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I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

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Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#71

Post by Bootvis »

matz1 wrote: post #50
rightbyte wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the interview victims wasting there time. And the employees that don't get new coworkers becouse riddles.

Wasting time ? You should do some research before going job searching, by now you should know about this leetcode thing.

Wasting time on training a skill they are not realistically going to benefit from. People can only spend their time once so learning other skills will suffer.

If the job requires algorithm wizardry, I see the benefits of LeetCode-style interviews but many jobs are not like that.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#72

Post by freehunter »

dijit wrote: post #38
icedchai wrote: post #36

Good DevOps engineers are software engineers that can also do infrastructure work. They should be able to code. Unfortunately, many are "cloud sysadmins", for lack of a better term.

_Good_ DevOps engineers are anyone on either side of the discipline spectrum who can work with the other side. DevOps are teams, not people. https://devops.com/is-devops-a-title/

Exactly. A devops team has a spectrum of people. Some who only do dev, some who only do ops, with plenty who can do both occupying the space in the middle. There is room on a devops team for people who can't code, and there is room for people who can't be trusted to sudo to root.

Not every person on the devops team needs to be a perfect 50/50 split of dev and ops.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#73

Post by Isamu »

scottLobster wrote: post #12

In a few months I'm going to be sniffing around for embedded software engineering positions (c on microcontrollers, DSP, maybe even some PCB or FPGA design). I'm still buying a copy of cracking the coding interview and doing leetcode in the weeks leading up to applying for precisely this reason. It's dumb but I'm not going to give up an otherwise promising opportunity in protest, although in the interview I might pol…

For embedded programming you are more likely to be asked questions that require bit manipulation, shifting, masking, etc. Maybe low-level C, mapping structs to memory locations, etc. Maybe how you might go about implementing hardware interrupt handlers, or how you could put a microcontroller into low-power sleep and then wake up, etc.

It is common for embedded software engineers to come from electrical engineering, and they are maybe less likely to ask CS-type questions.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#74

Post by stallmanite »

reallydontask wrote: post #49
shepardrtc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they generally do require programming knowledge Yes > probably an algorithm here and there No Even Amazon doesn't ask about algorithms for DevOps. When I interviewed with them for a DevOps position, they asked me to write a Python script to parse logs files. They also asked about various linux commands that you would use to work with those same logs. Pretty relevant. But the interviewer never once asked about algor…

>Companies that ask leet coding questions for DevOps probably have no idea what they're looking for and probably don't know what they're doing. I think it's a more a case of cargo culting rather than not necessarily knowing what they are doing, although that might also be the case in some instances.

If you’re cargo culting do you really know what you’re doing though? I’d think the two situations are mutually exclusive. Or were cargo cults actually effective at getting supplies dropped from the sky?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#75

Post by dragonwriter »

dijit wrote: post #64
icedchai wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people work on those teams. We are talking about the expected abilities of such individuals. How do you assess these abilities? What is expected?

The whole point is to make your team heterogeneous*, so in terms of skills you need to staff for all your needs. "We'll use python on GCP with PostgreSQL as a backing database" Well, then you need an expert in GCP, Python and postgresql. This can be as many people as it takes to have those skills covered. As for responsibility, well, that goes for where your skill is. If you're the resident postgresql expert then you…

> The whole point is homogeny,

I'd rather say the point is the opposite; devops teams are (even moreso than agile dev teams) heterogeneous (or “cross-functional” or “multi-disciplinary”).

There's basically a continuum where assembly line analysis / dev / test in separate teams (and security, operations are separate higher level organizations with the technical area, and business is separate from technology) is one extreme, then agile dev teams unifying the analysis/dev/test functions, then devops, then devsecops, then maybe the other extreme is some thing that goes beyond devsecops where also domain expertise (and not just the system analysis skills that interface with domain experts to elicit requirements) are an organic part of the team.

But each step along the line does increase the expected range of skills of an individual team member, because you need also to avoid any team member being a single point of failure and you have to keep teams in manageable sizes (e.g., 5-9).

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#77

Post by jlengrand »

I got into the habit of answering those questions orally, and then directly asking when was the last time it has been used by the person interviewing. In some cases the interviewer didn't quite like it, but most of the times it actually led into interesting discussions (finding questions is hard, what they are trying to gather as info ...). I'm based in Europe though, so YMMV

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#78

Post by scottLobster »

Isamu wrote: post #73
scottLobster wrote: post #12

In a few months I'm going to be sniffing around for embedded software engineering positions (c on microcontrollers, DSP, maybe even some PCB or FPGA design). I'm still buying a copy of cracking the coding interview and doing leetcode in the weeks leading up to applying for precisely this reason. It's dumb but I'm not going to give up an otherwise promising opportunity in protest, although in the interview I might pol…

For embedded programming you are more likely to be asked questions that require bit manipulation, shifting, masking, etc. Maybe low-level C, mapping structs to memory locations, etc. Maybe how you might go about implementing hardware interrupt handlers, or how you could put a microcontroller into low-power sleep and then wake up, etc. It is common for embedded software engineers to come from electrical engineering, a…

Hopefully. But I've heard from people who got asked leetcode style stuff in addition to those kinds of questions because it was company policy for anyone interviewing to be a "software engineer".

Best to be prepared.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#79

Post by scardine »

itake wrote: post #8
opportune wrote: post #4

I guess if you don't like the company's interviewing process you don't have to work there. Unemployment rate for software engineers is pretty low these days so just go with somewhere else. I'll keep working at places that ask programming questions because basically all the highest-paying places do that these days. And as snobby as it sounds, I want to keep working with other people who can pass algorithms teasers Als…

I'd be frustrated for wasting my time. The recruiter should have better explained the review process.

Check glassdoor for this company/position, looks like most people think it is a difficult interview process:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-De...

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#80

Post by libria »

scottLobster wrote: post #12

In a few months I'm going to be sniffing around for embedded software engineering positions (c on microcontrollers, DSP, maybe even some PCB or FPGA design). I'm still buying a copy of cracking the coding interview and doing leetcode in the weeks leading up to applying for precisely this reason. It's dumb but I'm not going to give up an otherwise promising opportunity in protest, although in the interview I might pol…

> although in the interview I might politely ask (after solving the problem) what relevance it has to the job, just to make the point.

I highly advise you don't do this, because I don't consider it polite. Everyone tries to be objective in final review, so don't jab them with something snarky they'll remember about you while discussing your performance.

It's an exercise, it's artificial. Can you convert an abstract idea into code. Yes there are bad questions and bad interviewers, that doesn't mean wanting to see you write code is bad. You don't want Microsoft's new "real world, from the job" style questions [1] because I've had a few of those and they're misguided. Way too much internal domain knowledge is missing and I spend too long trying to get it out of them.

That said, DP in a phone screen for devops is a little tough.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-new-developer-inte...

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