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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

#501

Post by ryandrake »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #483
Aurornis wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We had one candidate who insisted that parsing a string and returning an integer was an unreasonable question because there was already a library function for it. “But what if you have an embedded system and no library?” (an actual situation for us, for part of our system). He was adamant — honestly that was a failure of the phone screen: had it been caught it would have saved us, and him, from wasting time. Trying…

there is a lot of stupid bullshit in most orgs, and things only get fixed by often irritable, unreasonable people. "shut up and do it" was only an acceptable answer when I was in the military. if the interviewee pushes back and find they don't like the answer, then it's a good signal to both parties.

This is definitely something that is dependent on the company culture and the personal preferences of the team. I would never want to work with someone who is constantly argumentative over everything, just because he thinks he's pushing back on bullshit.

Sometimes you just have to "document your objection, but do it anyway."

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#502

Post by ryandrake »

tnel77 wrote: post #489
lumb63 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to like this approach reasonably well. My current company uses a similarly simple problem to evaluate candidates. For me, it was a breeze, and I thought we’d be hiring slouches left and right. Once I started administering the interview, I realized that the majority of candidates absolutely bomb this simple question for one reason or another. It seems that “able to code a simple problem well” is a far less…

I have a friend who has interviewed about 30-40 software engineering candidates for his company (small, publicly traded company from the midwest). He said that FizzBuzz alone is enough to filter out 25% of applicants. The next slight more challenging question will axe another 30-40% of candidates. I think Leetcode hards exist to stroke the egos of select software engineers.

Yea, smaller and medium sized companies just don't have the recruiting infrastructure to weed out the fakers. When I worked in FAANG companies, by the time a candidate got to me, they were pretty good. They went through enough filters and checkpoints and annoying gates that I never really had to do a FizzBuzz equivalent.

When I worked for more medium sized companies, I'd get software engineering candidates who obviously did not even remotely know how to code. Imagine the worst possible software candidate, and then lower your expectation even further. One couldn't even tell me what an "int" was. I think a single "for loop on a whiteboard" question would filter out at least 50% of candidates.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#503

Post by gumby »

IshKebab wrote: post #406
gumby wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At all the companies I’ve run we’ve used a simple whiteboard example for this reason. Don’t worry about typos; how does the person think. “Trick” questions are dumb, but you want to get an idea of if the candidate knows their stuff (and let the candidate know what we’re like — interviewing is a sales process in both directions). If someone asks a question like “is it ok to modify the argument” (or says “I’ll assume I…

I agree with all of this. Leetcode questions are fine as long as they aren't actually difficult maths puzzles or brain teasers. We also used atoi/itoa loads and it was pretty much the perfect difficulty. Though I still do start with a short fizzbuzz-level question because you would be surprised how many people fail that and it makes it way less awkward if you start with atoi and they can't write a loop. If they fail…

> If they fail fizzbuzz I generally just turn the interview into a chat or give them easy questions to practice, rather than say "yeah no thanks", because I feel like the latter is a bit mean, and everyone can benefit from interview practice.

It’s kind to politely ramp the interview down in that case but I’ve learned to then cut off any later interviews. It’s a waste of the company’s time and the candidate’s too.

If we were going to have lunch the recruiter takes them to lunch anyway, unless the (now former) candidate doesn’t want to.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#504

Post by 6510 »

mihaitodor wrote: post #365

5 years later, I still refuse to do them and I don't want to put myself through that process ever again. I got bullied, harassed, laughed at and taunted by people who use this as a one-hour game of kicking people around and I'm not interested in entertaining them any more. I have the following disclaimer both on my LinkedIn [1] and GitHub [2] profiles because I had plenty of surprise-leetcode interviews, so I want to…

Seems like seeking devs could collectively hammer out a TOS. HR could then familiarize themselves with it and reconsider their ways.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#505

Post by 6510 »

weatherlite wrote: post #181
apples_oranges wrote: post #38

A friend once in the middle of a technical interview stopped speaking, stood up and went out. They ran after him, "what's wrong, you're doing fine!" and he told them it depresses him too much and he's not interested anymore. Sad, given that this is a fun profession for most of us (I assume)

Done a similar thing in a Zoom interview. I had a horrible hard Leetcode question, was completely stuck and was getting nowhere (neither did the interviewers seemed keen on helping me out). I told them hey thanks this isn't my day I want to quit the interview - at this point they really tried hard to make me stay for the rest of the time. I think if a candidate wants out - you should let him.

if I may be so rude to ask, what was the question?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#506

Post by ryandrake »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #433
johnnyanmac wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reading through the thread it seems that my experience is not universal, and the majority here have had less pleasant interviews, so I understand where you are coming from. it changes immensely based on the job market. I've defintiely tanked some inerviews hard, stumbling on softball questions that shoulda been a bullet point. But I get pretty far or even gotten offers. The last 12-18 months though? I've had intervi…

> it changes immensely based on the job market. I dodged the .com bust because I worked for the U.S. DoD at the time. But I got laid off for the first time during last year's "15% bloodbath". If I compare my current job search vs. all of my job searches in the past: (1) As parent comment said, the bar seems to be much higher. I've thought that I did really well on some interviews, only to not get an offer. (2) Some i…

> (2) Some interview processes are way more rigorous. For a DevTech role within nVidia, I had 12 interviews + 2 take-home problems. (BTW, the take home problems were incredibly fun. Well done nVidia!)

That's ridiculous, tho.

Did they really not have enough information on the 11th interview to know whether or not they wanted to hire you?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#507

Post by 6510 »

palata wrote: post #265

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…

It is perfectly fine to ask anything from the interviewer. How long have they worked there? Did they have other jobs? Why did they leave? Is there anything specific that is great about this place? Why are you looking for employees? Did someone quit? Do you have a lot of meetings? Do you enjoy coding? Do you have anything interesting on github?

Not specifically that but give it your own twist.

If they are confused remind them that getting along with people and fitting the team is at least as important as the ability to do work. The work is the least of your concern. It will probably involve dusting off some old skills and learning some new things.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#508

Post by ryandrake »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #411
slavapestov wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you need at least one person on the team to do the actual work, while everyone else is “communicating and managing expectations”.

That statement is not untrue, but I think it over-estimates how much of the "actual work" is banging out code, vs. making sure the correct code is being written.

Yea, I've worked in a place where it was just "coders coding" and nobody was communicating and managing expectations, and that was its own unique form of awful. You need both.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#509

Post by ryandrake »

bluGill wrote: post #428
vaylian wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FizzBuzz is a highly artificial problem. It makes sense that people who are not familiar with it will assume that there is an elegant solution. But in the end the right approach is to be very boring and to notice that you need to check for divisibility with 15 before you check for divisibility with 3 and 5.

FizzBuzz is a problem that doesn't have an elegant solution. That is the point: to see how you approach the problem. (there are 3 possible solutions, each in-elegant in their own way)

I don't like FizzBuzz because it over-weights the interviewees knowledge of the relatively obscure modulo operator. Yes, there are other ways to do it, but the expectation of FizzBuzz is that the candidate has that "Eureka" moment and remembers modulo.

If I need a "Non-Programmer Weed Out" question, I'd rather give a problem that is 1. as easy as FizzBuzz, but 2. is just 'if' statements and loops and cannot be solved by knowledge of a particular operator (or bit twiddling tricks).

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#510

Post by EnergyAmy »

gumby wrote: post #237
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…

At all the companies I’ve run we’ve used a simple whiteboard example for this reason. Don’t worry about typos; how does the person think. “Trick” questions are dumb, but you want to get an idea of if the candidate knows their stuff (and let the candidate know what we’re like — interviewing is a sales process in both directions). If someone asks a question like “is it ok to modify the argument” (or says “I’ll assume I…

Offtopic, but there's an interesting parallel between making a mistake like that and AI hallucination. In a human, that behavior is a positive signal, but for many people, that same behavior is proof of how LLMs are just a toy that will never rival human intelligence.
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