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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

#561

Post by alexey-salmin »

kristopolous wrote: post #531
alexey-salmin wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you complain about is a false-negative error: an engineer with 15 years of experience can't pass these tests unless he prepares for 3 more days. That can sometimes happen, yes.

The initial stated problem was different: false-positives, bad engineers practicing for 6 weeks will pass the test. That I seriously doubt is a real thing. If they managed to learn that fast, they must be good. They could be junior-good -- that's perfectly fine, you need to hire juniors too. You don't judge seniority solely based on leetcode results.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#562

Post by therealdrag0 »

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…

Have you given interviews like this?

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#563

Post by was_in_amazon »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #440
was_in_amazon wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you call any coding test "leetcode like interviews" then YES

I'd consider - a coding test in a short time frame (30-90 minutes) - implementing some singular function that expects a singular answer - expecting time/space complexity optimizations, often those not naively thought about in said short time frame - in synthesized test environments (as opposed to something representing a real world environment) to fall under "leetcode like interviews". Log parsing can fall into eithe…

Then I was right. And it seems there are a lot of sour grapes in this thread...

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#564

Post by emblaegh »

batshit_beaver wrote: post #520
emblaegh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my interview at facebook some four years ago, I am inclined to believe they disable intelisense so the candidates do not get tangled up in the minutiae of language syntax, function arguments, etc. and instead focus on the algorithm they are trying to write.

Except you get dinged on your performance if your code doesn't run once the interviewer has a chance to test it after the interview. And getting dinged generally means rejection in today's economy.

I passed that round and I’m 100% sure the code I wrote was not runnable as it was written.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#565

Post by weatherlite »

ryandrake wrote: post #515
weatherlite wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40 year old here. I don't think its strictly a time issue, its an energy/motivation issue. 40 minutes of practice a day for a month or two should be sufficient for someone to solve/go over dozens of Leetcode questions. We all, literally all, have that time to spare otherwise we wouldn't touch our phones or ever watch T.V and yet most of us do. But I don't disagree with you completely. I think the older you get, the m…

Yea, the older I get, the less willing I am to jump through hoops, supplicate and prostrate myself in front of a company I want to work for. At 22 years old, I would have thought nothing of studying 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 4 weeks to get a job. Now, no way. And I believe this is a common trait among employees my age. So if a company designs an interview process that involves all this hoop jumping and whiteb…

> So if a company designs an interview process that involves all this hoop jumping and whiteboard hazing, they are deliberately adding bias against older, more experienced candidates.

I agree about the bias though I don't think its deliberate. I think its just the easiest way for them to filter through masses of candidates.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#566

Post by weatherlite »

ryandrake wrote: post #512
weatherlite wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell. What area do you live? Are things that bad or were you just too picky?

I've been ~2 months from missing rent having to move my family into a van. At that level of desperation, you're willing to stomach a lot of non-ideal companies. If I didn't get that (as it turns out, terrible) programming job, my next step would have been to try to get a job stocking shelves at Home Depot.

Holy hell. Wow that's harsh, I'm super glad you are employed now (even a terrible programming job is better than a home depot job) and that ordeal is behind you. This lousy economic cycle will eventually reverse a bit and we will hopefully all have some more leeway to find better employment.

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#567

Post by davedx »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #374
davedx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah games company interviews can be hilarious. I had an interview for a company in the south of England a long time ago. The first half went okay, then in the second half the whiteboard came out, and I was asked to "implement C++ object oriented method dispatch in C" with a chunky marker pen. I mean, it's not exactly a rocket science question, but it's not easy either (on a whiteboard, with a chunky pen), and in the…

Depending on the specific job role, I actually like that interview question. It tests knowledge of the C++ vtable and function pointers, which is probably a good marker for intermediate-level C++ knowledge. Especially for debugging some heinous bugs.

It tests knowledge of how C++ itself is implemented. That's not really something most people study or prepare for unless they work on C++ compilers. I wouldn't call knowing how vtables are implemented intermediate-level C++ knowledge, and I never again encountered it despite spending another ... 5-6 years writing C++ code afterwards.

It's intellectually interesting for sure, I think depending on how it's introduced it could make an interesting discussion in an interview. But asking someone to implement them from scratch on a whiteboard? Come on. :)

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#568

Post by [deleted] »

6510 wrote: post #505
weatherlite wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: I am sick of LeetCode-style interviews

#570

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

dvt wrote: post #522
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> yet were incompenent in the very subject their books are about Gonna on this one. I mean I guess anecdotes are cool, but yours goes against basically any editor/publisher due diligence, not to mention the financial incentive of writing a book in the first place (the book actually being good ), but alright.

It does not have to be bestselling books; just some niche books. And also I can guarantee you I can write you a book, say, "intro in datascience" without actually knowing much about the subject, just by mixing together existing material; after that succesfully forget everything I had learned why was writing the book.
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