How do you pick representative problems on leetcode? He says to pick 100-150 and master them... how do you know which ones to master?
Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
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Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#72More and more tech companies are beginning to hire for soft skills as a main emphasis, with basic technical skills as a given. They're tending to intentionally NOT hire l337 folks, with a lot of emphasis on avoiding the "brilliant jerk." So, if you are personally interested in the work, willing to learn, and aren't a jerk, you'll probably go further than someone who has traveling salesman memorized in 8 languages.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#73How do you pick representative problems on leetcode? He says to pick 100-150 and master them... how do you know which ones to master?
pick some from each pattern. Adjust more or less based on your comfort with each pattern
eg: pick more sliding window pattern, dp, greedy vs pick less for binary tree/dfs problems.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#74More and more tech companies are beginning to hire for soft skills as a main emphasis, with basic technical skills as a given. They're tending to intentionally NOT hire l337 folks, with a lot of emphasis on avoiding the "brilliant jerk." So, if you are personally interested in the work, willing to learn, and aren't a jerk, you'll probably go further than someone who has traveling salesman memorized in 8 languages.
Curious what companies these are or where you are seeing this data. This has not been what I have seen, I actually think leetcode is becoming more and more common in interviews. Just adding some of my own anecdata.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#75I 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 pa…
I do not think they are going away. They are a filter some like to use.
I personally use a dead simple 'leetcode' style program because I want to see they have the basics and can communicate them. I have had to filter more than a few people just because of that. If you can not handle some simple if's and for loops you are in for some real trouble later on. Sometimes they will come in and bust on through it quickly. Which actually helps me decide. Because I can then say 'oh you got through that semi quickly which site/book did you learn from?' That opens up what they know and gives me a good handle on how they are technically. I can then move quickly on to 'let them brag about previous work'. That shows if they were passionate for or was it just a job to grind out. Some cases it matters others not so much. If they come in and really give it a good try but struggle a bit and can say why I may recommend making them a bit more junior and pairing them with someone.
I also do not see it going away. I recently proctored some classes in my org. By the time the 'class' was done most had not bothered to even do 1 or 2 chapters. It was mostly just watching a 20-30 min video with whatever level of homework you wanted. I watched many of them for a few months after. The ones who bashed it all out were ones who tended to be tech leads and suggesting better things to happen.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#76You really need to decide in advance what you want to get out of LeetCode. It has a lot to give. For example, some LeetCode questions are textbook problems. You really should familiarize yourself with them, but you will probably never see them verbatim on an interview. Other LeetCode questions are too tedious or time-consuming to do on a whiteboard in an hour. You will also not see them on an interview. For some peop…
> Other LeetCode questions are too tedious or time-consuming to do on a whiteboard in an hour.
Afaik all leetcode problems are from contest where thousands of ppl solve 4 in 1 hr. Its unlikely that there are questions which cannot be solved in 1 hr whiteboard.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#77More and more tech companies are beginning to hire for soft skills as a main emphasis, with basic technical skills as a given. They're tending to intentionally NOT hire l337 folks, with a lot of emphasis on avoiding the "brilliant jerk." So, if you are personally interested in the work, willing to learn, and aren't a jerk, you'll probably go further than someone who has traveling salesman memorized in 8 languages.
Curious what companies these are or where you are seeing this data. This has not been what I have seen, I actually think leetcode is becoming more and more common in interviews. Just adding some of my own anecdata.
The last two companies I've worked for, and feedback I've gotten from product managers and hiring people.
All of the interviews I've done over the past few years have used leetcode, or some variant, but most of them used it only as one dimension when considering candidates. If someone was leet at coding, but bad at team work, they didn't have a chance. The opposite position was far more favorable (I've heard "you can train people to have skills, so hire for the things you can't teach" more often than once). In fact, I'm seeing companies swing the pendulum a little too far away from skills, but that's to be expected, when doing this kind of balancing.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#78I started doing leetcode when the pandemic hit. I wanted to be ready in case I got fired and I have to do an interview... surprisingly I fell in love with it. I am one of those ppl that writes codes in their head, so I just look at a problem and go on with my day until I have a solution. Then I write it and test it out. It's enjoyable to me, and I have been forced to learn a lot of CS concepts I had forgotten and tec…
I sure as shit hope you don't breeze through. Why should practicing mental leetcode questions prepare you for a job interview in the real world? In my company, you wouldn't breeze through, because we don't participate in 'whiteboard culture', or maybe those sorts of companies you have self selected out of?
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#79I honestly think leetcode is a pretty terrible way to learn how to do algorithm problems, especially without a formal education in algorithms. The large test case bank is the most useful feature. The discussion and solutions shared on the site tends to be lacking in breadth and depth.
I was happier to learn algorithms properly via the algorithms Coursera course taught by Sedgewick. The next time I need to go through the interview loop, I’ll probably start with Programming Interviews Exposed and supplement it with some other algorithm books as needed.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#80I 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 pa…
These types of interviews favor those who have the luxury of ample time to prep for difficult interviews... Interviews that test for anything that isn't directly related to the job the candidate will be doing are essentially codified discrimination - the expectation that someone will have a skill or significant knowledge outside of the job itself is effectively a way to filter out candidates based on arbitrary criter…
That's one way of looking at it. But there's also another side of it: this type of interviews let you change career path.
Imagine that you're run-of-the-mill java programmer, but you'd like to dive into Machine Learning, or BlockChain, or whatever. Some companies will require you to have 3 years of previous experience before considering you for such job. Others will give you a Leetcode interview to ensure that you're smart, and then let you learn the actual tech stack on the job.
Also, Leetcode problems might be removed from everyday development work, but most of us did learn those things at some point, i.e. in college, so asking them in the interview kind of makes sense, it's kind of "common denominator" for all programmers.