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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

#101

Post by gambiting »

lmarcos wrote: post #94
lotsoweiners wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7. Background checks start in parallel with on-boarding. First week is spent with business unit teams to learn what the company actually, really does. Yikes!!! I’ve never heard of a potential employer giving offers before background check. Do you tell candidates this before they quit their current jobs?

As someone not familiarized with background checks, why is it weird to do bg checks after handing the offer? If the employer does the bg check before handing the offer, that means the candidate hasn't resigned yet from their current job. So wouldn't the bg check expose the candidate? (E.g., my boss would know I'm thinking about leaving)

Doing the background check after the offer is fine, it's insane that they do it after the candidate already starts the new job. So what, I leave my current job to come work for you, and in the first week you tell me "sorry you failed our background check" and let me go? Who the F would ever agree to this kind of risk?

>>8. End of first week, we occasionally have to let someone go on background issues

Yeah, that's bonkers.

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

#102

Post by swader999 »

danwee wrote: post #41
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…

Well in my case, this code review was only two pages and it was only given to people who accepted an interview. So you had about a fifty percent chance of landing the job. Contrast this to the leet code dedication of a couple of years on the side effort...

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

#103

Post by francisofascii »

danwee wrote: post #31

Not sure if it would be any better, and I say this as someone who hates leetcode-related interviews. Code reviews are way more subjective than writing a piece code (at the end of the interview session, if the code works, then that's a huge thing already). If I highlight something like "Perhaps we could inject that dependency, instead of harcoding it": sure, that seems probably the most correct assesment, but again, w…

I think job interviews are subjective and not a bad thing. Some objectively good candidates are not good for certain roles and vice versa. To me, your answer would be the best and would allow you to fit into more roles. You give options for a situation, rather than dogmatic statements like, you must inject that dependency, or the variable names should be done this way. But that is my subjective assessment.

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

#104

Post by thebigspacefuck »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #25
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is what you meant, but to me this reads as: "I don't know anything about data structures or algorithms".

Not him but 1.) DS and Algo knowledge are way overrated in day-to-day job functions. I have yet to have to implement a single DS or Algo from those classes (they are almost always available to the framework, standard library, or language), runtime complexity has literally never once come up in my life, and the most I've ever needed to know about data structures is "which one should I use here?" and 99% of the time it…

I think if you don’t know it, you are blind to it. We had some AWS lambda function timing out and the person working on it kept adding more and more resources to get it to complete on time but it would inevitably slow down again. I took a look at it and realized that they were building a huge array and performing a lookup in it each time. Converting the array to a set immediately dropped the runtime and fixed the issue for good.

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

#105

Post by throwaway38475 »

lmarcos wrote: post #94
lotsoweiners wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7. Background checks start in parallel with on-boarding. First week is spent with business unit teams to learn what the company actually, really does. Yikes!!! I’ve never heard of a potential employer giving offers before background check. Do you tell candidates this before they quit their current jobs?

As someone not familiarized with background checks, why is it weird to do bg checks after handing the offer? If the employer does the bg check before handing the offer, that means the candidate hasn't resigned yet from their current job. So wouldn't the bg check expose the candidate? (E.g., my boss would know I'm thinking about leaving)

Background checks don't call your old boss. How would they even know who that is?

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

#106

Post by pie_flavor »

The best coding interview puzzle I've ever done involved a (fictional) thrice-cursed data-management system with inaccurate documentation and a couple nasty traps. Instructed to collaborate with the interviewer as if they were a coworker, you had to adapt another piece of software to this system so that they could migrate it. I was awestruck by how many ways it tested your real competence at the actual day-to-day of the job.

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

#107

Post by JohnFen »

ziddoap wrote: post #90
indymike wrote: post #69

We use this process, and it has helped us hire some great developers without having to use third party staffing and headhunters: 1. Post well written job post on major job boards. 2. Immediately reply via text to every applicant (yes, we have opt in on the application) 3. Initial screening including several knock-out questions via text. Immediately let candidate know if they are not selected and why. 4. 30 minute can…

It's great that you quickly notify candidates if they aren't a fit! Wish more people did that. But.... > Bring a side project, show us how it works. What do you do if someone doesn't have a side project (or want their side project to be reviewed by someone they don't know)? Some people code to live, not live to code.

I'm not defending the practice of requiring that a side project be presented. I think that's over the top and wouldn't do it -- however, if a candidate volunteers one, that does give a huge advantage to that candidate.

> Some people code to live, not live to code.

Totally fair. But there are lots of companies who prefer people who code because they love coding over those that do it just for the paycheck, and that's also totally fair.

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

#108

Post by HerculePoirot »

gedy wrote: post #76
hcks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hell I wish they would tbh. I have a decent IQ (140), but can't (or just unwilling to) grind leet code

An IQ score of 140 is considered near-genius or genius level and places you in the top 0.25% (99.75 percentile) of the population.

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

#109

Post by JohnFen »

lmarcos wrote: post #97
bobobob420 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bring a side project, show us how it works." Can people in the industry stop this please? You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. It doesn't make any sense. "Average developer tenure is two years, company is three years old." Got it. I don't think this statement says what you think it does.

Agree. Interviews taken into account side projects are biased towards: - people who have free time to work on side projects (usually young people have more free time than people with families) - people who don't mind sharing their code with others - people who work on interesting side projects. If your side project is boring, that will probably bore your interviewers -> no offer - people who work on side projects on…

> people who work on interesting side projects. If your side project is boring, that will probably bore your interviewers -> no offer

This hasn't been my experience at all. The interviewer doesn't care how "interesting" the side project is. What they want to see is what your actual working code is like, that you demonstrate a good grasp of programming concepts, etc.

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

#110

Post by JohnFen »

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.

> Nobody happy with their pay and job is going to grind leetcode.

I'm not going to grind leetcode regardless of how happy I am with my pay and job. I have very strong objections it. If a company requires it, I take that as a pretty strong signal that I won't get along well at that company.

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