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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

#91

Post by emilecantin »

zrobotics wrote: post #41
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 embedded is possibly one of the few software positions where these questions might be somewhat relevant- aside from embedded who is writing a sort by hand anymore; although even in embedded it isn't that common of a problem. I just find the questions especially egregious for an average software dev working on something like a web app, since in that case hand-coding something like a sorting algorithm or BST i…

I'm a Web developer, and I did hand-code the Dijkstra path-finding algorithm recently. Granted, it's not common, and I didn't do it from memory, but at least I knew what to Google.

I needed to represent the shortest path between nodes on a map, so I needed the internal data from the algorithm, thus the need to whip out my own version.

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

#92

Post by alpha_squared »

I might be able to shed some light on one possible way this ends up happening because I was on a team that did exactly this.

The team/manager probably doesn't know what they want or does and has the budget for only a single hire. Their expectations are completely disconnected from industry/reality because they just don't know any better and probably lucked out getting into their position. They want a strong developer because the team needs one (or several), but they desperately need ops to keep their project afloat. So, sure, OP has all the right ops keywords on their resume, but can they also be that developer we really need?!

I butted heads constantly with my manager who had that mentality because of things like that. We rejected great DevOps candidates because we wanted them to be developers and good developers because we wanted them to know ops.

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

#93

Post by jshowa3 »

I've always wondered what the attrition rate is for these types of interviews. I know I'd probably fail them and I've been writing software professionally for a while. And this is with me regularly practicing these types of problems because you simply just can't know. Often solving them takes the entire interview time in itself.

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

#94

Post by Bootvis »

matz1 wrote: post #83
Bootvis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first and foremost purpose of practicing let code is to get the job, thats the benefit. You do it in addition of learning skills you use on your job.

Yes, and this wastes time compared to the situation where there is no useless use of leetcode-like tests.

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

#95

Post by wayoutthere »

libria wrote: post #80
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 i…

The problem with tech interviews is that it’s super rare to find the right combination of elite technical skills and emotional intelligence required to properly assess a candidate. Those people are usually busy.

What you end up with is someone who is either a mid-level engineer and almost totally green to recruiting or an HR drone with zero technical skills who is liable to believe a bunch of bullshit. Both tend to ask stupid interview questions they learned from a book because they’re out of their depth in some way.

This is not a situation unique to software either; it affects nearly every professional specialization (especially ones where the pay gap between an HR role and a functional role is as big as it is in tech). You’re right, it makes zero sense to put your interviewer on the defensive — being likable is almost always more important than being good.

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

#96

Post by libria »

scottLobster wrote: post #89
libria wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

I wouldn't ask it snarkily. I've been hired for jobs before and then asked to work on stuff that, while related, was nowhere in the job description. Got hired to do Java/C++ development, was pushed into being part-time sysadmin for our primary test environment because my team had spare capacity and our dev-ops team didn't. There were times I went 6 months without touching a line of Java or C++. Another guy I worked w…

Fair enough; phrase it "What would my day-to-day work look like?" "What percentage of time coding/designing/testing/meetings?" The current interview process could be better but right now these coding questions are just a proxy for ability/aptitude.

I just want you to have the best shot at this job. Be as critical about the process as you want after you get it.

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

#97

Post by mgoblu3 »

rjf72 wrote: post #84
arnvald wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter whether it's hard or not, it's at best a mediocre tool to determine programming skills. Also, it leads to a spiral of becoming worse: 1. being able to solve LeetCode tasks doesn't mean you're a good developer 2. not being able to solve these tasks doesn't mean you're a bad developer. So we have a tool that has a certain (IMHO high) rate of false positives and false negatives. 3. people start realisi…

You have to consider the perspective of a company or a recruiter. Their goal is not to simply find somebody who is capable, it's to take the hundreds if not thousands of prospective applicants they have and then cull that down to the tiny handful that they advance along for the openings that they have available. You're not looking for reasons to accept people, but for reasons to reject them. It's just the nature of e…

I feel this perspective gets lost a bit. Big companies don't roll through 1000 applications with 50 open spots and try to hire the best 50 candidates. They want to find maybe people in the top quartile of that, while spending the minimal amount of time on costs to find the adequate fits, and the cost of a false positive is way higher than the cost of a false negative.

Is the process great? Absolutely not, and I'm sure that these places miss out on qualified candidates because of the process and hire some people who gamed the process. Things like degrees and LeetCode tests and other screening methods are just ways to reduce cost and risk to get that "good enough" threshold.

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

#98

Post by raiflip »

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

Sounds interesting, could you expand some of the abstract and targeted technical questions that you find effective?

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

#99

Post by sockgrant »

mac01021 wrote: post #37
closeparen wrote: post #24

Isn’t the point of DevOps that you’re a software engineer who happens to work on infrastructure automation code? If they wanted someone who only knows how to operate systems they would have called it “sysadmin.”

Yes, but a single dynamic programming exercise is not a great test for the sort of programming experience you want your devops engineer to have.

Well it sounds like a phone interview. One goal of the phone interview is to not waste people’s time with onsite if it’s determined the candidate couldn’t pass onsite.

If their onsite has more leetcode coding questions, then the interview served its purpose.

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

#100

Post by deminature »

jlengrand wrote: post #77

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

It's frustrating for the interviewer, because they usually need to photograph your working out to allow others to independently check it later, and insisting on verbally solving a problem denies that.
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