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I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

nelson.cloud

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Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#171

Post by gigatexal »

sethammons wrote: post #128
gigatexal wrote: post #111

I don’t think anyone is saying in a traditional SWE role data structures and algorithms aren’t useful things to have some me amount of mastery about (higher levels required for higher levels of seniority maybe)… but it’s just hilarious and also sad that we’ve, as an industry, not been able to move away from these logic puzzles disguised as programming tasks that ostensibly should mimic a typical task but serve only t…

See: work sample test. My best received interview question was for a bug/firefighting team. Based on a real bug we had, here is a sanitized repo (perl or python, our languages at the time) with some sql and data. We gave them three made up support tickets about some settings values being incorrect causing $issue. Dig into the utility script, find bugs, fix the data. Even folks who didn't pass complemented the task

That kind of out of the box thinking is where I think the industry should go. But would it scale to the Google's of the world? Probably not. They'll continue filtering people through the sieve that is the leet-code style interview.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#172

Post by mvdtnz »

fzeroracer wrote: post #58
SilverBirch wrote: post #29

I understand the frustration, but at the end of the day I think they do serve a purpose. They're not great at that purpose, but they're good enough and they generally produce false negatives (smart people fail) rather than false positives (you hire an idiot). And this makes sense, because a false negative is low cost (maybe you spend 50% longer interviewing candidates) but a false positive is high cost (you hire an i…

How do you know they produce false negatives over false positives? How do you know if your top candidates simply didn't cheat over the honest candidates that produced worse but honest code?

How do you cheat at live coding?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#173

Post by scott_w »

emodendroket wrote: post #22
dinobones wrote: post #6

Leetcode style interviews probably serve two functions: 1) A way to suppress wages and job mobility for SWE. Who wants to switch jobs when it means studying for a month or two? Also, if you get unlucky and some try hard drops an atomic LC hard bomb on you now you have an entire company you can no longer apply to for a year. 2) A way to mask bias in the process while claiming that it’s a fair process because everyone…

I'm sure anyone determined to do so can act unfairly regardless of what process is in place, but the fact that there is a standardized test in my mind does the opposite and makes the process much fairer. Assuming a fair-minded interviewer, the process gives a chance to a candidate whose resume may have less vaunted names on it to demonstrate their skill. I'm quite sure that I'd never have had some of the opportunitie…

> the fact that there is a standardized test in my mind does the opposite and makes the process much fairer.

It can make the process fairer but it's not a given. You can do the classic "no dogs, no blacks no Irish," and that was a standard across pubs in England. It certainly wasn't fair, unless you were racist.

If you're committed to fairness, then a standard will help. It gives you a clear point to fix and improve things and something you can use to measure if you're achieving your stated goals. That's definitely something you can't do if you're just making things up as you go along.

And yes, I made a deliberately provocative statement. I'm obviously not saying whiteboard tests are the equivalent of segregation.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#175

Post by Pelayu »

Honestly after interviewing lately, I prefer Leetcode-style interviews to doing some takehome project. I’ve failed two assessments now where my project fulfilled the functional requirements set out, but I was rejected because I didn’t use their conventions (which were not specified) or they didn’t like the structure of the code. Not only that, after investing a few hours of my free time to complete said project. I just get vague, hand-wavy reasons as to why I’ve been rejected.

Leetcode-style any day, over that.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#176

Post by weatherlite »

boshalfoshal wrote: post #17

I see these posts a lot, and I sort of disagree with where they are coming from so I'll play devils advocate. Leetcode is used to select for one of (or both of these) 2 things for the average IC hire: 1. Do you work hard (i.e a person who studies many problems, memorizes solutions, and regurgitates then) 2. Are you smart (i.e a person who doesn't do any leetcode but knows the fundamentals and can sythesize past knowl…

> 1. Do you work hard (i.e a person who studies many problems, memorizes solutions, and regurgitates then)

Most people applying already have a job. And if they work hard its actually quite uncommon for them to have ample energy to do leetcode questions on the side. So you might get the opposite - you'll get candidates who aren't great performers in their current roles but used their extra energy to grind leetcode.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#177

Post by wruza »

ownagefool wrote: post #69
dinobones wrote: post #6

Leetcode style interviews probably serve two functions: 1) A way to suppress wages and job mobility for SWE. Who wants to switch jobs when it means studying for a month or two? Also, if you get unlucky and some try hard drops an atomic LC hard bomb on you now you have an entire company you can no longer apply to for a year. 2) A way to mask bias in the process while claiming that it’s a fair process because everyone…

I don't think the problem is the format, i.e. a 30-50 minute interview on simple coding with DS&A problems, but the escalation. The reality is, fizz buzz got us 75% of the way there. It turns out when pressed, a lot of people can't write code. Yes, there's false positives, but there's also people brute focing their way through via copy & paste. This doesn't manifest as a person who can't do any task, just as a person…

A lot of people couldn’t even read this thread if someone was watching closely. They’d recognize words and idioms, but couldn’t make sense of these or think. It’s called anxiety and rarely has anything to do with actual performance. Anxiety is a frequent guest in a smart guy’s home.

As an early 2000s integrator/analytics I learned to write code when someone watches out of interest or straight time pressure (still taxing sometimes). But most developers that I know intellectually curl up in such situation, regardless of their skill or performance levels. We worked with one very math-y low-level-skilled guy whom our clients described as “literally freezes for an hour without moving, should we pay for it?” when he did field work. He was a very strong developer otherwise.

Not that a company must hire or want these people, but the idea of writing code under uncanny pressure all day makes as much sense as that swordfish scene.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#178

Post by iLoveOncall »

clarionbell wrote: post #166

Leetcode test would be fine, if they were formalized with automated scoring and nobody giving you hints/silent treatment. Unfortunately, proponents of "normal" interview process will tell you that it's necessary to observe engineer working on a problem to know how good they are. Maybe they are right. After all, I'm not an expert on the matter of recruitment. But from my experience, I felt far better when the process…

> Leetcode test would be fine, if they were formalized with automated scoring

You understand how this goes completely against the very purpose of the interview which is to evaluate how they think about the problem rather than about the final outcome, right?

I couldn't care less about whether your code compiles or not if you were able to figure out the perfect solution, walk me through it, explain why it is the best, and looked like you had some experience writing code when it came to that part.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#179

Post by kristopolous »

varjag wrote: post #123
boshalfoshal wrote: post #17

I see these posts a lot, and I sort of disagree with where they are coming from so I'll play devils advocate. Leetcode is used to select for one of (or both of these) 2 things for the average IC hire: 1. Do you work hard (i.e a person who studies many problems, memorizes solutions, and regurgitates then) 2. Are you smart (i.e a person who doesn't do any leetcode but knows the fundamentals and can sythesize past knowl…

> 2. Are you smart (i.e a person who doesn't do any leetcode but knows the fundamentals and can sythesize past knowledge well enough to answer a new question) I'm sorry but it's incredible hubris to think you'll come up with say Dijkstra's algorithm during the interview from the first principles. The only reason you can do it is you studied it before.

Right. I look at this like a Bayesian

Chance of someone

- seeing it before: 10%

- being a liar: 5%

- being the next Claude Shannon: 0.000001%

So someone coming up with the right answer and claiming they've seen it is useless.

Right answer and claiming they hadn't seen it is basically a guaranteed liar.

You can use it to filter out the liars I guess. But you'll also filter out your Claude Shannons as well.

Either way, it's a dumb test unless you're genuinely getting a steady stream of Princeton and Cambridge magna cum laudes waltzing through the door and can reliable bump the last two priors by a few decimal points.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#180

Post by XorNot »

sjaak wrote: post #124
ownagefool wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the problem is the format, i.e. a 30-50 minute interview on simple coding with DS&A problems, but the escalation. The reality is, fizz buzz got us 75% of the way there. It turns out when pressed, a lot of people can't write code. Yes, there's false positives, but there's also people brute focing their way through via copy & paste. This doesn't manifest as a person who can't do any task, just as a person…

I've also used FizzBuzz at several companies, and the insane amount of people it filters out continues to boggle my mind.

Do you tell them what the "mod" operator is before giving it?

The failure rate of FizzBuzz has always struck me as depending on the idea that you can do a lot of programming and just never need that operator.

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