[flagged]
[deleted]
Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
21–30 of 114 posts
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#22Thank you for this. Some people are critical of coding tests but I do this there is a point: namely to weed out people who can't code.
Am I the only one that interviewed people with lengthy resumes full of programming experience and when I asked them to do a simple programming exercise they fell flat on their face? I've seen experience in C, gave them take home two hour exam and they couldn't even get anything to compile. What he meant was he took a class a few years back.
You see it in other domains with extensive Excel experience and the guy gets hired and never heard of a vlookup.
I think some of the stuff is overkill but you need to select for people that know how to program.
I for one am glad they exist because I don't have a CS degree but learned on my own. I lucked into this profession through an online leetcode style screener and your book helped me immensely,so thank you
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#23This sounds like an amazing resource. What’s the rationale for making it all free?
Aline is a bit of a Hacker News legend. She's been active here for longer than most people have been working and when you see how she's built her product, it's plainly obvious that she legitimately understands and sides with the HN community. I bet the genuine answer to your question is that she knows it's a resource that could help tons of people (at a time when tons of people need that help) and paywalling it means…
What does “side with the community” mean?
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#24Cracking the Code Interview is a great book and excellent for practice and brushing up. But I have found leet-code questions terrible for actually interviewing candidates. A lot of them boil down to whether the candidate knows the specific trick or can regurgitate the memorized solution.
(Maybe I am just bitter because I have more than once bombed a leet-code interview myself)
I interview a lot of people and my go-to coding question is actually a pretty simple question that might be found in a 2-year coding course. What I am looking for is production ready code, good error handling, tidy design, and understandable code. All things that leet-coding specifically discourages.
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#25This sounds like an amazing resource. What’s the rationale for making it all free?
> What’s the rationale for making it all free? The writing is on the wall for Leetcode-style interviewing. The signal-to-noise ratio is diminishing in the age of AI (cheating). These sorts of puzzle challenges might no longer play a meaningful role going forward.
Hot take from the author: This is a commonly repeated claim, but it’s probably not accurate.
It’s FAR easier for companies to stick with the interview process they’ve used for decades—just mandate in-person interviews again—than to reinvent the wheel with some new, unproven format. Sure, there’s a growing need to assess more than just DS&A in initial screenings, but let’s be honest: those interviews aren’t going anywhere.
The REAL reason to make these resources free? Because it’s not a competitive advantage to offer problems to practice. There are already tons of free problems online. The real value isn’t in giving people a place to do problems—that already exists. The value is in the book. If you already know enough to do well on problems without the book, then you shouldn't have to pay to practice it.
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#26[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#27Incredible value here, thanks for sharing Aline. The book itself is a wonderful resource, not just for the technical chapters but the rest on resumes and reaching out etc. Even the technical portion provides the framework (boundary thinking, triggers, etc.) which is above and beyond basically any other resource online or in print. The AI interviewer is also super useful and the 'book' section of the site is very well put together. 10/10.
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#28Hot take: these interesting, contained problems that you really can solve on your own are a finite resource, and every time you read the solution to one you permanently deplete that resource for yourself.
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#29This sounds like an amazing resource. What’s the rationale for making it all free?
> What’s the rationale for making it all free? The writing is on the wall for Leetcode-style interviewing. The signal-to-noise ratio is diminishing in the age of AI (cheating). These sorts of puzzle challenges might no longer play a meaningful role going forward.
I agree with what Mike said. We shared the content because we want people to read the book and to use interviewing.io... it's not because we've given up on it (see my longer comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44136448). We have yet to see any real evidence that technical interviews are dying.
What is hopefully dying is companies asking verbatim LeetCode questions and candidates having to memorize a bunch of questions. We wrote this book largely because we wanted to teach people how to think. I knowing how to think is only going to get more valuable.
Re: Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
#30Proud to have helped work on this. Happy to field any questions.
Why make the questions and AI interviewing free? This sounds too good to be true
OP here.
A few of you have asked why we made these problems free. The answer is twofold, simple, and maybe even a bit underwhelming:
1) We want people to read the book (To wit, we've also made 9 chapters of the book free: http://bctci.co/free-chapters)
2) We want people to use interviewing.io
In my career, I've written a lot of stuff about hiring, and I've shared a lot of interview-related materials (e.g., full length interview replays). I hate paywalls for content, and you probably do too... and I have never regretted making it free. In my experience, putting good stuff out there is the best way to market to an eng audience.