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Goodbye to Google Code Jam

codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com

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Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#131

Post by c7b »

GuB-42 wrote: post #119
c7b wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT?

We just did a competitive coding event and one of us based his strategy on ChatGPT, which was allowed. That got him through the qualification rounds, but then ended in the middle of the pack, which I think matched his skills as a non-ChatGPT coder. So, not a significant advantage, and none of the top performers used ChatGPT. The thing is, most of the times, ChatGPT gives a wrong answer, so you need to look at the cod…

Yeah, but with the breakneck speed at which this field is moving, how long will it be before we have dedicated 'Coding Competition' models (if they don't exist already somewhere)?

I can't help but reminded of AlphaGo. When Lee Sedol saw the footage of the AI beating the then European champion, he was like 'That's neat, but it would still take a decade of training to get to world champion level'. That was about half a year before he crushingly lost to it. We just underestimate how fast those models can evolve. I know that playing a well-defined game against itself is an ideal setting for RL models, and that language models use very different architectures. Nonetheless, I still think it's reasonable to think that coding competitions may soon go the way of chess,..., where humans stand no chance against the best machines.

Not that that's a reason to cancel them immediately like Google just did (after all, chess is arguably thriving), but that's a different story.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#132

Post by jsnell »

pushedx wrote: post #109
gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

This is really sad. What’s even more sad is that the person who made this descision will probably never know how much damage it did to Google’s reputation. Code Jam had what I think were the most well designed and insightful problems in all of competitive programming, not to mention innovative problem types and judging systems. Google, you have just disappointed and pissed off many of the best algorithmic programmers…

I'm not sure it's a given that Google was actually getting any kind of reputational benefit from Code Jam. As an example, the last significant submission on HN discussing Code Jam was 8 years ago. It only came up in HN comments a handful times per year, and are not particularly positive (not negative either, just neutral). Can you quantify that reputational benefit somehow?

Why is running a competition really well for 15 years something to be pissed off about? Why not be dissapointed at Microsoft, Amazon and Apple for not running their own competitions, as well or better?

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#133

Post by KeplerBoy »

devit wrote: post #113
KeplerBoy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires a clear ruleset. In chess it's very clear where to draw the line: no help allowed, you're on your own with your brain. Where should one draw the line in Coding competitions? No ChatGPT? I guess most people would agree. No Copilot? Same as ChatGPT as the products seem to converge. No Googling? That too will converge to something close to ChatGPT. If you can't look up information during a contest anymore,…

In-person competitions simply don't allow any Internet access, you have to use their own machines and you can't bring any data or printed material or electronic device.

That's not the experience i had at past events. Everyone brought their own devices and solved the problems with whatever tool they deemed suitable.

Actually I'm attending another such event in a few days and expect to see a lot of ChatGPT sessions used with varying levels of success.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#134

Post by Yoric »

isaacfung wrote: post #73
adam_arthur wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you’re hiring for. Firstly the interview should be structured with an aim to maximize correlation between success on the interview and success on the job. If you’re not thinking along these lines you aren’t even playing the game. For most startups, the right criteria to screen for is pace and quality of code, plus work ethic. You can ask a relatively easy coding problem, whether it be algorithmic/data st…

Recently read a blog post of Erik Bernhardsson on the interviewing process(he has several other interesting posts that approaches hiring as a machine learning problem). https://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-pred... He suggested asking many short questions instead of doing long leetcode problem(as the solution often relies on one single insight, it gives you very little information relative to the wo…

I've had an interview during which I was asked to review code.

I loved it.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#135

Post by Temporary_31337 »

c7b wrote: post #120
gregdoesit wrote: post #94

For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...

Couldn't this be confusing cause and effect? The article seems to insinuate that the product was cancelled because the team was laid off to save costs. But couldn't there be an unrelated reason why Google wanted to cancel the product, which then lead to the decision to lay off the team? I could imagine that with the advent of the likes of GPT, Google may have concluded that the competition has lost its utility in ide…

You are overthinking this - the team that managed this got laid off that’s there’s no more Ai story to it.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#136

Post by bragger »

geraldwhen wrote: post #129
FiberBundle wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've competed at the highest level of programming competitions, but you also seem to be doing work on Upwork [1]? That seems pretty unusual... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34935440#34935783

…yes? Lol. I’ve moonlighted on upwork for easy cash in the past. Not all of us made 200k/year in our first job out of college a decade and a half ago. Yes, I was part of a USA team in an international competition. I won our region. For what it’s worth, competitive programming isn’t like sports. The playing field isn’t that good, and the amount of work it takes to make it past regionals and to an international competi…

The field is definitely weak. I got a top 50 result in round 3 (but not top 25) of my first GCJ, my second programming contest ever, the first being the one time I showed up for one in college, and that score was ahead of some ICPC and IOI gold medalists. My only preparation being doing a few practice problems from prior years and making a blank C++ file with some includes, an empty main function, and "using namespace std;".

I think it helped to have some background in time-constrained thinking from high school math contests, but I was never particularly good at those, either.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#138

Post by sltkr »

mFixman wrote: post #93
gfd wrote: post #9

Topcoder will also be having their final TCO this year: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/113201 Google Code Jam and TCO were the two biggest onsite competitive programming event that's not targeted at students. This is a huge blow to the sport.

It's a pity that nobody was able to reproduce the challenge phases of TopCoder SRMs. Coding problems while taking of edge-cases for later was really fun.

FYI, CodeForces allows challenges too.

They even implemented it slightly better: instead of having a separate challenge phase, you can “lock” your solution for a particular problem at any time (which means you cannot resubmit it) and then view other people's solutions, and challenge them with custom input.

Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam

#140

Post by thaumasiotes »

nostrademons wrote: post #122
yodsanklai wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In contrast, when I searched about whether Code Jam was a significant part of Google's recruitment strategy, one of the top results on Reddit on r/cscareerquestions really underplayed the recruitment part Google has a very standardized recruitment procedure. Once you're in the pipeline, you're judged with the same standards as everybody else (algo interview, system design...). Whether you're a Code Jam champion or…

It's there to find the non-networked developer - the kid in their mom's basement who is not in Silicon Valley or possibly not even in the U.S. and doesn't know anyone who works at Google, but learned to program on their own. Ironically this is the sort of developer that HN says can't get FAANG jobs because they lack the credentials and connections.

> Ironically this is the sort of developer that HN says can't get FAANG jobs because they lack the credentials and connections.

That's correct. As the reddit post noted, there is no benefit to coming to Google's attention via Code Jam. They'll give you an interview that way, but they'll also give an interview to anyone else who wants one.

And the approach you take to Code Jam is actually harmful to your performance in Google's hiring interviews, to the degree that the recruiter who contacts you based on your Code Jam record gives you a specific warning that Code Jam people tend to have a common set of problems (in terms of how their interviews are rated) and you shouldn't treat the interview as being similar to participating in Code Jam.

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