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Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

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Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#451

Post by etblg »

You know after going through like 10 or so interviews this year while trying to find a new job, I grew to appreciate leetcode tests as a candidate more.

The first thing you start to realize when interviewing is that every company has their own unique process for interviewing. The second thing you realize is that you're not going to ace every process every time, it's a roulette wheel you're spinning to see if this specific process and this specific day and this specific set of interviewers and this specific mood you're in are able to align in a way that they feel confident giving you an offer (leetcode or no leetcode, doesn't really play in to this factor).

The nice thing about leetcode tests as a candidate is that you can study for them, go through a few rounds of it with different companies, and get better at it and know how to improve for the next interview. When companies drop the leetcode tests you end up getting judged on the arbitrary criteria and testing that they devised in its place. If you come out of that interview not doing well, you can't really use that as practice for the next one -- because the next company you interview at may have a process/test that doesn't overlap at all with that previous interview. Now you don't have to practice leetcode and spend an hour doing something that's not directly applicable to your day to day job, but instead you're subjected more to the whims of randomness and whether you were prepared to satisfy the process they came up with instead -- which may not be shared by other companies.

Leetcode isn't great, but it's also not that bad. Some companies (i.e. Google, Facebook) you will have to get very in depth with practicing and knowing data structures and algorithms to do well in the interviews. A lot of other companies you can pass the leetcode with a lot less work, just need to have a basic refresher on graphs, trees, linked lists, etc. Other companies yet, they won't ask you leetcode at all (but that doesn't mean the job/company is good in other areas either, it's always a tradeoff).

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#452

Post by WorldMaker »

sai_c wrote: post #116
hiq wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough. What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates?

> This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough. But then why do people with that kind of reputation still (at certain companies) have to jump through these hoops? https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our... > What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates? What about (instead of forcing a months long decision process upon…

We could make sure that a person only has to do that trial once in their career and then every other company should accept that they've done it because they've proven they've done it. We could call it an Apprenticeship or an Engineer-In-Training stage. (Where have I heard those before?~)

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#453

Post by chris11 »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #228
Koshkin wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want the airplane I am about to board to be flown by a real pilot.

Do you want the plane designed by a brilliant engineer or 100 people who are really good at memorizing engineering questions?

This comparison isn't totally valid. Behavioral and system design rounds become much more important in the typical Silicon Valley interview process as you get more senior.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#454

Post by nkuttler »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #415

Totally against using LeetCode for interviewing engineers. However, when asking around about why people who use it do so, I found out it does have one irrefutable advantage: it stops people who can't code at all. From an engineer's point of view, LeetCode is a complete waste of everyone's time because it measures things that aren't factors in successful engineering (as TFA says). Bu from the non-technical manager's p…

You don't even need leetcode easy level though to stop imposters, a trivial challenge with a loop and variable that you manipulate somehow will do.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#455

Post by aulin »

foobiekr wrote: post #431
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 problem with this theory is that I have met a ton of engineers who really have a lot of their identity wrapped up in how well they did on leetcode interviews [mostly by memorizing enough of them to pattern match] and heap scorn on candidates who don't do well on them as if they are subhumans. The ego and status jockeying appeal of leetcode is very, very high and a lot of engineers just eat it up. I think discussi…

and those will be the same people perpetrating this flawed interview system, because interviewers tend to look for themselves in the interviewee

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#456

Post by WorldMaker »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #240
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…

No joke: Isn't this the famous Donald Knuth text layout algorithm? I heard it is still used today -- it is that good.

I've done that in interviews: "oh hey, the most efficient known algorithm is this classic named X". That tends not to win interviews either, but in the real world knowing the name of the best algorithm (or even just that a best algorithm exists and a general idea of what you'd google to find it) is more useful than knowing the details of it. If I need to reimplement a well known algorithm I can often reimplement it from the Wikipedia description, that's trivial and boring make-work (and will always be trivial and boring make-work). But I need to know which well known algorithm sometimes and that's a far more useful practical skill.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#457

Post by closeparen »

asdff wrote: post #446
closeparen wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough. You can't just hire someone based on their reputation at a company of any maturity. That's a legal and HR nightmare. There has to be a process with a semblance of objectivity, and that process has to demonstrably apply to everyone equally, always.

Which in practice means you put out a fake job posting where the qualifications uncannily mirror this persons resume to a tee, and you hand them the job formally after a week.

Yes, but the forms must be observed. You can't just skip the interview, or give people you like a softball interview compared to other candidates.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#458

Post by corrral »

Apocryphon wrote: post #422
Bayko wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I honestly think no one is entitled more than software developers. Not even that chick from Mean Girls. Hell which other similarly paying field can you double compensation in like three or four months. Six months if you are slow or have a demanding life. Lawyers? Hahahaha. Doctor? Hahahaha. At least with LC there is an end goal. Those 75 questions. Or well I think 150 questions. I hate LC personally but also…

At least with those professions you have one test you pass, and maybe you retake it once every few years to renew your credentials. With Leetcode, you have to retake the test multiple times every few years when you change jobs for each company you apply to. Leetcode would be a lot more tolerable if it was administered more like the bar exam or like medical exams. Whatever happened to DRY?

I'm quite certain that making people dread interviewing is part of the point. Else why keep making people who've already passed multiple times, do it again? First FAANG to start routinely letting people who've already passed a couple similar interviews at peer companies in without repeating the leetcode-hazing, then the other companies have to do it, too, now suddenly the rate-of-increase of software developer pay's even faster than it already is, which none of them want.

Even having to pass such a test on a very aggressive set schedule—say, every 5 years—but only at those set times, would be better—for developers. Not for the companies hiring them.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#459

Post by typon »

sdevonoes wrote: post #180
bigpeopleareold wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do leetcodes because I am not really into programming puzzles (or parlor tricks :D ), but I roughly tried to do what you described. ~45 minutes it took, deciding in the middle to not worry about the algorithm. Guess I won't get the job ... shrugs.

You won't get the job not because you "didn't worry about the algorithm" but because you didn't ask any questions about the problem; just went straightforward to the implementation. In FAANG interviews that would be a red flag.

This is a myth. It doesn't matter if you ask "questions" but implement an n^2 solution. Unless you implement the optimal solution, usually using a top-down DP or some array trick, you aren't moving forward in the interview process.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#460

Post by [deleted] »

synergy20 wrote: post #424
weatherlite wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can however assess how smart somebody is Why not just give candidates a standard IQ test then? They are probably more reliable than Leetcode...

IQ does not tell determination/hard-working-attitude at all, in fact many with high IQ ended up being nobody, as high IQ makes learning relatively easier, most got used to that and just let the 'grit' go. leetcode is the SAT for coding, not perfect, but at least it's close to fair play.

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