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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

#271

Post by kamarg »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #261
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pro…

As someone from the Midwest I can assure you that we don't have a larger percentage of crappy coders than the coasts and tech hubs do. We spend just as much time fixing the code from your terrible developers as you do from ours.

It's really a lack of training provided by companies and that most 4 year degrees don't actually prepare people to write good maintainable code so new developers have to luck into finding a mentor that can teach them these things.

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

#272

Post by fdjlasdfjl »

yoz-y wrote: post #170
malvosenior wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> False positives are a lot more damaging to a company compared to false negatives. This is accepted blindly as dogma in our industry but in my experience it's only the case if the company is dysfunctional and management is too weak to let poor performers go quickly. Being an effective leader means being able to hire and fire quickly. If you're open and honest about it, you don't have to do as much as much intense ve…

Depending on the country that might not be that easy (in France you have basically 4 months to fire somebody and then you are screwed). Also, you have to include cost of on-boarding.

4 months should be enough. If they aren't doing their best when on probation then they're an idiot, and if they're not doing well then how bad are they going to be after probation?

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

#273

Post by pault »

e40 wrote: post #244
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So, the developer is overconfident. Have you tried coaching this person into understanding this? I feel that is part of good management.

We've had several sit-downs. The problem with a low-skilled senior developer is you'll never convince them that they are writing junior-level code. It would shatter their world view.

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

#274

Post by ubershmekel »

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…

> This person is so convinced that they are a good developer that they refuse to take direction or ask questions

While I agree a coding exercise is valuable - this is the actual problem. The way I test for that humility is by asking "tell me about a time you personally did a poor job." I then follow up by asking for a time they identified a failure of a colleague. I look to see if they're empathetical, open to being wrong, and declaring they're always trying to improve.

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

#275

Post by donretag »

jjav wrote: post #231
malvosenior wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience (also interviewing hundreds of people) this is totally an urban (internet) legend. Not once has someone been able to talk intelligently and at length about a project they built and the underlying technology choices and then been unable to deliver. Once you gain experience building things yourself, it's pretty easy to suss out whether someone is any good just by talking to them. No coding tests needed…

Agreed. The best way to interview is to simply have a joint discussion about their past projects (from resume). There is no value in whiteboard puzzles. It is easy to gauge who is competent and who didn't do or didn't understand the work they claim on the resume. In over 25 years of interviewing candidates, this approach has never failed me. I've never asked for whiteboard coding. Whiteboarding architectural concepts…

I use the same approach. Also has never failed me. If you can code system X, then you know how to use an if statement.

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

#276

Post by [deleted] »

Stronico wrote: post #204
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.

The interview is there to provide more information about a possible relationship. Winning an interview is like winning a date (assuming you want a relationship with the other person.).

[deleted]

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

#277

Post by pnathan »

from the comments:

> I'm not trying to defend all current interviewing practices, but Leetcode-style interviews became popular because they're designed to find people who are good at programming without requiring overly specialized knowledge about specific tools that are popular right now but may not be in a few years. The idea is to find someone who can reliably learn what they need to know for the job rather than finding someone who's an expert in X and Y which you currently happen to be using.

I use synthetic / algorithmic questions for this purpose. I don't need tool specialists, I need people with wider skills.

I also like concocting fizzbuzz variants as a high pass filter. Some people fail them...

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

#278

Post by lbotos »

RijilV wrote: post #169
wool_gather wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a fair point, but an interview is not solely about programming skill. It's also about being a co-worker. And the question "what does this person do in X situation", where X is "they don't know the answer to something they need to know'" is highly relevant. So there may be a better way to go about it, but the parent's desire is reasonable.

The deal is when you’re interviewing me we’re _not_ co-workers. You hold all of the cards and decide my fate. A big part of interviewing candidates well is breaking down that dynamic. There are many ways of doing it - I get up on the whiteboard first and write out my problem, and stay there until they’ve explained themselves and I need to get back to my notes so I don’t forget stuff. I phrase questions like “I need h…

> The problem is only one side is evaluated.

I tell all of my friends that it's your job to interview the interviewer as well. The company is about to get 8 hours of your day for the next few years. figure out how you can figure out if it's the right place for you.

Obviously, if you are in dire straights and you need to take what you can get, sure, but the questions are still relevant and will prepare you for whatever poo you might find yourself stepping into.

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

#279

Post by dbancajas »

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…

what was wrong with this code? I don't deal with exceptions a lot so not familiar with the idioms here. Is it because the catch is not doing anything at i<3? And then at i==3 it just breaks from the for? So rendering the whole thing useless ?

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

#280

Post by docker_up »

I am preparing myself for a week of onsite interviews as we speak.

Of course I hate them, but what other choice do I have?

The biggest problem is that the questions are so random and span almost anything.

Will I get asked:

a pthread question?

implement mergesort or quicksort?

implement a Read/Write lock?

implement a smart pointer?

a bit manipulation question?

topological search?

dynamic programming?

graph question?

backtracking question?

What the default timeout for TCP/IP is?

a Java internals question?

best practices about Cassandra?

N-ary tree search?

linked list?

b-tree?

Paxos vs Raft?

What is the access time for an SSD vs spinning disk?

How does Hadoop work?

Design Netflix

various random programming questions, as evidenced by Leetcode's 1000+ questions

It's impossible to know everything and yet this what people expect and ask. I've been asked those questions above over the last 6 years. It's utterly insane the expectations that interviewers have.

I personally also interview candidates, I've done hundreds of interviews throughout my career. These days, I do about one interview a week, and often 2.

My coding question is a simple recursion question, with a for loop and some basic knowledge of data structures. It's not hard, but I look for perfect code. If you can't code a bug-free 15 line function in 45 mins, that's my red flag. I don't think that's unreasonable. As long as the person asks good questions, we work together well, and they can code in a sane way, to me that's a pass. Interestingly, 70% of the people fail the interview because they can't code properly, even after the phone screen. I think because people are expecting a hard leetcode algorithm question, they can't think properly when someone asks them a simple question.

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