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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

#261

Post by threwawasy1228 »

pault wrote: post #205
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…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

I think a bigger problem is that they probably weren't lying or fabricating their resume. They probably weren't trying to trick you in some way, they probably just have actually programmed like this for the last 10 years! In a lot of work environments especially in the midwest, it isn't surprising to encounter people like this that don't know basic best practices.

The standards for what a company wants from their programmers can vary wildly depending on the location. This speaks to a broader problem of not having consistency across the industry and various locales.

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

#262

Post by sokoloff »

pault wrote: post #256
SkyBelow wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. ...at the salary you are offering. I see many people hiring adjusting for cost of living but not adjusting for the place being less desirable to live. Also, given the reputation of FAANG and similar, working for them is viewed as something of a future investment. That is a benefit your company likely cannot offer. So even if e…

No, that's why I said "before anyone says we're not paying enough...". There are team members making $2xxK/year here, and we're not in a coastal city. The problem we have is that almost every person that comes in here bombs out in the first five minutes of the interview.

If that's a competitive salary for your area (you would know better than me, but that range in the middle of the country certainly seems competitive), then have a look at your recruiting sourcing funnel.

If you're only sourcing the same 75% of active job seekers who are bombing most of their other interviews [thus leaving them available to come in and bomb yours as well], start advertising your positions elsewhere or trying to recruit passive job seekers/encourage employees to scour their own networks.

If you don't change something, you're likely going to keep getting more of the same.

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

#263

Post by Balgair »

jkdufair wrote: post #239
Balgair wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody won, lost, passed or failed I mean, like, yeah they did. They either got the job or they did not.

If I were the interviewee and discovered it was a poor fit, I’d consider the lack of an offer or the opportunity to refuse one a win

Granted, this is tech, so finding a paying job isn't too terrible. But with a lot of other industries [0] it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get employment. I'd say for most US workers, even in today's market, not getting the job is a loss.

[0] which is not really super relevant to this discussion, I know.

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

#264

Post by winter_blue »

dcolkitt wrote: post #250
wutbrodo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a holdover from hiring more junior candidates: after a few years interviewing and sitting on HCs at Google, I hired for a tiny startup that had tons of trouble sourcing candidates. My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests. Simple coding problems are pretty ideal for this, since they also lightly test necessary domain skills. The problem is that this doesn't scale with tal…

> My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests... The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience. Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. The reason being is that intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and skills. Intelligent people literally learn faster than others. The skil…

> Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience.

If hiring managers are aware of this, then it might be a good idea to apply to Mensa. If you're able to get in, maybe putting "Mensa" down on your resume isn't that bad of a thing. (I've always felt it would make one come off as a douche, but maybe that's not so true.)

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

#265

Post by mywittyname »

pault wrote: post #233
sokoloff wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this person doing (valuable) work that would even require hiring a replacement? If not, fire them. If so, lobby to secure a backfill and then fire them.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

Javascript sucks.

I work with lots of really, really good developers who struggle a bit with JS. Most of it is because they come from a totally different background, and the other part is Javascript in general just makes things difficult.

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

#266

Post by Stronico »

rifung wrote: post #179
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).

I once told an interview I didn't know something and they told me that I should never say I don't know something and just try to make something up. I don't really agree with him and just kept doing it though and things seems to be fine.. If anything I would say that interview was successful for both parties because we probably wouldn't get along and that is totally fine.

That is the goal of an interview! You ended with more information that you had before.

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

#267

Post by pault »

skinnymuch wrote: post #260
pault wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

How quickly do they answer that to get that so wrong? I freeze like crazy with interview questions. Even you just putting the question there, my brain froze and I couldn’t remember the word “action” for a couple of seconds.

They usually answer confidently right away. It's one thing if you're nervous in interviews, it's another if someone asks you a novice-level question about your area of expertise and you give an answer that is objectively wrong.

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

#268

Post by varjag »

scarface74 wrote: post #186
jasonpeacock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes but I’m not writing code everyday on a whiteboard, I’m writing it in an IDE with access to Google. When I am at a whiteboard I am drawing very crude architectural diagrams.

It's a great point we hear often, so I incorporated it into our last round of hiring. Some still couldn't do it with an IDE, their language of choice and access to Google.

(sorting an array, with any algorithm you want)

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

#269

Post by cloverich »

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.

> Leetcode is not even that hard, tons of material and key to the answer is on the internet.

Doesn't that support the argument a bit? Its "not that hard" -- so even someone who _doesn't_ have the requisite experience could learn it? So its just another hoop to jump through, _before_ they validate whether you are a good fit for the job in the first place. That's what people are complaining about.

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

#270

Post by pault »

sokoloff wrote: post #262
pault wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's why I said "before anyone says we're not paying enough...". There are team members making $2xxK/year here, and we're not in a coastal city. The problem we have is that almost every person that comes in here bombs out in the first five minutes of the interview.

If that's a competitive salary for your area (you would know better than me, but that range in the middle of the country certainly seems competitive), then have a look at your recruiting sourcing funnel. If you're only sourcing the same 75% of active job seekers who are bombing most of their other interviews [thus leaving them available to come in and bomb yours as well], start advertising your positions elsewhere or…

You're correct. The problem is that the positions we have open are for front end developers, and for a variety of reasons (mostly that the scale of complexity on the front end has increased so rapidly that the industry still has a lot of people in it that were writing mostly HTML and CSS a few years back) the supply of competent developers is far lower than the demand, and anyone worth their salt is already happily employed. Highly skilled front end developers can basically write their own check these days, and if you manage to find one in the brief amount of time they're in-between jobs it's pure luck.
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