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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

#531

Post by kristopolous »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #247
kristopolous wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leet code is not "decent problem solving skills" but it's almost always about three types of programs: sliding window, linked list rearrangement, and BFS. The code to solve basically all of them look nearly identical after you classify it and the questions asked (what's the big O of this) are also all identical. It's an extremely narrow and teachable class of problems. There's outliers for sure but the 80th percentil…

Well the thing is, I keep hearing about these people who can't code but excel at leetcode, even that they are mass-trained in some bootcamps, but somehow I never saw one in reality and I interviewed hundreds of people. So I'm kind skeptical this is a real issue. The other way round (people who code, but can't leetcode) I agree it's an issue. Unfortunately as noted here in comments, cost of a bad hire is much much wor…

No. The point is the correlation is poor between the two sets AND there's equally quantifiable things with higher correlation.

If I genuinely wanted a job again all I'd do is go to one of those drilling game websites for a few nights and then say whatever the interviewer is looking for.

Any test I can fail one day and pass 3 days later that is ostensibly supposed to assess whether I have skills that take 15 years to master is total bullshit.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#532

Post by gumby »

krackers wrote: post #521
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…

>shuffle a deck of cards Fwiw this is surprisingly subtle and non-trivial to get right. A naive "random swap" approach does not produce uniform permutations. Sorting based on a random comparison function can likewise produce biased results depending on the implementation of the sort. Tagging each element with a random number and then sorting based on the tag works (or so I think?) but you need to deal with the case w…

It’s an open ended problem and someone could nerd out on the maths while another could define a card class, a suit class, and use a factory pattern (oh brother…SMH but probably wouldn’t categorically rule someone out for it, just talk some more).

At the end of the day the question is: “could this person do the job and could they work with others in the process?”

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#533

Post by gumby »

soerxpso wrote: post #519
EnergyAmy wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that an LLM isn't very good at saying "I'm a fucking idiot" and changing it when asked to double-check (unless you handhold it in the direction of the exact error it's meant to be looking for). Humans recognize their own hallucinations. There's not really any promising work towards getting AI to do the same.

Leela.ai was founded to work on problems like that.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#534

Post by kristopolous »

kristopolous wrote: post #43
boshalfoshal wrote: post #17

I see these posts a lot, and I sort of disagree with where they are coming from so I'll play devils advocate. Leetcode is used to select for one of (or both of these) 2 things for the average IC hire: 1. Do you work hard (i.e a person who studies many problems, memorizes solutions, and regurgitates then) 2. Are you smart (i.e a person who doesn't do any leetcode but knows the fundamentals and can sythesize past knowl…

It's skills that a 4-year college student learns at approximately 19 and then promptly does not use for their next 50 years of actually building things. It leaves out looking at the engineering skills it takes to put something past the finish line on budget. It's at best, an adjacent sideshow and at worse a proxy for ageism to preference people closer to 19 and less capable at getting quality software out the door. A…

also if you're going to "timebox" be very very generous. If you think it takes 30 minutes, give them 5 hours and say you're being generous.

I've known people who program things like jet engines and stuff that goes into space. They know their stuff, are super methodical and take their damn time to do it well.

Quality programming is a rarely practiced time consuming art and you'd be lucky if you have 10% of your workforce doing it. Heck, you'd be lucky if you have 1%. Those people save the ship.

I'm not one of them. When you meet them, they're like a different kind of human.

If you timebox them to 30 minutes, the people who write mission-critical quality code will fail to get it in on time and be filtered out.

These are the people who write those 10,000 word articles that appear on HN with carefully constructed schematics, equations, and code that you struggle to understand and bookmark to study later.

On the other hand, if you give people 5 hours, I assure you, the morons will still obviously be morons and you give the "True" Engineers who take their craft dead seriously a chance to shine.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#535

Post by ZephyrBlu »

fragmede wrote: post #514
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know many people making (very) high 6 figures working at places most have never heard of You know people making ~800-900k at places most people have never heard of? That is what "high 6 figures" means. I have to assume you mean more like ~$180-190k?

Not op, but FWIW, I know people who make high six figures (explicitly, $750k>) at companies that aren't household names or FAANG(ish) companies (or AI companies for that matter), though I also know my share of people that are at such companies that most people, or maybe just people here have heard of, that also make > $750k. Some of them aren't even software engineers! Most (all?) of them aren't paid that much on the…

I 100% believe it's possible, but that's even more of a lottery than FAANG is which would negate his point :).

If you can get your foot in the door it's hard to beat FAANG comp on a risk-adjusted basis and they do actually employ quite a lot of SWEs, which I think is why it's such a focal point for tech jobs even though you can get similar comp in other situations.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#536

Post by johnnyanmac »

bena wrote: post #455
johnnyanmac wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure is. I could also be questionied on: - CPU/GPU architecture - graphics/shader programming ( I do enjoy graphics programming, but I have been asked these questions despite not applying for graphics roles) - GPGPU - traditional software engineering (programming patterns, architecture) - netcode (I never applied to a network engineering position. I in fact actively avoid that part of the stack) - general industry…

Fair enough man. I've done hobbyist game development, independent game development, and applied to some shops myself early on. But eventually, you get a job and your path diverges, etc, etc. Like, I'm not anywhere I'd imagine I'd be when I was in school. I think at least half of all programmers got into it because of video games. They know it's desirable, so they can filter almost as hard as they want. Like, the indu…

>I think at least half of all programmers got into it because of video games. They know it's desirable, so they can filter almost as hard as they want.

I had this whole pipeline where I figured

- okay, I don't have a master's degree

- there aren't any junior graphics roles.

- I'll work in industry for 4-5 years in whatever I can while working on rendering tech, and then get a graphics programmer job this way.

- I'll be in a cushy, in-demand, highly skilled, more protected part of industry from the layoff hustle and bustle. You don't throw away engine programmers at the blink of an eye

Alas, the industry shifted around in the blink of an eye. Most studios cared less about fundamental graphics for an in-house engine as they all just changed to unreal. I did in fact get an engine programmer role, but was still first on the chopping block for layoffs. The industry tighted the heck up over the last 18 months and my side hobby projects on github barely mattered as they wanted 5+ years of graphics experience. Back in the catch 22 I was trying to avoid with all this prep.

I wouldn't say my dreams are crashing down, but it sure did show me that nothing is truly safe, no matter how experience or well liked you are. Nor even how exploited; definitely had freinds completely underpaid that put 80+ hours into the company, and they still get cut the moment RTO is announced. You have the dream capitalist candidate but can't handle not seeing them 5 days a week with butt in seat.

>if you're currently between jobs right now, you could crank out a prototype of something and see where it takes you while job hunting.

That's the weird part. Prototypes are normally a great way to stand out. But the market here is sending all kinds of weird signals. I don't know what companies want anymore, clearly not a plain ol' hard worker.

I am still getting interviews, but they are cut short in the process or am simply ghosted. Some are botched tehnical interviews, others I have no clue. So more prototypes aren't necessarily solving my personal issues.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#537

Post by KaiserPro »

6510 wrote: post #491
throwaway7ahgb wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I sort of agree with you. Background: I'm in a FAANG type company now, a YC company, 3000+ engineers. I'm a Staff SWE with 20+ years of experience (ECE degree) and make $600k+ per year. I've went through the promo cycle here (it sucks). I can't do any leet hards and can do leet mediums after studying. Some easy's take me a couple of tries. I usually do very poorly in interview coding exercises. ** throwaway , ma…

Curious, would you say FAANG offers the right challenges to stay in the 0.1% or 1% if one started out there? Are they actually in the right place to grow?

depends. If your in at the bottom floor, then you will grow with the company.

If you are lucky and join/lead/get a new project off the ground, then you'll also grow.

If you're just trying to move the dial on a normal project, then its very difficult to make any kind of headway. You are surrounded by overly enthusiastic hall monitor types who will put in more hours than you, or post more than you.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#538

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

tnel77 wrote: post #528
ryandrake wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvio…

I agree. How are these people graduating? What does that say about our universities?

> "What does that say about our universities?"

"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

It says barely anything about the universities and everything about the student. If a student just wants to just have a perfunctory gargle at the fountain of knowledge instead of drinking as deeply as they can, that's on them.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#539

Post by jonkho »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #526
jonkho wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. You just proved my point that “categorically LC is not largely memorization” by reinforcing that only in specific cases in some specific levels that you do need some specific domain knowledge.

My point is that LC hards were not intended nor designed to be perfromed in an interview setting, and essentially most people will only do the in that typical interview timeline if they've lucky enough to have seen it before or lucky enough to understand the specific domain knowledge. So I'm not sure we're interpreting the same conclusion here unless you think trick questions are a mark of a "good engineer".

My point is that a claim cannot be made that categorically LC tests are generally a test on memorization. It appears your point does not disprove that. You mention exceptions, that in fact proves the general rule is true (I.e your claim isn’t of the form: most leet code questions of almost any level cannot answered without spending 45 mins and requiring specialized domain knowledge as a prerequisite). You cannot argue against general rule by pointing out specialized exceptions. Cats generally have 4 legs as a rule. Yes exceptional conditions exists where they don’t have 4 legs, but the generally rule holds true. To argue against, your point must take the form: “as a rule, most cats do not have 4 legs.” Do you understand?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#540

Post by bdangubic »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #513
bdangubic wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there’s only a handful of companies that pay well with all due respect I believe this is about as far from the truth as it gets. I believe the issue is that people think they have to work at FAANGs in order to be paid REALLY well which is just nuts. I know many people making (very) high 6 figures working at places most have never heard of. instead of looking for FAANGs people should be looking at companies that hav…

> I know many people making (very) high 6 figures working at places most have never heard of You know people making ~800-900k at places most people have never heard of? That is what "high 6 figures" means. I have to assume you mean more like ~$180-190k?

No, I mean $700k-$900k
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