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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

#191

Post by kristopolous »

CSMastermind wrote: post #51

The important thing to screen a software engineer for is not knowledge but the strength of their problem solving and ability to build mental models of problems. Whiteboard interviews are a good way to evaluate these skills - assuming the candidate hasn't seen this particular problem before and the interviewer understands that this is what they're supposed to look for. Goodhart's law applies - the measure becomes a ta…

There's a bunch of better ones that are readily accessible.

Ask the candidate to build a known quantity like say, a calculator, calendar, whatever or give them a bunch of code and have them modify it in some way or discover a bug.

Something closer to building software. Leet code is too far away from it and the performance on it too poorly correlated with actual suitability.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#192

Post by grishka »

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…

Okay, do do quizzes, but let people google goddamn stuff because that's just how software engineers operate. Don't make it an exam. Don't mimic the worst thing about the education systems. Both in the school and in the university, these goddamn exams were the worst because they tested memory first and everyone else second, and I'm such a kind of person that I could never remember things on command. It was a real struggle. I can't be the only one.

I've never been through the "regular" IT hiring process myself, but I've interviewed several candidates for an Android developer position. I liked asking questions and looking at how the person thinks. I didn't expect exact correct answers for every question, I just wanted to see whether they have a fundamental understanding of Android. After that, they had to build a small app at home (not my initiative) to show their skills.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#193

Post by matheusmoreira »

lupusreal wrote: post #127
dinobones wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take issue with it because Leetcode gives tech people a fake feel good, “yeah but at least it’s fair” illusion, when really it’s probably just as biased as any other hiring method. This is ironic considering these companies have forced mandatory DEI seminars (which I have no problem with btw), inclusive language, #EveryoneCanCode, and so on. But despite all this, you end up with teams and organizations that are 99%…

> This is ironic considering these companies have forced mandatory DEI seminars (which I have no problem with btw), inclusive language, #EveryoneCanCode, and so on. I really do wonder what those sanctimonious sermons are meant to accomplish. People who are already ideologically aligned with them won't learn anything new and may just resent it, while people who aren't aligned won't become aligned as a result of that "…

They're supposed to absolve the corporation and its leadership of responsibility and liability. By giving that training they get to claim they did all they could.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#195

Post by Rinzler89 »

kidintech wrote: post #67
boshalfoshal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem you are describing is interview variance and hiring bias, not leetcode. This happens irrespective of interview style. Many companies have question banks that are specially designed to be fair/have some contextual relevance (ideally) to some "realistic" problem. Or at least, many of the companies I've interviewed at follow this model. I consider these coding questions to be "leetcode" style because at the…

Question banks that are too big: huge variance, and OP's point stands. Question banks that are too small: leaked on eastern forums immediately, candidates show up reading answers out to you (some of the guides include guidance on when to pretend to think, I am not kidding). The idealized version of "question banks" might work. The real one does not; you'd require employees constantly scouring forums in every language…

> leaked on eastern forums immediately

What exactly are "Eastern forums"? "Eastern" what? Europe? Asia? The world?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#196

Post by vundercind »

koliber wrote: post #186
watwut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senior Java developers who could not import HashMap without looking it up. Eclipse does not without me having to even look at it. IntelliJ does the same. In what situation these people had to import it by hand? They had no ide available or what?

No IDE, specifically to test basic ability. We use a web-based shared editor, that has syntax highlighting, and auto-tabbing, but specifically no auto-complete nor auto-import. Sometimes, it's just pseudo-coding, either in a conversation, or on a whiteboard. Even though Eclipse does it, I'm sure you know where HashMap lives. Some people are compile-and-pray type devs. They lean on auto-complete for everything, not as…

Jesus. The last time I could maybe have passed something like that was 20 years ago when I’d only worked in one language and had only recently stopped writing code in MS Notepad.

[edit] oh god it’s closer to 24 years. The time, how she flies.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#197

Post by kristopolous »

batshit_beaver wrote: post #164
watwut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senior Java developers who could not import HashMap without looking it up. Eclipse does not without me having to even look at it. IntelliJ does the same. In what situation these people had to import it by hand? They had no ide available or what?

Google used to ask people to write code in a Google doc. No tools allowed. Facebook to this day disables intellisense in their coderpad interviews. It's fucked up.

It'd be like interviewing a chef and you give them twigs and a flint rock to roll their own stove.

I don't get what these tests are trying to show.

Breadth? Depth? There's other ways. Give some complicated code that touches a bunch of things and have them work with that.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#199

Post by sensanaty »

XorNot wrote: post #180
sjaak wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I know how to implement FizzBuzz since it's such a meme, but I've basically never used the mod operator in real code. Maybe it comes up in more math-y code I suppose, but for most backend/frontend/SQL code I've never reached for it.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#200

Post by eschneider »

XorNot wrote: post #180
sjaak wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if that's so, modulus (or at least the concept of remainders) are elementary school math and any competent programmer could bang together an (inefficient) modulus operator in a few minutes.

So even in a language w/o a mod operator, it's not a hard problem if you understand how to solve problems with code.

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