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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

#381

Post by ThinkBeat »

I have so far not done a full Leetcode myself and I dont consider it an especially good approach.

But I want to share a couple of thoughts.

If these interviews in general, follow a form of template as to what they contain, what to expect, how answers should be presented, then studying it, while time consuming is not that hard.

It can function as a form of "proof of work". That you took the time to prepare yourself for the interview will be points in your favor. Like putting on some nice clothes and brushing your hair. and putting together nice CV.

The second part is to perform under stress. I hate this part of modern interview processes. They want to give you something difficult, then spinkle with some rudeness and abrasive comments.

Will the candidate work under pressure or not?

Coming from the consulting world, perhaps that is more common in that sector than others.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#382

Post by pjmorris »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #378
pjmorris wrote: post #357

Jerry Weinberg used to run a discussion forum for experienced software development consultants, aggregating many years of experience at many companies building significant projects. Their consensus opinion was that a 'work sample test' was the most reliable means of assessing whether potential hire would be a good fit. Bring the person in and pay them to work with you, in your environment, on tasks parallel to what i…

That's really interesting. I'm guessing this works better for consultants than for regular employees, due to employment / tax laws.

> I'm guessing this works better for consultants than for regular employees, due to employment / tax laws.

Yes, if you go as far as treating them with the respect of paying them for their time. However, it can still be done in the many interview processes that take half- or a day's time but that don't pay the interviewee for their time.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#383

Post by TrackerFF »

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…

That sounds like the exact opposite of what one wants, form the interviewer standpoint.

The goal of coding interviews is to probe the candidate, have them explain their thought process, and see how they interact with you. Are they able to formulate the problem? Gather specs? Are they able to consider constraints?

The last thing I want is some automated system where you have no idea how the applicant came to their answer, what their thought process was, etc.

If that was the goal, then just bring back brain teasers, or better yet, just use thinly veiled IQ tests.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#384

Post by justjash »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #348
resource_waste wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are not software engineers and it shows massively. Coming from Real Engineering and making 2x more programming, I lol at people who say there is any Engineering in software. We are programmers dealing with layers upon layers of abstraction. Knowing to optimize for time by using vectors is more of an art, than a science. I did do safety critical C code and Assembly which are probably my hole in the whole 'its no…

>I lol at people who say there is any Engineering in software. There definitely is. Safety/mission critical code is definately a more rigorous, formal process where you don't just download a library for padding a string (you probably wouldn't use built-in strings anyway on this kind of code). But I agree that the way most coding works (i.e. move fast and fail often) is completely antithetical to how engineers should…

As someone who started going to school for Mechanical Engineering and ended up in Comp Sci, I think your last paragraph is what drew me in. So many different ways to solve the problem at hand.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#385

Post by johnnyanmac »

pjmorris wrote: post #357

Jerry Weinberg used to run a discussion forum for experienced software development consultants, aggregating many years of experience at many companies building significant projects. Their consensus opinion was that a 'work sample test' was the most reliable means of assessing whether potential hire would be a good fit. Bring the person in and pay them to work with you, in your environment, on tasks parallel to what i…

it seems so straightforward. I'm surprised more companies don't try it. paying, say, 5 promising candidates for a short period on some super reduced pay can't be that much more expensive than 2 months of interviewing a few dozen.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#386

Post by AnimalMuppet »

upmind wrote: post #239

Leetcode style interviews are not great, but I much prefer them to take homes. However, some FAANG+ companies have a nice system (for internship), where they give a very small codebase (~100ish lines) to work on with some errors / possible improvements and you go through those in the interview.

Take homes for me are "just no". No, I won't spend six hours working on some throwaway project, in order to have you spend five minutes looking at it and then decide you don't want to hire me.

The problem with this (and with grinding leetcode) is that it's not symmetric. If I'm in an interview, and you're wasting my time, you're also wasting your own. So the employer has some incentive not to waste my time. With a take home, though, they can feel free to waste my time, because it doesn't waste any of theirs. (And leetcode is the same. Yes, asking it in the interview takes their time as well. But all the time I spend grinding in preparation, they do not spend.)

For one special job that I really wanted to get, sure, I'd do a take home. For your average job for average pay? No. Your job isn't worth it. Don't waste my time.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#387

Post by breckenedge »

NhanH wrote: post #133
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…

> 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). I've seen this reasoning, but I'm wondering if this is actually true, especially if you also believe the other myth in hiring: most people applying are not qualified for the job. Since most hiring actually requires you to fill the position in the…

In my years of hiring experience, it doesn't hold up. I've hired folks who could leet code all day long, but couldn't develop a feature from scratch, or figure things out without enormous hand holding. I want to hire problem solvers who also know how to code. I stopped doing leet-code interviews about 7 years ago. By all means have people code in interviews, but don’t do leet code.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#388

Post by CoastalCoder »

pjmorris wrote: post #382
CoastalCoder wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. I'm guessing this works better for consultants than for regular employees, due to employment / tax laws.

> I'm guessing this works better for consultants than for regular employees, due to employment / tax laws. Yes, if you go as far as treating them with the respect of paying them for their time. However, it can still be done in the many interview processes that take half- or a day's time but that don't pay the interviewee for their time.

I've heard of using Amazon gift cards as a form of payment.

I'm guessing that's illegal in the U.S., but maybe it's such small amount of money that companies aren't worried about the legal exposure.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#389

Post by jkukul »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #324
jkukul wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A leet-code test would be much more standardized if candidates could solve it at home. Just send me a link to the quiz and let me solve it within a specified time frame. I've done tests like this for some companies. It felt a lot fairer and more closely resembling the actual work environment than live leet-code interviews, with biased interviewer(s) and a stress factor that's not a part of the actual job.

As a hiring manager I HATE leet-code tests, and they do nothing to differentiate candidates, but a take home in the era where people run chatGPT beside the interview window, or have someone else do the interview for them? Not a chance. You are 100% correct that it is way more representative, but the prevalence of cheating is ridiculous.

I totally understand you, but want to offer a different perspective.

They will also be able to use ChatGPT on the job. And StackOverflow. And Google. If they know how to use tools available to solve a problem, that will benefit them on the job.

If you're testing them for what ChatGPT can already solve, then are the skills being tested worth anything, in this day and age?

Take-home LeetCode, even with cheating will still filter out a good chunk of candidates. Those who are not motivated enough or those who don't even know how to use the available help. You'll still be able to rank those who solved the task. You'll still see the produced code and be able to judge it.

Like other commenter points out, you can always follow up the take-home LeetCode. Usually, it becomes apparent really quickly if a candidate solved it on their own.

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