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

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

chrlschn.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 286 posts

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

#111

Post by qkeast »

I've done something similar for product designer interviews in past roles and at my current company: rather than any variation of take-home or design challenge (which are unethical and unhelpful), we ask candidates to do a design critique with us centred around a third-party product of their choice.

It gives us great signals into the things we care about in designers: communication skills, design and product thinking, their mindsets and approaches to thinking about and evaluating products and design, and even their craft.

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

#112

Post by JohnFen »

ativzzz wrote: post #85
codeTired wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people who are good at algorithms are grinders. There is a tiny percentage of geniuses who don't need to grind algorithms. The rest of the people who were good at algos before leetcode became widespread were also grinders In fact this is how you become "smart" - some talent and a lot of hard work (grind)

> In fact this is how you become "smart" - some talent and a lot of hard work (grind)

Hmm. I think this is a different definition of "smart" than I'm used to. I would say that some talent and a lot of hard work gets you "skilled", not necessarily "smart".

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

#113

Post by MajimasEyepatch »

antman wrote: post #42
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 comp…

> 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.

It's not clear to me why this would be a result of their engineering hiring practices as opposed to their business strategy and product management culture.

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

#114

Post by lolinder »

JohnFen wrote: post #109
lmarcos wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be worried about boring my interviewer and getting rejected because they consciously recognized that they were bored, I'd be worried about there not being a level playing field between projects when the hiring committee is discussing it later. The guy who built the fun video game will probably be remembered more fondly than the guy who built the CLI tool for tracking the weather.

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

#115

Post by lolinder »

yreg wrote: post #98
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.

> You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. Could you expand why? We allow people to substitute a tech interview round with side project showcase. Don't see why it doesn't make sense in your view. > "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. So what does it say?

> Could you expand why? We allow people to substitute a tech interview round with side project showcase. Don't see why it doesn't make sense in your view.

As an option to replace a different interview segment I think that's quite fair. But both choices have to be clearly presented to the interviewee, and they should understand that either option is treated as equally good. OP's interview format seems to assume that everyone does the side project and the tech interview round isn't an option.

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

#116

Post by ativzzz »

JohnFen wrote: post #112
ativzzz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who are good at algorithms are grinders. There is a tiny percentage of geniuses who don't need to grind algorithms. The rest of the people who were good at algos before leetcode became widespread were also grinders In fact this is how you become "smart" - some talent and a lot of hard work (grind)

> In fact this is how you become "smart" - some talent and a lot of hard work (grind) Hmm. I think this is a different definition of "smart" than I'm used to. I would say that some talent and a lot of hard work gets you "skilled", not necessarily "smart".

There are many different types of intelligences or smarts

Skill is a form of "functional intelligence", where skill = talent + grind. The more talent, the less you need to grind, but combined the two are killer. To me, "smart" where the grind is 0 is not "smart", but just "lucky" (born with talent)

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

#117

Post by 62951413 »

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?

Surely you'd find something to discuss about one's previous twenty years of building software. Especially if the last ten years have been in the same domain. Somehow it all worked just fine before 2010 or so. Also, one's tolerance for silly things and short-term memory for useless puzzles don't increase with age.

You know you live in a clown world when memorizing nonsense makes one more employable than learning some front-end stuff to be a little more full-stacky.

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

#118

Post by ikura »

yreg wrote: post #98
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.

> You have to be mentally sick to ask people to code review their side projects. Could you expand why? We allow people to substitute a tech interview round with side project showcase. Don't see why it doesn't make sense in your view. > "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. So what does it say?

> So what does it say?

It depends on the definition of tenure... if tenure is defined as a closed interval (i.e. defined only for developers who've joined and then left) then it means that, of the developers who have departed, none had wanted to grow with the company, or the company had let them go. For a startup company this might not be a good sign.

If tenure is defined as the length of time the developer had worked, OR, has worked so far, then it means they have a core group of developers and aren't growing the development team particularly quickly. Again, this might not be a good sign for a startup.

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

#119

Post by el_benhameen »

JohnFen wrote: post #107
ziddoap wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I don’t think this was intentional, but you missed the third category: people who love to write code but only have time to do it for the paycheck.

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

#120

Post by burkaman »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #92
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…

> 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?

Yeah this sounds like it should be illegal, although it's probably allowed in the US. There's no way it is clearly communicated to candidates, I don't think most people would agree to a contract that says "FYI we might fire you after a week if HireRight doesn't like you, no we can't check beforehand you'll just have to hope you meet our standards."
Post reply on HN