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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

#121

Post by Stronico »

skrebbel wrote: post #115
Stronico wrote: post #110

When interviewing people I usually push until I get the candidate to answer "I don't know" on SOMETHING, just to see if they can do it. Not everyone can, and a lot of people will happily come up with a technical word salad to hide their perfectly understandable ignorance on some obscure technical problem I just came up with. That way you get to hear how they ask technical questions. Asking questions is a valuable (an…

That's a trick question. Trick questions are bad because they test interviewing skill and not programming skill. It's a trick question because you want the interviewee to answer something different (I don't know) than what you're asking them to answer. Confident applicants might feel up to saying they don't know, but nervous people who are very self conscious in an interview setting may respond completely differently…

Saying "I don't know" is an accurate answer.

The ability to ask meaningful questions is a big part of any programming job. And (in my opinion) harder to learn than any particular technology.

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

#122

Post by mondoshawan »

Stronico wrote: post #110

When interviewing people I usually push until I get the candidate to answer "I don't know" on SOMETHING, just to see if they can do it. Not everyone can, and a lot of people will happily come up with a technical word salad to hide their perfectly understandable ignorance on some obscure technical problem I just came up with. That way you get to hear how they ask technical questions. Asking questions is a valuable (an…

This will easily pitch you into an adversarial position and give you and your company a black eye. Remember: interviews are bidirectional. If I was pushed to the breaking point like this in your interview, I'd walk out without saying a word.

You're only going to be selecting candidates who can handle pressure -- not skill or ability with this.

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

#123

Post by ConcernedCoder »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #104
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…

I've had interviews start very positively with such an approach of questions, but then "just to be thorough" I have them code something simple on the whiteboard and they completely fail. Some of them couldn't even get nested for loops to work correctly. If you're hiring someone to write code for you, you need to have them write code in the interview. There's no substitute for it. Obviously, you can improve the experi…

This disproportionally filters for those who can think/code and perfom while under pressure/observation... i.e. the "porn stars" of software development, if you will.

Similar to how not everyone is able to perform well while having sex-on-demand in front of a camera -- these same people are more than likely able to have sex when not under pressure and observation, and probably are quite adequate while doing it.

My personal experience in software development spans decades, I'm quite competent and I have definitely "choked" at the whiteboard, just like you're describing -- for the same reasons I don't do well speaking in public, I'm not comfortable doing it, and I'm just not cut-out for it... I don't think it's a good measure of actual problem solving and/or software development competency.

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

#124

Post by SubuSS »

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…

The coding is to get a sense of how they write code, how rusty they are, how many good habits they've picked up relative to their experience, how do they think about validation/testing of it, how the go about building it (ad-hoc vs top down), their problem solving skills when faced with an unknown problem and so on.

There will always be unknown unknowns. We are just trying to cover the known variations and if he has any unknown knowns[1].

1 -https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/60/3/712/453685

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

#125

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

arnvald wrote: post #39
matz1 wrote: post #31

Complaining about leetcode is unproductive. Leetcode is not even that hard, tons of material and key to the answer is on the internet. Another benefit is, its streamline job searching. You practice once and you can use the same skill to interview for many companies.

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…

> 2. not being able to solve these tasks doesn't mean you're a bad developer.

Half of those questions are based on sophomore-level data structures and algorithms classes, the same concepts that operating systems, compilers, and most libraries/frameworks are based on. I would certainly hope that an experienced developer could effortlessly relearn basic concepts taught to college sophomores long enough to pass an interview.

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

#126

Post by kache_ »

The reason that people still ask algorithmic questions is because they work for avoiding false positives. False positives are a lot more damaging to a company compared to false negatives. While algorithmic questions can get many false negatives, they don't get much false positives.

What does it mean for a software developer? Spend a few hours a week doing leetcode questions. They're really not that hard.

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

#127

Post by Stronico »

malvosenior wrote: post #112
Stronico wrote: post #110

When interviewing people I usually push until I get the candidate to answer "I don't know" on SOMETHING, just to see if they can do it. Not everyone can, and a lot of people will happily come up with a technical word salad to hide their perfectly understandable ignorance on some obscure technical problem I just came up with. That way you get to hear how they ask technical questions. Asking questions is a valuable (an…

Doing this during a job interview is not going to give you the results you expect. For every person like you who wants to hear "I don't know" there are 10 people who will pass on you for not knowing something. People's expectations are set by the worst interviewers they experience, not the best (and honestly, trying to trap people isn't the "best" anyway).

So far it's worked very well for me. Since I've started using it (admittedly my sample size is small) I've found some very effective programmers, and automatically filtered out a lot of egotistical types. Software is usually a collaborative effort and this technique helps in that regard.

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

#128

Post by mondoshawan »

Stronico wrote: post #121
skrebbel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a trick question. Trick questions are bad because they test interviewing skill and not programming skill. It's a trick question because you want the interviewee to answer something different (I don't know) than what you're asking them to answer. Confident applicants might feel up to saying they don't know, but nervous people who are very self conscious in an interview setting may respond completely differently…

Saying "I don't know" is an accurate answer. The ability to ask meaningful questions is a big part of any programming job. And (in my opinion) harder to learn than any particular technology.

Saying "I don't know" like this in an interview scenario is nearly impossible for most candidates and only serves to humiliate rather than prove their abilities.

If you want to see them ask questions, give a half explanation of the problem at hand instead and guide them to ask more detailed technical questions.

Be an ally, not an adversary, and you will find talent better than if you push.

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

#129

Post by depr »

Stronico wrote: post #127
malvosenior wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing this during a job interview is not going to give you the results you expect. For every person like you who wants to hear "I don't know" there are 10 people who will pass on you for not knowing something. People's expectations are set by the worst interviewers they experience, not the best (and honestly, trying to trap people isn't the "best" anyway).

So far it's worked very well for me. Since I've started using it (admittedly my sample size is small) I've found some very effective programmers, and automatically filtered out a lot of egotistical types. Software is usually a collaborative effort and this technique helps in that regard.

How do you know whether the ones that were filtered out were egotistical?

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

#130

Post by notyourwork »

skrebbel wrote: post #115
Stronico wrote: post #110

When interviewing people I usually push until I get the candidate to answer "I don't know" on SOMETHING, just to see if they can do it. Not everyone can, and a lot of people will happily come up with a technical word salad to hide their perfectly understandable ignorance on some obscure technical problem I just came up with. That way you get to hear how they ask technical questions. Asking questions is a valuable (an…

That's a trick question. Trick questions are bad because they test interviewing skill and not programming skill. It's a trick question because you want the interviewee to answer something different (I don't know) than what you're asking them to answer. Confident applicants might feel up to saying they don't know, but nervous people who are very self conscious in an interview setting may respond completely differently…

It’s not a trick question. Saying I don’t know is a perfectly acceptable answer. The follow up should be questions to clarify or reduce complexity. I interview a lot and this is something I expect out of candidates.
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