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In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

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Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#81

Post by eesmith »

GuB-42 wrote: post #77
eesmith wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not let the perfect obstruct the useful. A FizzBuzz coding test - which is also imperfect - will weed out those who cannot code, and without the false negatives from LeetCode. Programming is far more than writing code. Do you test their documentation skill? Their ability to work with others? To fix someone else's code? To identify and resolve ambiguities in the spec? To estimate development time? Is the additional…

I actually never did LeetCode interviews, but I did some competitive programming, same idea. And it tests more useful skills than FizzBuzz. I wouldn't recommend hard questions, as they usually require techniques that are not very useful for most jobs and that you have to specifically train for (ex: dynamic programming). But for easy to medium questions, in my experience, the bottleneck is usually misunderstanding the…

It seems in poor taste to respond to someone specifically criticizing LeetCode questions, by using your experience in non-LeetCode evaluations.

I too did competitive programming. A team working together to prioritize from a list of programming tasks which cannot all be completed in time even by the best team is a far cry from a LeetCode interview problem.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#82

Post by alisey »

danjl wrote: post #37

A good senior developer should be able to go out to lunch and know if the candidate has the skills and the right cultural match by the end. There's no need for coding tests or whiteboarding problems. I've seen some of the best developers I've worked with in 40 years of coding get turned away by Google and Apple because of their terrible interview processes. The only thing better than going out to lunch is working wit…

In my experience, the results from those who claim they can judge skills based on a lunch conversation have not been good. I think people who can do it are the exception, not the norm.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#83

Post by waythenewsgoes »

GuB-42 wrote: post #57
waythenewsgoes wrote: post #9

I have always seen LeetCode problems as effectively hazing rituals in a job interview setting. A high pressure interview situation simply won’t bring out peak problem-solving capabilities in many people. At best you get some superficial insight into someone’s problem solving methodology, but at worst you filter out otherwise excellent fits for not being able to solve an ultimately inconsequential problem under pressu…

The thing is, all these arguments can apply to any test you do during an interview. It is always under pressure, and it will always be incomplete. You will never know for sure before you actually hire the candidate. If the interview for a coding job doesn't involve actual coding, how do you know that the candidate can code? What you may get are people who are just really good at selling themselves. Maybe a good fit f…

> If the interview for a coding job doesn’t involve actual coding, how do you know that the candidate can code?

LeetCode problems seldom resemble real-life coding scenarios, which in theory is what you are supposed to be most concerned with.

Why not present them with a real problem that you actually had to solve for your business? And ask them to walk you through how they would try to solve that? Perhaps as part of a take-home assignment?

Leetcode test or nothing is a false dichotomy. Accepting it is lacking without attempting to look into alternatives doesn’t seem logical.

>You can certainly memorize solutions

You can most certainly memorize the high level steps to LC problems. In fact I would argue that this is already the status quo. You may still be able to learn how they would approach a problem this way, but if they are good at “selling themselves” they can make all that “seem” real as well.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#84

Post by biglyburrito »

habitue wrote: post #66
novok wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ test questions are explicitly designed to be things you haven't seen before, solved within minutes per problem. If you've seen them before then the validity of the test is usually invalidated. Leetcode is effectively the opposite, because each one is usually a CS paper by itself, which by definition took a very hard problem a long time for a very smart person to create and test the solution. You cannot practically…

Again, the IQ being measured isn't "Are you able to invent A* search during the interview?" but rather "Can you memorize and apply these algorithms?". Believe it or not, most humans on earth can study as long as they want for leetcode and still won't do well on them. If you can drill and study for them and your scores improve... bam: that's the IQ test.

You're still missing the point: "IQ test questions are explicitly designed to be things you haven't seen before."

LeetCode is the _opposite_ of an IQ test. LeetCode tests one's ability to memorize, recognize, & regurgitate information in a timed test.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#85

Post by MichaelNolan »

willio58 wrote: post #25
OnionBlender wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at the Meta interview guide and it says: > Let us know if you’ve seen the problem previously and also: > In your tech screen, you’ll be asked to solve two problems in roughly 35 minutes. Practice coding solutions to medium and hard problems in less than 15 minutes each to help you be ready for the constraints during the interview. The only way I could solve two problems in 35 minutes is if I've seen the…

> Let us know if you’ve seen the problem previously Or just say “I’ve seen this one before” until they get to one you actually have seen before and ace it. Leetcode is a joke. I’ve hired a dozen or so high quality candidates using a short 2-3 hour take-home. It shows us more than leetcode ever could. And sometimes people take it places I could have never imagined, these are people we move quickly on and they are the…

> using a short 2-3 hour take-home

Where in the process did you give the take home project? As a candidate, I would consider doing a take home project as the final round of an interview, but anything earlier than that and I will reject doing one. 2-3 hours is too much time to spend on one company, unless you’re confident that the company is serious about hiring.

Projects can work great for smaller companies, but are basically impossible to use at larger companies.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#86

Post by rufus_foreman »

slashdave wrote: post #44
habitue wrote: post #6

Leetcode is just a proxy for an IQ test. That's it. If you can study up and do well on leetcode, then you're smart. People getting hung up on how realistic the questions are, or whether you ever need to implement X data structure are confused. Fact is that no job can give a reasonable test for how it is to work there short of working there. There's team dynamics, developer / project fit, etc etc. All you can ever do…

> Leetcode is just a proxy for an IQ test. What? No. You need to practice to be truly effective at Leetcode.

That's a good point. You need high conscientiousness in addition to high IQ.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#87

Post by willio58 »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #85
willio58 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us know if you’ve seen the problem previously Or just say “I’ve seen this one before” until they get to one you actually have seen before and ace it. Leetcode is a joke. I’ve hired a dozen or so high quality candidates using a short 2-3 hour take-home. It shows us more than leetcode ever could. And sometimes people take it places I could have never imagined, these are people we move quickly on and they are the…

> using a short 2-3 hour take-home Where in the process did you give the take home project? As a candidate, I would consider doing a take home project as the final round of an interview, but anything earlier than that and I will reject doing one. 2-3 hours is too much time to spend on one company, unless you’re confident that the company is serious about hiring. Projects can work great for smaller companies, but are…

We do 3 rounds.

1 quick culture fit one, basically do they even like what our company does? Do they say anything offensive? If not, they continue on.

Then a 2-3 hour take home (this is self-limited on their end). Once it comes back we give a 45 minute technical round that’s focused on really high level questions about technical knowledge and about their take home specifically.

If both of those go well, they go onto the final where we ask work-background questions. Basically trying to understand how they did in recent jobs. Finally if we’re feeling good we call some references for like 2-3 minutes each and unless something comes up (you’d be surprised how often something does) they get an offer!

I think you’re right about the small/big company thing. The candidate needs to have confidence that their take-home will actually be evaluated. This can be helped by guaranteeing an interview round after the take home is done but even still I get the point that this would be hard to trust in larger companies.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#88

Post by karmakurtisaani »

Ekaros wrote: post #78
waythenewsgoes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you don’t wake me at 3AM to rotate a red-black tree, or find the median of two sorted arrays we should be good

I must remember to ask how many times those problems happen in company's code base in next interview. Or whatever they ask. And if it is more than one, ask if they have libraries for it... You know good development practises and all.

Being a smartass typically goes down well in interviews.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#89

Post by eYrKEC2 »

biglyburrito wrote: post #84
habitue wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the IQ being measured isn't "Are you able to invent A* search during the interview?" but rather "Can you memorize and apply these algorithms?". Believe it or not, most humans on earth can study as long as they want for leetcode and still won't do well on them. If you can drill and study for them and your scores improve... bam: that's the IQ test.

You're still missing the point: "IQ test questions are explicitly designed to be things you haven't seen before." LeetCode is the _opposite_ of an IQ test. LeetCode tests one's ability to memorize, recognize, & regurgitate information in a timed test.

It doesn't matter. It's a heuristic. _vocabulary_ test performance correlates with IQ and vocabulary is _only_ a test of something you know.

Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews

#90

Post by eYrKEC2 »

gedy wrote: post #34
habitue wrote: post #6

Leetcode is just a proxy for an IQ test. That's it. If you can study up and do well on leetcode, then you're smart. People getting hung up on how realistic the questions are, or whether you ever need to implement X data structure are confused. Fact is that no job can give a reasonable test for how it is to work there short of working there. There's team dynamics, developer / project fit, etc etc. All you can ever do…

I wish they'd just give IQ tests then.. I do just fine in those (~140) but not a leet coder at all.

They're illegal, unless you're the government or... NFL, surprisingly.. "wonderlic"
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