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

Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

fev.al

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 675 posts

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#571

Post by 908B64B197 »

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…

> What person better matches that than someone who's able and willing to study for and pass a tech version of the SAT?

Is it actually? "Leetcode" is pretty much covered by 6.006 [0] or equivalent. You shouldn't have to "grind" or study for hours if you passed the class (your problem sets should more than cover what you'll do on the blackboard).

Anyone applying for a serious engineering job should have at least done one algorithm class. This is what leetcode filters for.

[0] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms...

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#572

Post by brianhorakh »

Leet code definitely discriminates against slow thinkers and those who might be more inclined to use libraries and interfaces. It is biased against a certain types of developers who is usually not the best type of developer.

Have you ever seen corporate codebases? Leetcode emphasizes the old way of thinking is/was prone to do what you are told, dont think, just do the task in the timebox allocated for the sprint, always reinvent the wheel, and each axel, multiple times, for each wheel, in the same codebase.

This jira waterfall code now, dont think, and this might be fine for a unicycle, or even a bicycle, bad for trucks and trains.

Hint: With factor t - all tech debt - Everything will become a truck or train.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#573

Post by lazyant »

dekhn wrote: post #481
cadr wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree liking to ask simpler stuff first. But what about this more complicated stuff? My problem is that when we talk about stuff having more "signal" - how are we determining if those questions are giving us more signal?

My question is fairly open and allows me to continue asking significantly more complicated questions. So far, nobody has (for example) asked enough clarifying questions to determine that a bloom counting filter could potentially solve the problem- most people just store ASCII string keys in a hash table, which wastes tons of memory and requires a lookup for every string. So usually I end up after 45 minutes finding t…

The problem with this question is that outside the junior people who won't understand the hints, many good programmers would pass or fail just based on whether they have seen a similar problem or know what a Bloom filter is. CS is so broad that you may have been working for many years and never come across one topic that the interviewer deems standard.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#574

Post by hiq »

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…

> But then why do people with that kind of reputation still (at certain companies) have to jump through these hoops?

Your article points out that in this example: "I'm not allowed to check in code, no... I just haven't done it. I've so far found no need to.".

> If, say after one month, you do not like what you see, you can easily let them go. Of course you tell them upfront what the deal is.

> We could call it, I don't know, maybe trial or probationary period.

You make it sound like it's a better solution for candidates, but it's way worse for many of them and it has been explained by other commenters already.

How many companies actually do this? At which scale?

Some companies increased their difficulty to hire by having aggressive PIP objectives. Likewise, having a "real" probation period where you fire, say, 10%+ of employees is not gonna make you competitive when candidates compare their offers.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#575

Post by Jistern »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#576

Post by Apocryphon »

corrral wrote: post #538
synergy20 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a startup idea in fact, wait, someone is doing that: https://codesignal.com is one that I just learned yesterday, but it's not 'standardized' like what SAT does. In fact I believe software should have some qualification tests, e.g. general coding, database, cloud computing, etc. Like CPA for accountants. Each test should be valid for a few years in each category.

The hard part's not creating some kind of certification, it's getting desirable employers to accept it as a replacement for the most-painful parts of their interview processes. I suspect a lot of top companies don't want to make it easier to jump between them.

Yeah, witness Triplebyte's lack of success in getting companies to use them as a substitute for anything more than the initial phone technical screen.

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#577

Post by krisoft »

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #558
krisoft wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But.. why? Does that reflect anything close to the job they would be doing? Yes? Yes. Figuring out how to make a computer solve problems is very much the job of a software developer. They will only encounter harder and less well defined tasks in their actual job. If they can’t do this and you hire them that is like hiring an opera singer who is mute, or a baker who is deadly alergic to flour. > putting them on the…

I can certainly understand that there are unqualified people who apply, what I'm disputing is your assertion that there is a correlation between doing the contrived problems under unrealistic conditions and future job performance. It sounds like your goal is just to filter out the absolute worst of the worst, and I'm sure its effective at that, but I believe you might be filtering out more of the top end than you rea…

> It sounds like your goal is just to filter out the absolute worst of the worst,

Yes.

> I'm disputing is your assertion that there is a correlation between doing the contrived problems under unrealistic conditions and future job performance.

You are projecting something here. You are saying, without any supporting evidence, that the problems are contrived. They are not. They are really the core of what me and my coworkers do day in and day out.

You are also saying that the conditions are unrealistic. What makes you think that?

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#578

Post by adam_arthur »

Leetcode style questions are not a bad backdrop as long as you do a few things.

1) pick questions that are actually somewhat aligned with a problem that would come up for the role. Usually implementing a data structure of sorts is going to be way more predictive and relevant than a dynamic programming problem.

2) Ensure the question requires a fair amount and complexity of code to complete.

3) The question should just be a backdrop. Consider also how quickly and proficiently they can code. How intelligent they come across in conversation. Things they call out as side notes, testing, quality etc.

Many interviewers seem to have forgotten the purpose of the interview is to be predictive to on the job success, not to invent some separate funnel and gauge how well the candidate did on that funnel.

In practice, at scale, you will likely have enough correlation between success on a contrived interview system and general competency, but you're going to get a lot of false negatives/positives using that as a yard stick.

My experience has been that leetcode "theory" is very weakly correlated with competency for most roles, and quality and speed of coding much more highly correlated. One of my best hires was a guy who couldn't implement a tree traversal in the interview

Re: Stop Interviewing with Leet Code

#579

Post by __turbobrew__ »

hiq wrote: post #88
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…

> 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?

https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?s=20&t=Ns...
Post reply on HN