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Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

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Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#311

Post by PheonixPharts »

lkrubner wrote: post #249
brhsagain wrote: post #148

All of these supposed "flaws" of leetcode are by design. Big companies want people who are smart enough to do the work, but obedient enough to put up with all the bullshit that comes with working at a big company. What person better matches that than someone who's able and willing to study for and pass a tech version of the SAT? Every anti-leetcode article I read is some version of "leetcode is bad because it measure…

The idea that companies are using leetcode tests for rational reasons goes against everything I've seen and experienced or read about. What I have seen, working at startups for more than 20 years, is irrational, self-destructive behavior, over and over and over again. I've worked with many entrepreneurs who have a few million dollars in the bank, and they have a great idea, but they self-destruct due to two big reaso…

I think it's quite possible that both you and the parent comment are correct.

Based on my experience, you are most certainly correct that the companies using leetcode aren't following any line of reasoning, and certainly not one as sophisticated as what the parent is implying. Most decisions made by "leadership" are irrational and self-destructive as you describe there (your book looks very interesting btw).

However what the parent is claiming, as far as the effects of the leetcode interview process is certainly true. I also think that the parent is correct in that these, perhaps unintended, consequences of leetcode interview in attracting a docile though technically competed work force are beneficial to large organization.

I also think the parents second comment, about these consequences not being beneficial to startups ultimately aligns with your view: startups do great harm to themselves by mindlessly aping the behavior of big name tech cos, mostly out of ego and fear.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#312

Post by devnulll »

Dowwie wrote: post #75

Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort gets filtered out of an interview involving contrived scenarios. You may have built the next generation X, but given an array of strings and a fixed width, can you format the text such that each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully justified -- in the next 30 minutes? Maybe you should have cultivated that skillset…

> given an array of strings and a fixed width, can you format the text such that each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully justified

So many questions. What character encoding is the string? What is human language? Should I honor non-breaking spaces and other similar codepoints? Is the string full of 'simple' characters or 'complex' characters? Graphme's? Emoji's? What's the min and max limits on width? How long (or short) can each string me, and how large could the array be? On what system am I running, and does the array fit in memory or is it paged off a disk? Does the font we're using support all of the graphme's present in the string?

Amusingly, I had a variation of this problem as part of an Amazon L8 IC role interview, framed as a Prefix Tree. Solved the problem, didn't get the role. :(

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#313

Post by yalogin »

brhsagain wrote: post #148

All of these supposed "flaws" of leetcode are by design. Big companies want people who are smart enough to do the work, but obedient enough to put up with all the bullshit that comes with working at a big company. What person better matches that than someone who's able and willing to study for and pass a tech version of the SAT? Every anti-leetcode article I read is some version of "leetcode is bad because it measure…

> obedient enough to put up with bull shit

I have see an over reliance on leetcode style question in startups actually. May be more fairly, "we want to be google" style companies which is every startup. In fact some large companies have a more relaxed way of interviewing.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#314

Post by overrun11 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #271
adamors wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are multiple blog posts from senior engineers who took 1-2 months off to grind LC just to get into Google/Meta etc.

> there are multiple blog posts from senior engineers who took 1-2 months off to grind LC just to get into Google/Meta etc. Don’t read too much into blog posts. This is engagement farming to capture search traffic and trending topics related to LeetCode. Taking months off to grind LeetCode all day isn’t common and doesn’t even make sense. LeetCode can be done on a lunch break. Even one problem per day in the evenings…

I think people like to exaggerate the difficulty of these interviews to excuse themselves for not having one of these jobs.

The lifestyle/compensation gap between top tier tech and everything else is enormous and it's a tough pill to swallow that the only thing keeping you out is some light studying every day for a few weeks/months.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#316

Post by 1ark »

stevekemp wrote: post #87
padjo wrote: post #16

Just talk to the person, ask them about projects they’ve worked on, problems they’ve solved etc. you’ll learn far more about them that way than getting them to put on a dog and pony show at a whiteboard!

I have to say this is how I've always interviewed people - I tend to be optimistic and assume people don't lie about their skills and experiences. So when I've been asked to interview people I mostly want to talk about projects, hobbies, and general things about developing, debugging, and the process by which people solve problems. I don't want to know if you can do specific things, if you can't you'll learn, but I d…

Great to hear this. We use a similar approach, we sometimes get flattery in the form of "this was the nicest interview I ever had". I believe in human centric approach (the golden- and silver rules), and if they have the fundamentals right, technical skills etc. they can learn the rest on the job! Quickly too. And stay working for many years, low turnover, more cost effective. I thought that is one reason there are the standard 90 day trial period. Instead a lot of time is spent in interviews finding the perfect candidate (which doesn't exist).

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#317

Post by mattkrause »

willcipriano wrote: post #192
yonaguska wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, what's the difference between a leetcoder and a real engineer? In my mind, a real engineer really shines in the non technical aspect of things, like coordination, communication, prioritization, and getting hard questions answered. But that's just me, I'm curious what everyone else's experiences are.

To me a real engineer is good at engineering, what you described sounds like a good HR manager.

I don't think HR is usually on that level.

For example, suppose your team generates and shares some kind of data. You want to change the wire format. You could just go ahead and do it, letting the chips fall where they may, but I think that's bad engineering/engineering management.

It'd be better to coordinate with the folks consuming the data. Can you make their migration easier? While you're making a breaking change, are there others that would make sense to roll in? Are there times when it'd be better/worse to roll out the new version? Being proactive about this sort of stuff seems like good engineering to me.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#318

Post by bpicolo »

overrun11 wrote: post #285
blueflow wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After seeing all the unreliable and buggy software, i think more gatekeeping in IT would probably be beneficial. You wouldn't let someone do surgery on you that hasn't been to medical school.

The rigor of an intro level algorithms course at a serious school far exceeds what is expected in a FAANG Leetcode interview.

I generally agree, but in the case of algorithms courses you generally know what you're expected to know for tests, and for course work you have ample access to course materials.

Getting a random question from an infinite pool and completing it with fewer resources under a short time crunch is a different game.

The low-level/assembly course I took had tests that felt like puzzles, and those tests were a ton of fun to take. Can't say I've had the same feeling for leetcode puzzles.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#319

Post by corrral »

brhsagain wrote: post #148

All of these supposed "flaws" of leetcode are by design. Big companies want people who are smart enough to do the work, but obedient enough to put up with all the bullshit that comes with working at a big company. What person better matches that than someone who's able and willing to study for and pass a tech version of the SAT? Every anti-leetcode article I read is some version of "leetcode is bad because it measure…

A key clue about some of their reasons for doing it is that they still make you go through it even if you're, say, applying at Google, passed theirs 8 years ago, passed Facebook's 5 years ago, and passed Netflix's 2 years ago.

I think part of the purpose is to cool competition between them.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#320

Post by Tade0 »

I've come to the realisation that during those two hours at maximum that I get with the candidate the most I can do is:

- Check their English

- Confirm that they are not an impostor

The former is an especially good predictor, because it tells me whether that person can read documentation.

I suppose for native English speakers a reading comprehension test would do.

The only thing Leet Code ever tests did for me is give false negatives.

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