Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode – Try Code Reviews Instead • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by itronitron » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

flashgordon wrote: post #162

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…

Here is a dark side of side projects (pun unintended). I went to an interview which was a nodejs shop. I was excited as they wanted to see a side project. Most of mine are just things I do for fun. Anyway it was in golang (with lots of control plane like features for a "fun" saas offering). Cto wasnt happy that I had chosen go and wanted to know why I hadn't chosen Node instead. (Never mind my Fe was in typescript).…

Yeah, I provided a side project once during an interview process and the only feedback I got related to my use of the 'static' keyword and how that could introduce an undesirable side effect when deploying into a web server (or something like that.) Not sure where they got the idea that the side project would ever be used in that way, unless they were trying to do that themselves.

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

#172

Post by n4r9 » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

> Bug hunter

> Intentionally introduce some logical flaw or defect and see if a candidate can spot it. A good idea is to go back and find recent bugs that were solved and pull the source before the fix was applied. Can the candidate identify the root cause? How would the candidate suggest resolving the defect?

I've had this exact idea on the back-burner for years! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794465

The example bug that gave me the idea initially is this one I reported on the "Satsuma Graph" dotnet package: https://sourceforge.net/p/satsumagraph/tickets/2/

Very keen to hear from anyone that has experience with this, from either side of the interview fence.

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

#173

Post by jmull » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

Let’s break down the problem:

* hiring is a very high-stakes decision

* the normal interviewing process has no hope of directly measuring a candidate’s fitness for a particular position. There simply is not enough time. You’d want to evaluate the candidate over maybe a couple weeks of full time work, which, of course, a large number of candidates aren’t willing to do.

* So you have to use the limited time you have to get as much information as possible and accept that direct knowledge really just cannot be obtained.

The idea of leetcode exercises is that someone capable of the analytical problem solving skills and determination necessary to do well at those puzzles will also be capable enough to handle the harder parts of software development jobs.

It’s an imperfect approximation, but for a problem where there is no closed-form solution, it could be one of the better of a number of poor options. (That’s the idea anyway, I don’t know if it’s true.)

All that said, I think a code review is a good idea. Maybe do a couple leetcode puzzles and a code review (and a design discussion, and a “explain a recent project of yours to me” discussion, etc)

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

#174

Post by mcronce » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

n4r9 wrote: post #172

> Bug hunter > Intentionally introduce some logical flaw or defect and see if a candidate can spot it. A good idea is to go back and find recent bugs that were solved and pull the source before the fix was applied. Can the candidate identify the root cause? How would the candidate suggest resolving the defect? I've had this exact idea on the back-burner for years! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794465 The exa…

I had a bug hunt as part of an interview once (or, I should say, once that I remember). It was different from that proposal in that the code was not part of the company's actual codebase - it was entirely fabricated for the test. It was fun, though; I enjoyed that more than livecoding and live-whiteboarding.

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

#175

Post by tsss » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

joeframbach wrote: post #82

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…

I can bring my kids in but I don't think I could tell you how they work. I've been in this industry for almost 20 years, but I don't have side projects, because, well, see above.

[flagged]

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

#176

Post by pedrosorio » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #133

HerculePoirot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually 137 if test was accurate, I still don't do well with leet code whiteboarding though, shrugs.

Maybe you just need to find something you enjoy doing, programming might not be "it"?

Or do you do well solving the problems on your own and just have trouble when being interviewed?

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

#177

Post by pedrosorio » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

coffeebeqn wrote: post #73

postalrat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is memorization how we should measure IQ? If so then LLMs have already far surpassed humans.

A LLM would do pretty/very well in a leetcode interview

In a "have you memorized the code to solve this problem" interview? Probably.

In a "can you solve this new leetcode problem that just came out and is not in the training data"? Awful.

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

#178

Post by postalrat » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

pedrosorio wrote: post #177

coffeebeqn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LLM would do pretty/very well in a leetcode interview

In a "have you memorized the code to solve this problem" interview? Probably. In a "can you solve this new leetcode problem that just came out and is not in the training data"? Awful.

There are probably about 30 or so leetcode problems and then endless variations made for those 30 problems. The best people on leetcode practice and memorize.

If you want to see an example of a new problem check out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37910297. You'd think if leetcode makes you good at solving problems then it should be doable any higher ranking leetcode programmer.

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

#179

Post by nightski » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

voiceblue wrote: post #93

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?

Exactly. A lot can unexpectedly go wrong during a background check, some companies ask employees for (very old) W2's they may not have, etc. There was a time when I worked at and a new co-worker suddenly disappeared without a trace, and I was told in confidence by a VP they "were not who they said they were" which I presume means they failed a background check. This was during growing pains, they were probably doing…

If an employer ever asked for an old W-2 I'd refuse, and if it was enough of a problem I'd recuse myself. That's private, sorry. Not that it would matter for me personally, I've been self employed for 15 years. But still there has to be some self respect.

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

#180

Post by pedrosorio » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #48

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 no…

> For some of those solutions we'll try to figure out if they would work, if they handle the edge cases, spot bugs

Most of the solutions will have been posted after submitting to the platform and passing hundreds of test cases, so you'd have to pick a very specific problem and solution to find any bugs/not handling edge cases.