If you are the type of person who writes a big brain log(n) solution instead of n solution when there is no real reason (compute wise) and the log(n) is a pain in the ass to maintain.
I hope I never see you in my team.
In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#12[deleted]
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#13Leetcode 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…
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Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#14There’s just so much guesswork with these as interview questions. The number of different problem spaces is non-trivial, and understanding the nature of the problem space for use in work is quite different from being able to work out a problem in 30 minutes in front of other people often in a code editor that is unfamiliar.
We lack an agreed upon, specific way to evaluate someone’s talent in 30-90 minutes. LC problems are not a terribly efficient way to fix this.
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#15I 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…
I don't try to add any pressure, but going on call will require some resilience from each team member.
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#16Leetcode 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 agree. One could say that just administering proper iq test would be better but that would be seen as insulting or whatever and also potentially illegal so people resort to elaborate challenges like lc
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#17I 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…
I don't try to add any pressure, but going on call will require some resilience from each team member.
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
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#18I would rather hire someone who has evidence of working on prior projects than someone who can solve brain teasers. There are many people who excel at LeetCode but struggle to build even simple software.
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#19> People that never done LC problems probably don’t even know how to implement some data structures. So when they face a difficult problem they will probably just use a brute force approach.
You don't need leetcode for that. It's sufficient to talk about datastructures. In fact, that is a much better and actually reasonable thing to do in an in an interview.
> I also like these questions because you can ask them to any kind of software developer, from frontend to DevOps.
Only those that will apply at your place, which will exclude me if you require a leetcode interview. So, in fact, you will be biased by prefiltering candidates.
It's like when companies say "we only hire the top 1%" and I ask "the top 1% of all engineers or the top 1% of the engineers that chose to apply at your company?"
Re: In Defense of LeetCode Interviews
#20Leetcode 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…
Actually - “how many golf balls fit into a VW Beatle” is a better proxy.