Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
leetcodetherapy.com
Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
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Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#2After crashing and burning the startup rodeo, I gave up. I live off my savings, dabble in crypto for some income, and work on my own software to sell. I've never been happier. Silicon Valley didn't seem to want me anyway.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#3It's worth checking out the other links/blogs on this site. I read a lot of complaining about Leetcode, most of which I think is valid. That said, something that's not discussed often is its effect on interviewee's mental health.
I used to admin a large Discord server for junior software job hunters. It's pretty insane how many struggle from anxiety and stress directly caused by the interview formats popularized by Leetcode. The author here makes a pretty good point, honestly:
>Leetcode is a competitive programming platform at its core, not an interview platform.
I think this is where a lot of the stress comes from. Like the author, I mostly avoided Leetcode and focused on fundamentals (literally reading CLRS and implementing foundational algorithms).
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#4Ah, man, I get being anxious in interviews but it never occurred to me that newbies would be stressed out by their (lack of) Leetcode score. It's totally unnecessary of course - the people who've racked 1500 problems are probably as unemployed as you are :p
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#5What’s a good way to pickup CS skills in a well rounded manner outside of a CS degree?
Moving from Sysadmin to DevOps rolls and need to learn this stuff.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#6What’s a good way to pickup CS skills in a well rounded manner outside of a CS degree? Moving from Sysadmin to DevOps rolls and need to learn this stuff.
The algorithm design manual by skienna is a popular choice. The first half is more instructional regarding different classes of algorithms and datastructures and how they should be used while the second half is like an encyclopedia of descriptions of various algorithms. It's a very approachable read and I've found it to be a great book, all around.
A lot of people recommend the super heavy tome textbooks, which could be useful, but I feel like from your description you'd be better off with this
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#7Nobody does 1500 problems. 100-200 is most common.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#8What’s a good way to pickup CS skills in a well rounded manner outside of a CS degree? Moving from Sysadmin to DevOps rolls and need to learn this stuff.
1. Trial by fire; learning on the job
2. CS stuff is widely available for self-study if you've got good discipline. "The Algorithm Design Manual" by Skiena is my favorite textbook on algorithm fundamentals. CLRS is a bigger book with more mathy crunch, if you're into that.
There's a lot more to computer science and software engineering than just algorithms, but it's what you'll get grilled on the most in junior level interviews. By the same token, the skills you need as you get more senior in this industry aren't really taught in school.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#9What’s a good way to pickup CS skills in a well rounded manner outside of a CS degree? Moving from Sysadmin to DevOps rolls and need to learn this stuff.
I've had good success with some Finnish MOOC on java when I had a teacher who didn't even know what RAM was. I had to learn quick unfortunately cause she just graded if it was right to wrong. But even with probably writing over a couple thousand lines it code, I don't think I became comfortable with OOP until like 6 months in. Personally, I think C# and Java are the easiest to learn and I don't care what anybody says. C/C++ gets hardcore fast and makes things frustrating. Web Dev gets boring because you mess with html tags and css more than you do javascript.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#10I wonder ten years from now how common LeetCode like interviews are. These types of interviews favor those who have the luxury of ample time to prep for difficult interviews and aren’t representative of most daily working environments. This process fails to consider candidates that would be good fits. When I help with interviews, I place much more values on communication skills, teamwork, mentorship, and a general passion for technology.