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I think for large companies where they want to reduce the number of false positives, leetcode style questions work well.
We keep seeing posts like these on HN/Reddit, yet companies keep using them. And companies like Faang (or is it Manga now??), whose engineers I would think would hang out on HN So it either means: 1. HN's influence is even less than we thought-- even MANGA engineers /10x silicon valley types dont hang out here 2. Everyone agrees its a good idea, but no one cares. Like everyone agrees we should care about the environm…
Just because you see them, doesn’t mean they’re correct. They’re just a breeding ground for holy wars and discussions. On every post like that you can find tons of “I don’t like them, we need something better and no I don’t know what”. But if you dig into comments you usually find why those type of interviews are done.
I keep seeing this kind of article that leetcode is not the answer. Yes it is not the answer but the best strategy to filter out not dumb, low IQ people who are going to panic when you give a vague, open ended problem. There are many people who call themselves engineers while trying to talk everything out instead of diving deep into problem.
The article addresses this as well. Stage fright does not make someone “dumb”. Slow thinkers aren’t “low IQ”. And reversing a tree likely doesn’t make someone apt for a job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only the first one you mention (a task to be solved in real time with both the interviewer and the candidate on the same video call) is the only one that respects the candidate's time. The other ones do not. A take home assignment could mean hours or days of effort for the candidate, while it may take at most 1h or so for the interviewer to review it. Totally asymmetric.
I've done take home tasks before. One of them I had to do landed me a job at a really great company that I'm happy I didn't miss. I agree it's maybe a little less respectful of a candidate's time, but as long as it's not too big a task I don't think it's unreasonable either.
When I was a junior developer I used to deal with a). Now that I have more years of experience I usually deal with b).
Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort gets filtered out of an interview involving contrived scenarios. You may have built the next generation X, but given an array of strings and a fixed width, can you format the text such that each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully justified -- in the next 30 minutes? Maybe you should have cultivated that skillset…
> Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough. What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates?
But then why do people with that kind of reputation still (at certain companies) have to jump through these hoops?
https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our...
> What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates?
What about (instead of forcing a months long decision process upon the candidates and the company) bringing them into the company after a short interview (maybe 2hrs), and making sure they can afford housing, food and everything else they need. If you like their work, they stay employed. If, say after one month, you do not like what you see, you can easily let them go. Of course you tell them upfront what the deal is.
We could call it, I don't know, maybe trial or probationary period.
1. An interview proces exists to fill a position. It doesn't exist to fairly assess an individual candidate. Candidates would like that. That's not the point. If there are 10 candidates and the employer fills the role successfully, they've achieved their goal even if someone great was filtered out;
2. FizzBuzz came about because many people talked a great game but couldn't code a flor loop. Giving a simple coding problem is an excellent negative filter. Doing great at the problem means nothing; and
3. Interviewers make the mistake of thinking FizzBuzz is too easy so they give harder problems. This is a mistake that defeats the entire purpose of the filter. Stop doing this.
These points remain constant in every such engineering hiring or interviewing thread.
This is a tired topic at this point. The mistakes people make are: 1. An interview proces exists to fill a position. It doesn't exist to fairly assess an individual candidate. Candidates would like that. That's not the point. If there are 10 candidates and the employer fills the role successfully, they've achieved their goal even if someone great was filtered out; 2. FizzBuzz came about because many people talked a g…
Don't get me wrong I hate LeetCode-style interviews as much as the next guy. In fact I really, really, really suck at them! Not sure if that says more about my ability then anything but c'est la vie In the defence of LeetCode-style questions, I do think they work, and very well may I add - with the caveat you have the throughput of candidate to make it work well? Their ability to filter out 'those who can't code' in…
But did you consider the number of qualified candidates that did not even apply because they know there will be leetcode questions?
Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort gets filtered out of an interview involving contrived scenarios. You may have built the next generation X, but given an array of strings and a fixed width, can you format the text such that each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully justified -- in the next 30 minutes? Maybe you should have cultivated that skillset…
> Someone who builds a truly novel technology solution involving hundreds of hours of effort This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough. What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates?
The internal recruiter said it kept happening for seniors and people with a lot of experience, but his hands were tied, as the leetcode process was deemed important by the CTO.