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Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

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Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#41

Post by danwee »

swader999 wrote: post #6

I like this article a lot and have had great success with this tactic (as a hiring manager) over the years. I often give a page or two of code as a take home assignment to discuss at the interview. They get a chance to look at it and research it on their own. And they also get a bit of the crucible of face to face thinking and reacting on their feet while you discuss it with them in the interview.

In the year 2023 tech companies are not "buying" (supply > demand) but "selling" (supply < demand); that means the hiring process should at least be equal in terms of time spent on it. Candidates spend way more time in home assignments (hours to days), while companies spend in the order of minutes to review the assigments. We think this is "normal" because "the company is OFFERING you a job"... that couldn't be less true nowadays, it is "me the one CONSIDERING working for your company". A big difference.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#42

Post by antman »

bluehorizon2 wrote: post #26

People are forgetting why companies these days do Leetcode in the first place. The initial reason why we have Leetcode today is that Google originally determined through their interview research that the smartest candidates were the ones who were best at algorithms. Google wanted to hire the smartest people, not necessarily the best coders, so that’s why their interviews were mostly algorithmic. Of course everyone st…

When you are a company that builds core software services algorithms are actually important and not proxies, and can be studied and learnt by heart. For most software companies algorithms they are irrelevant since they are glorified CRUD shops. What google ended up with that workforce, is a percentage of failed projects (in terms of real world business value and longevity)) that would have brought other software companies to their knees. Google produces nice languages and frameworks tho.

They really need to hire less geeky people (disclaimer, also geek but with self awareness). We hire a percentage of people whose first degree is not programming and have formed relevant career paths.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#43

Post by hcks »

I don’t get why people always hate on leetcodes.

Anyone can train and get good at it, it makes interviews short and not time consuming, it’s a standard accros industry so you can focus on studying it and not have to read one book for each company you apply to.

What would be a better alternative? Hiring based on connections? Take home assignments that takes 15 hours to complete? Domain specific knowledge grilling?

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#44

Post by simonbarker87 »

wiremine wrote: post #33

I'm a CTO for a small software studio. We've used mini projects and code reviews in our interview process for years, and it works great. The code review is a great way to explore a candidate's ability to code, and also to communicate their decisions about a piece of code. In the "age of AI", I'm not sure we'll ditch the mini projects. I think testing a candidate's ability to _use_ AI to generate code is an important…

I think mini projects + code review is the way to go for smaller places. Make the projects large enough that an AI couldn't generate correct code right off the bat and then in a follow up conversation dig into the code and ask for their reasoning to make sure they understand the code they wrote so you know that they either wrote it or fully understand it to the point where it doesn't matter if an AI write it and they tweaked it.

To be honest, as a CTO (not currently hiring though) I want people that can use AI to speed up their coding but who know how to use it well. If anything I suspect those devs are better than devs who don't use AI as they are practicing using their code reading abilities more often and filtering away any bad code written for them.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#45

Post by codeTired »

hcks wrote: post #35
very_good_man wrote: post #3

Leetcode being asked in an interview is a marker of an incompetent organization.

Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI, Citadel are incompetent organisations. Wow lads

What if I told you any large organization can be incompetent? Not saying they are, but there becomes a point in a corporations life when it becomes full of people who flock to it due to prestige and pay. The original founders are often out of the picture and their original product is beginning to turn into shit.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#46

Post by nfriedly »

codeTired wrote: post #36
bluehorizon2 wrote: post #26

People are forgetting why companies these days do Leetcode in the first place. The initial reason why we have Leetcode today is that Google originally determined through their interview research that the smartest candidates were the ones who were best at algorithms. Google wanted to hire the smartest people, not necessarily the best coders, so that’s why their interviews were mostly algorithmic. Of course everyone st…

The problem is that it might have been true at some point but now there are resources to “learn” for interviews, so currently you will get people willing to grind. Nobody happy with their pay and job is going to grind leetcode. They could just ignore leetcode and ask puzzle problems instead to test ability.

Honestly, being "willing to grind" might be a good thing to target if it's a good proxy for being willing to do the work.

However, I agree with the general sentiment that almost nobody is doing the research to ensure their interview process selects for the things they actually want.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#47

Post by guappa »

hcks wrote: post #30
bluehorizon2 wrote: post #26

People are forgetting why companies these days do Leetcode in the first place. The initial reason why we have Leetcode today is that Google originally determined through their interview research that the smartest candidates were the ones who were best at algorithms. Google wanted to hire the smartest people, not necessarily the best coders, so that’s why their interviews were mostly algorithmic. Of course everyone st…

It’s just a proxy measure for IQ really. They could have handed out Ravens matrices and got better outcomes prediction.

You can also train for IQ tests.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#48

Post by tzs »

He's on the right track, except instead of ditching LeetCode use it as a source of code to review. I think many people overlook that each LeetCode problem has an associated forum where people discuss the problem and post solutions.

Here's what I'm going to try if I ever again have to conduct interviews.

1. I'll present the candidate with a LeetCode problem (or let them pick from a list), after emphasizing that I'm not going to be asking them to actually solve it.

2. After they read it we'll discuss it, starting with the problem statement and examples, until we are both sure we think we know what the problem is actually asking. We'll also talk about any edge cases we anticipate might give us problems.

3. We'll talk about possible approaches to the problem.

4. After we have come up with some approach that with sufficient hand waving could convince someone that we could actually right a solution, we'd go the forum for the problem and start looking at the solutions people have posted.

5. For some of those solutions we'll try to figure out if they would work, if they handle the edge cases, spot bugs, see if they are well organized, talk about how well they appear to be written, and stuff like that.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#49

Post by codeTired »

hcks wrote: post #43

I don’t get why people always hate on leetcodes. Anyone can train and get good at it, it makes interviews short and not time consuming, it’s a standard accros industry so you can focus on studying it and not have to read one book for each company you apply to. What would be a better alternative? Hiring based on connections? Take home assignments that takes 15 hours to complete? Domain specific knowledge grilling?

Because adults with hobbies and families have better things to do. How is this so hard to grasp? Bonus is that 90% of devs literally will not use most of that knowledge.

My biggest problems are getting requirements, understanding the problem, working around a legacy system or deciphering old code, not actually writing code when requirements and documentation is on point.

Re: Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead

#50

Post by krupan »

My favorite interviews are when they give me some code to read and understand, and then either test or fix bugs or add a feature to. That is what we all spend bulk of our time doing and so it makes sense to make that the "technical challenge" part of the interview
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