“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#631

Post by gofreddygo » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

_9omd wrote: post #520

polishdude20 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just start off doing leetcode questions online and learned from the solutions? I'd study leetcode stuff if I could even start getting interviews to show my skills :/

Yes, and I went against the standard advice to not look at the solution until you solve it yourself. I think for the first 50-100 problems it's best to not think too hard about it before looking at the solution, gaining a full understanding, and writing an implementation or three (building that muscle memory so to speak). At this point, you'll have many more tools in your kit (graph traversal, search, dynamic program…

Excellent practical advice.

That part of just following the solution for the first 50-100 problems is spot on. It resonates very well with my experience learning math by first following the "solved" examples, fully understanding them, then solving similar "simple" problems, repeating them till they fit into muscle memory and only then attempting the challenging ones.

First challenge I faced with leetcode is they do not have a concept or technique map. Similar to the chapter index in any math textbook, each dealing with a specific technique, concept or pattern. For example the idea of using a hash to store a running sum is useful for a class of problems like finding the longest sequence that adds to a specified sum, longest sequence of equal no of 0s and 1s. Yet, there was and still isn't a page or resource where such a pattern was described.

Solving leetcode feels like swimming upstream, one problem at a time, looking for patterns. Some are well described (Kadane for example) but most aren't. I looked around the web but couldn't find any resources that helped me with this.

I wonder if we could, at your experience, list some concepts and techniques that can be repeatedly useful. I believe that could cut the prep time by a good degree.

Second related problem to this is retention. With this master technique map, it would become easier to review and revise quickly. (I tried spaced rep, not useful) The most effective strategy for me has been to put everything in one book.I have multiple index pages with lists of similar problems pointing the page numbers with the solution.

I have been able to get better at data structures using this approach now I'm at the leetcode phase.

Appreciate your response.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#632

Post by xtat » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

Gotta ask yourself, is this helping us build better technology (or hurting?)

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#633

Post by joeax » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #233

joeax wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have several certifications from Microsoft and Google and, for the most part, mean jack to an interviewer. I am still forced to leetcode and answer mind-numbing questions. On a side note, of all the choices I prefer a take-home, as long as it is timeboxed to no more than 1-2 hours.

It never is one or two hours though. It might be if you designed the thing and know exactly how to get there and handle all the corner cases. Oh and also we always underestimate. I have yet to see a 1–2h take home test actually be doable in that amount of time. It’s more like 8–10h to get going, have something meaningful, and code that isn’t inscrutable.

It can be if they give you something to start with.

One company gave out sample code and asked me to optimize it so it ran under 5 seconds. The exercise was in parallelizing or caching/reusing what you could per the requirements.

it was great because:

- problem statement clearly defined

- skeleton code provided

- about 2 hours to complete

- solved an actual, real-world problem

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#634

Post by pickledcods » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #627

pickledcods wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then age... I'm an eighties whizz-kid, educated hardware and software background with borderline epiphanic understanding of computer technology. From firmware to systems where peoples lives literally depend on. In 2000 jumped on a plane to Taiwan to develop the first Arduino/RaspberryPi class devices. Still up to date and currently busy polishing a ShowHN which will blow you off your socks. Everything nowadays is…

> Finding a job position is impossible. What's your email? I'd love to reach out to you and discuss some openings that we have on our team.

Thank you. It's mailto:xyzzy%40rockingship.org

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#635

Post by hiq » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #330

hiq wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that koonsolo never mentioned quicksort, only sort. You can easily make it a newbie question by just accepting any sort that returns a correct output, even with a quadratic complexity in the best case. Any programmer should be able to write that in less than 10min. And as the post you answered to alluded to, the point of the question is really just to filter out candidates who can't even write simple code, just…

I haven't written a sorting method in years and couldn't remember it on the spot in 10 minutes, despite having analyzed the big ones 6 years ago. Yet, I have no problem creating a giant, modular, cookie-cutter enterprise structure, which is generally more sought after and something many hardcore leets seem to struggle with, especially once it comes down to doing more than just a fancy UML graph. We really don't need…

Again, you can make it a newbie question by just accepting any sort, including one you come up with on your own (so no need to remember). I'm sure you can design your own sort given enough time, granted 10 minutes might be too short to get it nice and clean, but with a bit more you're on the level of difficulty of fizzbuzz.

To make my point clear, you can implement a dumb and inefficient sort by implementing a min function, taking this min, then iteratively call it on what's left of the array and append the values to a new array which you then return. That won't get you into FAANGM, but maybe that's enough to get some discussion started in an interview at a company that's not too much into leetcode and is trying to evaluate other skills like communication. And I do think that 99% of people who write code every week could come up with something like this or better fairly quickly.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#636

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #470

yodsanklai wrote: post #359

I've just landed a job at a FAANG company. Some random subjective comments based on my experience: - it was hard work - there was no way I could have passed these interviews without all the work. - my past experience and education barely helped me for the interview - it's not enough to be able to solve the problems, you need to be able to solve them on the spot, without much thinking, in an interview context - I pass…

This process is all theater. We really need some kind of certification process instead. I'm a while out of school and one interview I went on had a requirement for a live coding session. The ask was to implement red/black trees from scratch despite the fact that they have an Angular app with MySQL on the backend. I took this as a blessing. I don't want to work at a place where they think this is a good way to hire pe…

Isn't a CS degree (from a non-degree-mill school) such certification process?

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#637

Post by tguvot » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

SavageBeast wrote: post #526

neilv wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate your candor here. I've long been opposed to the Leetcode battery interview processes, to the point that I started asking FAANG recruiters that several years ago, and saying that was a showstopper for me, like a signal for how they treated people. Though I otherwise wanted to work at a couple of them. After consulting levels.fyi, however, I've revised my opinion: if an employer is willing to pay a…

"That said, for people who've frittered away their discretionary time on things like open source, hobbies, family, etc., rather than drilling for FAANG interviews, the well-known "test prep" commitment for Leetcode-oriented companies is a barrier to even applying there." Salary aside - this is the truth right here. I interviewed at a few FAANGs and I didn't have what Id call a good experience. Neither resulted in an…

I had a gig as contractor at one of FAANGs (they needed expertise that they didn't posses). Money aside, after you remove from equation fleet of leetcoders there is a bunch of smart people over there that work on solving various interesting and challenging problems. It's great place to learn on how problems (especially in scaling of various infrastructure systems on global level) are solved and also how things shouldn't be done :)

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#638

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #466

vsareto wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NGL, I'd jump through hoops for 250k + other compensation Part of why this has stuck around for so long is that so many people are willing to do that because it's a life-altering amount of money

Plus the prestige of being able to walk into your next job and captain the ship. I've been at a few places that hired former Googlers, and they were all treated like gods.

Is that really true? I've interviewed ex-FAANG employees at some jobs and there was never any pressure to hire them, and I didn't feel like any one of them would be treated as a god if hired. They were pretty universally above average though.

They were also not "walking in to captain" anything. They were applying for standard engineering jobs. Think of an average individual-contributor software engineer from, say, Facebook. Is a smaller company really going to hire them as Director Of Engineering (a totally different job than software engineering), just because of the company name on the resume? That sounds absurd.

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#639

Post by disambiguation » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

sudeepj wrote: post #90

echelon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or…

> Our craft is becoming arcane I would say is that a lot of hard problems (of last 20-30 yrs) are getting commoditised (e.g. S3, DynamoDB, Redis) and barrier to entry reduced. This would mean increasing the work is "glue & pipes".

exactly, "software engineering" nowadays is just over-glorified plumbing

Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”

#640

Post by _9omd » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

gofreddygo wrote: post #631

_9omd wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I went against the standard advice to not look at the solution until you solve it yourself. I think for the first 50-100 problems it's best to not think too hard about it before looking at the solution, gaining a full understanding, and writing an implementation or three (building that muscle memory so to speak). At this point, you'll have many more tools in your kit (graph traversal, search, dynamic program…

Excellent practical advice. That part of just following the solution for the first 50-100 problems is spot on. It resonates very well with my experience learning math by first following the "solved" examples, fully understanding them, then solving similar "simple" problems, repeating them till they fit into muscle memory and only then attempting the challenging ones. First challenge I faced with leetcode is they do n…

I completely agree about leetcode lacking a technique map/graph/tree. This would be immensely useful. In my studies I found that I naturally gravitated to classes of problems I was already good at, because that way I could avoid the mental pain of learning new techniques. I really needed a roadmap that lead me to what I actually needed to study, and that showed me where I was strong and weak. But as you said, they never make it super clear which techniques a problem uses, and how those techniques build on and relate to other techniques.

I'm really glad you bring it up, because I had actually been pondering ideas for making a better programming training site based on the idea of a skill graphs (similar to an RPG), repetition to build muscle memory, clear progress tracks based on the graph of skills, and greater insight into your strengths/weakness/progress with metrics.

As far as enumerating techniques, I'd need a good deal of time to work on that. I think there are two classes, the macro, being data structures/algorithms and what type of problems they apply. And the micro, which is more implementation specific techniques. Things like using a loop with two pointers into the same structure (ie: find a cycle in a linked list).