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

I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

nelson.cloud

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 625 posts

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#211

Post by eschneider »

Nobody dislikes these sorts of interviews more than me. I'm not sure they're particularly useful for anyone and I _know_ they don't show off what I do well for employers particularly well. That said, prepping for interviews is just one of those things I'm willing to do for money. Is it worth $25K a year to me to spend an hour a day for three months working leetcode problems prior to interviewing? Probably.

I mean, is it a great way for companies to hire? No, not really. Is it how many companies hire? Yes. Do I occasionally learn a few things while doing this sorta prep? Occasionally. All-in-all, the expected value from a bit of prep seems worth it.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#212

Post by ljm »

mvdtnz wrote: post #172
fzeroracer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’ve interviewed people who wore an earpiece and were fed instructions on the fly, and also people who kept their cameras turned off to try and hide the fact they were getting assistance. You started picking up on patterns like them repeating your questions, or spending a lot of time in silence (asking their friend a question) without any other communication or activity on the screen. Like they weren’t there.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#213

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

dvt wrote: post #16

> I don’t really have a solution to this problem, I just know it’s a problem. The solution is simple: refuse to do those interviews. I have, and I wish more engineers would. It's one of my screening questions: do you do whiteboard style quiz/brainteaser interviews? If the answer is affirmative, I politely (and sometimes impolitely) decline. I've written a book, edited another, contributed to plenty of open source, in…

I have frankly dealt with some people, who wrote books, had lots of titles, yet were incompenent in the very subject their books are about. So yeah, does not mean much to me. I personally love whiteboard tests; shows your ability to code quickly and reliably.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#214

Post by david_allison »

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…

> Even though Eclipse does it, I'm sure you know where HashMap lives.

Why?

----

I'd struggle. It's a trivia question as it has no bearing on modern Java development

Modern IDEs both collapse the import section, and auto-import on the fly

The only reason I'd see the line is:

* Looking up documentation: very rare

* Conflict on the import - unlikely

* Code Reviews - skimmed over

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#215

Post by dfadsadsf »

adamors wrote: post #147
resource_waste wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All the talk about diversity, but no diversity of thought. Only LC chasers. I genuinely believe this decreases innovation massively. Nice belief, but good luck proving it. I imagine the people grinding LC are harder working/more innovative than people who watched TV instead.

Yes, those are the only two options. I'd rather spend time with my kids than grind for 4 hours a day to get ghosted after the 5th round of interview.

If you spend your free time with kids you are outlier. Average adult in US watches 3 hours/day of TV (stats which frankly amazed me) which if spend more productiveky is more than enough to grind for interview

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#216

Post by azornathogron »

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.

You don't actually need mod to do fizzbuzz, even if that's the most obvious way for people who know what mod is.

But without any "real" math at all you can do it with, eg, two counters and some if statements. Or if you recognise that there's a repeating pattern you can work out that pattern manually and just write code to emit it over and over.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#218

Post by Rinzler89 »

kidintech wrote: post #210
Rinzler89 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leaked on eastern forums immediately What exactly are "Eastern forums"? "Eastern" what? Europe? Asia? The world?

The most common example would be 1point3acres. I'd prefer to not be more specific; I chose the word Eastern on purpose. For DEI committees reading this: I am both eastern european and asian, so I hope to be exempt from any scrutiny.

So you wanted to say "Chinese forums" but couldn't say it out of fear?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#220

Post by mike_tyson »

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…

part of the problem is saturation in the job market.

higher education, even job experience is no longer considered a sufficient barrier to entry.

reminds me when the guy who wrote homebrew failed the apple interview. if i recall.

ironic because they use brew so much internally.

Post reply on HN