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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

#261

Post by palata »

yreg wrote: post #224

I once had an interview that I really liked. It was for a bank. They give the candidate some messy, done-in-a-hurry code (but not purposefully obfuscated) and ask them to refactor it to the best of their ability. The interviewer sits next to the candidate and talks to them throughout the whole process. It's pretty much pair programming, but the candidate has the initiative. I found it to be a breath of fresh air afte…

> because they know what exact technologies they are using and they don't need to measure candidate's ability to learn new tech, etc

Well leetcode interviews do not measure the candidate's ability to learn new tech either, do they?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#262

Post by civilized »

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

...a standardized test? No. There are tests. They sure as heck aren't standardized.

Maybe they should be, since everyone seems to be doing the same thing.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#264

Post by spacecadet »

spacecadet wrote: post #260

Well give how well the FAANGS all turned out, evil-money generating society destroying hell holes... I imagine it actually goes like this: Im going to randomly and silently draw from one of 3 topics that I understand, but nothing that I don't and would need to collaborate with you to solve. It must be something I have memorized so not to risk looking less smart than the interviewee. Good we have now hired the 10,000t…

LC says, "we have no clue what we are building but need people who can build anything, maybe", its a hiring strategy when you have no company strategy.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#265

Post by palata »

I wish I could, as a candidate, ask leetcode-style questions to my interviewers, too. If I am to work with them, they should prove to me that they can pass them, right?

Interviewers tend to forget that they are in a dominant position: they have nothing to lose, they are the ones who take the decision, and they are the ones who chose the questions. I have been in such interviews where I completely failed, but where I am absolutely certain that I could have made the interviewer fail as well were the roles inverted. It feels a bit hypocritical to fail someone who did not actually do worse than you would have done...

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#266

Post by johnnyanmac »

jonkho wrote: post #129
369548684892826 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that there is a standardized test in my mind does the opposite and makes the process much fairer The problem isn't standardized tests, it's that leetcode questions are about having the time to have learnt the answer beforehand, rather than raw ability for problem solving.

That’s not true. In any discipline when confronted with a test there are two strategies: brute memorization of the question/answers, or developing the skills to tackle the problem dynamically. You cannot categorically claim that LC tests are largely memorization tests rather than raw problem-solving skills. That is just the approach you are capable of taking. Not being able to see up the mountain doesn’t imply there…

> You cannot categorically claim that LC tests are largely memorization tests rather than raw problem-solving skills.

Sure I can. By the time you get to Leetcode hard, these aren't just "can you derive the answer". The questions by design take 45+ minutes and have some weird quirk in it that is nominally related to the core concept being tested. These aren't necessarily meant to be done on the fly during an interview period.

>Not being able to see up the mountain doesn’t imply there are no climbers above you.

a better analogy is that youre on a road and you see a freeway above you. The people above you aren't "better", they are simply on another road, to another destination. But they aren't necessarily worse either. They could be on their way to a dead end job or could be a billionaire CEO.

That is to say, it's useless comparing yourself to other people you don't know. Everyone has their story.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#267

Post by sjaak »

arethuza wrote: post #232
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.

I once froze in an interview when asked a simple technical question - I'd been giving a presentation for an hour on how to launch a new product and I was asked by the CEO how to do something technically trivial - my brain could not do it. So he probably thought I was some marketeer pretending to be technical - which isn't really true. I suspect quite a lot of people who are labelled as "can't code" are freezing like…

When I ask people to code FizzBuzz I:

  - give them ~30 minutes on their own machine
  - they get to pick the language they code in
  - I leave the room for large parts of it
  - I bring them a drink
  - I tell them I want to see what they can do and that I don't care if they complete it
  - permit them to search on the internet (as long as they don't copy/paste a solution)
I see this usually:

  - they finish in a few minutes
  - they just can't do it, even with hints

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#268

Post by dukeyukey »

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…

> “if you know how to problem solve you will always pass.”

See, this is true eventually. But it's _definitely_ not true in 45 minutes.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#269

Post by wruza »

sensanaty wrote: post #199
XorNot wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

  for (…) {
    heavy_op();
    if (i % 100 == 0) {
      printf("not dead");
    }
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