Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

leetcodetherapy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 157 posts

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#141

Post by arwhatever »

jitl wrote: post #24

Don’t want to do Leetcode? Me neither — after I left Airbnb I vowed to not work at any company that asks this kind of question. I interviewed at a bunch of interesting companies (Airtable, Brex, Eaze, Figma, Lob, Notion, ...) none of which asked this kind of algo brain teaser question. There are tons of places out there with great product, interesting problems, and good compensation - so if you hate this bullshit, do…

I've created a website - https://sievejobs.com - to allow job seekers to hard-filter out companies with this sort of interview process, and also to quantify to hiring companies exactly how many job seekers they're missing out on.

(The site treats other job elements similarly: open seating plans, remote-ness, etc.)

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#142

Post by Google234 »

nefitty wrote: post #136
wnmurphy wrote: post #113

I've recently been thinking about this a lot. The single highest-leverage action I've found for myself has been to shift my goal from: A. (destination) I need to get a top-tier job at a FAANG company. to B. (process) I want to develop my ability to think structurally, so that I can enjoy spending time with code by honing an intuitive sense of the pattern language of code. The former is future-oriented, stressful, fee…

I like the mental shift that focusing on process entails. For your process goal, do you have a list of activities or tasks you do for that? Here are some of mine, although I’m unsure of relative ROI’s (maybe “return on investment” is antithetical to the process goal lol): - Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I rea…

- Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I read it

How is this useful at all? If you want to learn you should actually start contributing to a project and get feedback that way. You don’t learn how to do math problems by copying solutions.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#143

Post by nefitty »

Google234 wrote: post #142
nefitty wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the mental shift that focusing on process entails. For your process goal, do you have a list of activities or tasks you do for that? Here are some of mine, although I’m unsure of relative ROI’s (maybe “return on investment” is antithetical to the process goal lol): - Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I rea…

- Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I read it How is this useful at all? If you want to learn you should actually start contributing to a project and get feedback that way. You don’t learn how to do math problems by copying solutions.

The point for me is that it makes my reading more active. I also get a physical feel for code style. If I was just reading source code, it would be a lot easier to skim over things without letting them cook in my brain from a bit.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#144

Post by redis_mlc »

intergalplan wrote: post #137
redis_mlc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeetCode is a problem that took a famous computer scientist a month to write a paper about, but you have 30 minutes in a proprietary web app to either remember or re-invent it, and pass a test suite.

LeetCode-type interviews are about 60% a how-bad-do-you-want-this test, and 40% a barely-concealed IQ test. I'm not even sure that's the wrong way for FAANG to do things, given how many people want to work there. I do know it's a damn bad idea for any place not offering FAANG-like comp, since at lower comp levels you're in competition with a ton of places that don't demand hours of grinding leetcode to prove you want…

I've seen actual, serious CS problems posed as questions, so it doesn't matter how much you want it - you either saw it before or you're doing heavy-duty research while people are watching you, which isn't likely.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#145

Post by dshia »

I agree that you only need to master 100, maybe 200, core questions then solving 1500 leetcode questions is only a time problem. However, most of candidates are not reaching or even closing to “master” level.

For example, given a question, can you immediately figure out the real problem you need to solve? What kind of algorithms and data structures look possible or useful for this question? Do you clearly understand the time complexity of each possible algorithm? Can you explain the solution quickly and clearly? What about other alternative solutions?

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#146

Post by legerdemain »

dominotw wrote: post #76
legerdemain wrote: post #31

You 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.

No, I stand by my claim that many LeetCode problems are too time-consuming or tedious to be effective whiteboard interview questions.

It should be noted that whiteboard interviews are slightly similar, but not identical to IOI and other coding competitions. An IOI problem is not necessarily an effective interview question.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#147

Post by tweetle_beetle »

xibalba wrote: post #96
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone just released a product that offloads Chrome to the cloud. Gmail has a very long loading screen. Hangouts was replaced by something like 4 incompatible apps. Android phones are significantly less power efficient than iPhones. YouTube copyright notices are trivial to game. Google’s software over the past 10 years or so leaves a lot to be desired and they’re the worst offender for filtering by leetcode-style in…

This could be explained by failures of management in addition to or as opposed to the ability of technical individual contributors.

I think you and the parent and the grandparent are in agreement.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#148

Post by wnmurphy »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #132
wnmurphy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mediocre actors stockpile material. Good actors react from first principles.

What?

A transferrable principle from acting.

Memorizing LC solutions is attempting to "stockpile."

Instead, we should be learning the main principles, and then reacting to technical interview problems from there, rather than trying to recall the solution to the problem.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#149

Post by wnmurphy »

Google234 wrote: post #142
nefitty wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the mental shift that focusing on process entails. For your process goal, do you have a list of activities or tasks you do for that? Here are some of mine, although I’m unsure of relative ROI’s (maybe “return on investment” is antithetical to the process goal lol): - Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I rea…

- Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I read it How is this useful at all? If you want to learn you should actually start contributing to a project and get feedback that way. You don’t learn how to do math problems by copying solutions.

I think there are two learning styles, one is to learn by doing, filling in the gaps as you go. The other is to front load information first and then apply it by doing.

For me, I learn the most by getting a broad overview of the material first, understanding how other people have used it, etc. then applying it myself.

For copying code, I actually do this to get a feel for a new language. An analogy might be to carefully watch Tiger Woods swing a golf club, then replicate the motion yourself to build muscle memory for the swing, then go out to the driving range and hit balls yourself.

Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety

#150

Post by wnmurphy »

nefitty wrote: post #143
Google234 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I read it How is this useful at all? If you want to learn you should actually start contributing to a project and get feedback that way. You don’t learn how to do math problems by copying solutions.

The point for me is that it makes my reading more active. I also get a physical feel for code style. If I was just reading source code, it would be a lot easier to skim over things without letting them cook in my brain from a bit.

I do this as well, I think the idea that code is physical is underrated. We've evolved to intuitively understand physical things; physicalizing something so abstract seems like a natural way to understand it.
Post reply on HN