgeraisin »

Aurornis wrote: post #17
timr wrote: post #8

We had algorithm questions, but they weren't absurd. Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now -- which should be a dead giveaway that the candidate has memorized the answer -- back then you'd maybe get one question that peaked out at about medium. That's about the practical limit for a competent (but exceptional) mortal who hasn't simply memorized a book of trivia. (And yes, we di…

> 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…

Yeah, here in India people love choosing leetcode hards for when they come to a college and everyone in the college applies to them. Considering how big colleges are here, they just care about the filter rate of the test. Leetcode hards filter the candidate set down to a size that they can realistically interview, and so they continue choosing that. Mediums sometimes let through too many people.

In normal hiring, i.e linkedin, or even college hiring where they look at resumes first, this nonsense rarely happens.

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

#53

Post by jaredsohn »

vunderba wrote: post #24

It was usually a combination of algorithmic questions, some riddles, a few technical questions, etc. All of it was done on the whiteboard. The thing is that at the time there were no books around commonly asked interview questions, online leetcode lists, etc. so the assumption was that the applicant was basically going in cold, and that there wasn't an expectation that they would be able to instantly solve the proble…

There were ways to get problems, though, such as prior questions for the ACM programming contest. Those tended to be a little harder, though.

Also, topcoder started in 2001.

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

#54

Post by jghn »

muzani wrote: post #45

Smart and gets things done, by Joel Spolsky: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid... Still a great read. Base idea is that they're smart enough to solve problems and they get things done and don't just blab about ideas which they won't implement. So they'd write code to prove they can get things done. Brainteasers were okay, but bad at testing the latter. This somehow evolved into Leetcode cul…

"Smart and gets things done"

Hunter & Schmidt 1998 [1] pretty much boils down to this. Their meta-analysis, predating Spolsky, winds up stating that the only useful thing is a combination of work samples & an IQ test. Never the order and that smells a lot like "are they smart and can they get shit done?"

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-10661-006

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

#55

Post by jaredsohn »

riffraff wrote: post #51
jaredsohn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book was about puzzle interview questions from Microsoft in the early 2000s: https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/03167784... Also, a famous question around that time was 'why are manhole covers round?'. (Thought there was a book from that era with that name but not seeing it; only found a newer book.) Remember doing interview prep at the time by trying to memorize the answers to a bunch of these…

The manhole cover thing was always confusing for me, as where I'm from manholes are all square.

Wonder if people where you're from run into problems where the manhole covers tip onto their diagonal and fall in (since that's the answer I memorized and I think is known as the predominant reason.)

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

#56

Post by coffeecloud »

awill88 wrote: post #40

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 wai…

> 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.

An interview is whatever the interviewer wants it to be. Often it’s a probing of your knowledge of data structures and algorithms via Leetcode style questions. Like, very often.

How many times have you interviewed in the last 10 years and for what kinds of positions?

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

#58

Post by vertis »

20+ YOE.

I've never been fond of whiteboard technical interviews which used to be the norm, I really struggle to draw and talk at the same time. I do fine in interviews normally, I tend to be more of a delivering value for the business kind of developer and strongly emphasise this in my interviews.

I'm not writing operating systems and neither are most the other people I work with and hire.

These days, I don't do leetcode. If a company insists I walk away. I have better things to do with my time than memorise a bunch of useless information (for some value of useless).

I'm mostly on the other side of interviews now and am firmly in the belief that you can get a limited set of signals during an interview. The "Thinking Fast and Slow" view is that we're not very good at evaluating people from a gut feeling.

You might think this would push me towards leetcode and other quantitive measures, however I'm much more interested in working out whether you can be good on a team. The last thing I want is an asshole 10x engineer that makes everyone else unhappy. If you can't actually program I'm going to work that out by watching your PRs and you won't pass the probation. I'm not suggesting I do NO checking in the interview, just that I put limited stock in what can be read during this process.

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

#60

Post by jghn »

Aurornis wrote: post #17
timr wrote: post #8

We had algorithm questions, but they weren't absurd. Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now -- which should be a dead giveaway that the candidate has memorized the answer -- back then you'd maybe get one question that peaked out at about medium. That's about the practical limit for a competent (but exceptional) mortal who hasn't simply memorized a book of trivia. (And yes, we di…

> 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…

"Where are you seeing LC hard questions?"

I realize this isn't quite your point but the GP also brought ups that not too many years ago fizz buzz was the literal test. There's a pretty big jump from fizz buzz to leetcode hard. In face *any* leetcode is a jump up.

While not quite the same issue one thing I've found is I want to see more LOC from candidates. And a lot of the algo questions don't lent themselves to that. What I really want to see are their habits, style, and preferences.

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