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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

#451

Post by mrunkel »

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…

I do something similar, I ask the candidate what they do when three different people come to them with urgent needs that must be done immediately and there is no way that they can do them in the time given.

The answer I’m looking for is “I ask for help.” Or “I talk to my manager.” They don’t fail if they don’t answer it that way, but it’s a good starting point for a conversation about why they didn’t say that.

For me, interviewing is more about getting to know someone and how they think than checking off various skill boxes.

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

#452

Post by james_s_tayler »

scarface74 wrote: post #384
blub wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must have written a couple dozen sorts, but only in high-school or when preparing for interviews. It's the one thing that is very well supported in most programming languages. C++ has stable/unstable sorts, partial sorts, whatever you want. Accepting things like bubble sort also makes the exercise doubly pointless.

I partially agree, but a bubble sort is slightly harder than FizzBuzz (?) and even if you give them the algorithm, it might be a little more fair since knowing how to do a nested for loop is less esoteric than the mod operator. Now if someone did a BogoSort, I would hire them just for their ingenuity and sense of humor.

10/10 I would go for randomize the array and check if it's sorted. Repeat if it's not.

I like the people I work with to have a good sense of humor.

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

#453

Post by winter_blue »

pault wrote: post #348
ikiris wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... so you're not paying enough to entice them. Which is what was said three posts up.

Thanks. Unfortunately we can't afford to pay front end developers $300k/year. And what we are paying is more than competitive. It's not an issue of pay, it's an issue of availability and not having the resources to stalk and poach developers from other companies. We also have a generous internal referral bonus, and various recruiters sourcing candidates. Is there something else I'm missing? Edit: I don't think you ar…

Have you considered hiring remote workers so that you are not limited to those living in, or willing to move to Austin, Texas?

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

#455

Post by scarface74 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #448
scarface74 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you heard about all of the bad code at Twitter pre-IPO, large companies don’t care about code quality either.

Startups are a bit different in that it doesn’t make sense to pay down most debt until a profit stream is found.

Or until they convince someone to acquire them or convince the public markets to give them money and remain unprofitable.

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

#456

Post by hackinthebochs »

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... never thought to use a continue inside a catch block. Points for creativity at least....

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

#457

Post by daveFNbuck »

_pgmf wrote: post #288
daveFNbuck wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting past the interview isn't the only step to being fine. I also want to work at a company where my co-workers know what they're doing. When the hiring process uses an irrelevant filter, you end up filtering out qualified people and letting in unqualified people.

I worked at a place with a demanding interview process for about 3 years and the people I worked with were excellent. Nobody is making you do anything you don't want to do. So drop the attitude and the childish entitlement.

I'm not sure what you think my attitude and entitlement are. I can handle the interview process fine without studying. It plays to my strengths. I've only worked at places with demanding interview processes.

My concern is about the success of the company I work at. My coworkers tend to be excellent when the bar is a tough algorithms interview, but they can't hire enough people. I'm a particularly demanding interviewer. I've rejected candidates who failed miserably, then later learned from my excellent coworkers that the candidate I rejected was excellent at their job.

I've also referred an excellent coworker from a previous job, only to have them fail the interview process. My current company would have benefited greatly from that hire, but instead rejected a talented person for a role they were having trouble filling.

If a company is having trouble hiring, it needs to at least get these excellent people that are being filtered out. Lowering the bar to let these excellent people in also lets in much less qualified people. Instead, the filter needs to be changed to let in people based on how qualified they are rather than how good they are at algorithm puzzles.

Successful companies need more than just people who are good at algorithms like me and studious people like you.

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

#458

Post by hackinthebochs »

confusedcoder wrote: post #417
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…

Forgive me because I have used a similar idom when dealing with io. I do something like: for i=0; i Am I doing something stupid here?

Well the continue isn't doing any work for you since the else clause prevents the raise from being called.

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

#459

Post by hackinthebochs »

blub wrote: post #400
hjk05 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's utterly insane the expectations that interviewers have. Not really though. They always manage to fill the position. Interview’s see the system as unfair because they think their interview happens in a vacuum. You get x questions answer all correctly and your awarded with a job. So naturally you complain when you feel half the questions are too advanced or that more brain understanding is enough. In reality the…

> In reality the interviews are just a sorting, and when everyone can answer the relevant questions you start asking harder ones because “we picked a candidate at random from those who got the questions right” is just not a satisfying endstate. That's just silly. If they can answer the relevant questions, they're qualified period.

Generally people don't just want to know that they got a qualified candidate, they want to know that they got the best candidate available. And so having a more sensitive differentiator than 'passes basic qualifications' is important to most people.

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

#460

Post by jlengrand »

officialchicken wrote: post #113
deminature wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not afraid to hire people who challenge and ask great questions. I ask that question all the time. The interviewer should be involved with improving the hiring process, not following the cargo cult of "hiring process". Obviously if that question comes up more often, they might start asking "why are we doing X?" and "does X provide better outcomes?"

Amen! Since I've been involved in hiring and recruitment, I stopped seeing interviews as a validation of invalidation of my worth and rather more as a discussion where we are both trying to see if what we have to offer matches what the other needs. Based on this, most of the interviews are not interviews anymore, but open discussions.
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