The fact that one can just ahead and cram for these problems should pretty much... severely downgrade, at least, their usefulness as hiring filters.
FANG recruiters will even give and encourage these study aids to candidates before their interview.
Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#12It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry.
Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job.
Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire someone who can ace the company's interview. People who can ace the company's interview are usually those who studied for it.
I recently took over a codebase from an ex-employee who went to Google. People were happy for him but I am so indignant. His code caused me hell. One production bug after another led me to eventually throw out all of his code. His code was written by somebody who did not care and his tests were useless. I'm pretty sure during his time at our company he was focused on leetcoding so he could get somewhere better. I wanted to reach out to him on LinkedIn to give him a piece of my mind hoping it may make him a more responsible engineer but I decided against it. I focused on fixing the features for the users because it was the right thing to do.
I want to work with people who care about the product they are working on. People who care about building great products are not solving coding interview problems.
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#13It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…
Now zoom back one level. Most of the jobs (not all!) are doing something pointless like increasing advertising revenue.
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#14The fact that one can just ahead and cram for these problems should pretty much... severely downgrade, at least, their usefulness as hiring filters.
It’s a how-bad-you-want-it filter. Plus a bit of an IQ test (to recognize which solution applies—of course even more studying can help here, too).
It’s working as intended.
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#15in golang
I think python is the most efficient language to use in interviews tbh. Functional languages might be better depending on the problem but you don't want people thinking you're a witch or something.
heh, reminded me of https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#16in golang
I think python is the most efficient language to use in interviews tbh. Functional languages might be better depending on the problem but you don't want people thinking you're a witch or something.
I learned enough Python for the interview questions specifically for this. Based on my (obviously anecdotal) experience, candidates I interview spend considerably less time on actual coding when using Python.
That being said, Scala makes design questions much easier thanks to its type system.
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#17It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…
How’s this different from a school exam preparation tool? It won’t teach you the subject; and if it did then what’s the harm?
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#18Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#19It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…
How’s this different from a school exam preparation tool? It won’t teach you the subject; and if it did then what’s the harm?
"The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades."
http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html
You shouldn't be studying to get good scores. You should be studying to learn and understand.
Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis
#20It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…
> ... His code caused me hell. One production bug after another led me to eventually throw out all of his code. His code was written by somebody who did not care and his tests were useless. ...
We just need different coding interviews. Focus them on systems design, common pitfalls and 'fingertraps', good software engineering principles, etc. A "10x" software dev should definitely know her way around asymptotic O(n) analysis, she might also want to know about all sorts of exotic algorithms and data structures, but there's so much more to get educated about in this field, that could be tested for with relative ease.