Do they have an archive of their challenges?
Goodbye to Google Code Jam
121–130 of 147 posts
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciated the quote from your article that: "Based on information from insiders, Google’s coding competitions engaged more than 300,000 software engineers external to Google, annually. These coding competitions assisted in the hiring of thousands of software engineers each year, who were directly sourced from these events." These views reflect that Google Code Jam was a very significant source for recruitment. In…
> In contrast, when I searched about whether Code Jam was a significant part of Google's recruitment strategy, one of the top results on Reddit on r/cscareerquestions really underplayed the recruitment part Google has a very standardized recruitment procedure. Once you're in the pipeline, you're judged with the same standards as everybody else (algo interview, system design...). Whether you're a Code Jam champion or…
It's there to find the non-networked developer - the kid in their mom's basement who is not in Silicon Valley or possibly not even in the U.S. and doesn't know anyone who works at Google, but learned to program on their own. Ironically this is the sort of developer that HN says can't get FAANG jobs because they lack the credentials and connections.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#123For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...
I appreciated the quote from your article that: "Based on information from insiders, Google’s coding competitions engaged more than 300,000 software engineers external to Google, annually. These coding competitions assisted in the hiring of thousands of software engineers each year, who were directly sourced from these events." These views reflect that Google Code Jam was a very significant source for recruitment. In…
There's a difference between "does Code Jam help attract quality candidates to Google" and "does participating in Code Jam help a candidate in getting a job at Google". Presumably, Google cares about the former, and participants care about the latter. Both statements can be true or false to various extents regardless of each other.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#124For anyone wondering about the underlying reason for these events suddenly being cancelled: it is connected to Google laying off the team that organized these four events, as part of their January job cuts. I covered more details I could find a few weeks ago [1] [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/google-coding-competition...
This is really sad. What’s even more sad is that the person who made this descision will probably never know how much damage it did to Google’s reputation. Code Jam had what I think were the most well designed and insightful problems in all of competitive programming, not to mention innovative problem types and judging systems. Google, you have just disappointed and pissed off many of the best algorithmic programmers…
People are still going to apply to work in Google in droves. No need to be so melodramatic.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it a joke? It is like any other sport or Olympiad, it involves solving faster, accurately and potentially of problems you haven't seen before. There is no direct correlation between competitive programming like CodeJam/ICPC and leetcode. They don't target the same audience at all. I couldn't get to the top of these but I do admire people who do, they are some of the absolutely brilliant people I have worked wi…
I am not a big fan of them because the sport has converged on the idea that the competition should be about quickly producing code for problems that map to algorithms fairly trivially once you parse the structure of the problem. Top-level competitive programmers have libraries of functions and algorithms that they copy-paste from, and so the end result is more like a spelling bee than anything else. Personally, I wou…
I think you have some delusions about competitive programming. Now lets debunk them.
If you looked at the Putnam results this year, a good amount in the top 50 were competitive programmers (let alone top 500 which was filled with names on Codeforces). This is just America and Canada which aren't the strongest countries in the world when it comes to competitive programming. There is a significant amount of medalists in IMO who won gold medals at IOI.
Now 1) is definitely true. In the last ICPC, no team could solve D (including the winning team consisting of an IMO gold medalist, despite 19 tries).
Here is another example of a tough problem. It was so difficult that the solution to this problem was a published math paper! https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/109707#comment-977862
Now to debunk copying and pasting library code. Take a look at this blog. https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/112021
If you think just using some library code is competitive programming that takes 10 minutes to solve and mapping to some well known algorithm you most likely have never done it to any serious extent. In that case, provide more informed opinions then saying it is the same as leetcode.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#126While I participated in the Google Code Jam, my favourite was Hash Code - the team programming competition. The problems were more open ended and being able to work with a team was really great fun. Also, much more resembling a real-world practical scenario.
Sad to hear that Google is closing them down, really feels like an end of an era.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends what you’re hiring for. Firstly the interview should be structured with an aim to maximize correlation between success on the interview and success on the job. If you’re not thinking along these lines you aren’t even playing the game. For most startups, the right criteria to screen for is pace and quality of code, plus work ethic. You can ask a relatively easy coding problem, whether it be algorithmic/data st…
Recently read a blog post of Erik Bernhardsson on the interviewing process(he has several other interesting posts that approaches hiring as a machine learning problem). https://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-pred... He suggested asking many short questions instead of doing long leetcode problem(as the solution often relies on one single insight, it gives you very little information relative to the wo…
Yeah, asking questions with multiple stages/progression, where the early stages are obvious but still provide signal through coding competency are good.
Similarly, many small questions is going to give you a more accurate view than a single hard algorithm problem. There tends to be a trick or specific process to solve leetcode style problems, thus sessions are more black/white on whether the person makes that observation. Very unnatural to usual dev work.
Interviews should never feel “hard” even if your threshold for success is high. There’s nothing that requires you to ask hard questions to get good candidates.
By definition if your problems are perceived as “hard” then they aren’t assessing people on relevant skills, because a problem that is correlated with real world work shouldn’t be hard for anybody who is coding all day/every day.
(Though somebody who is unskilled may find pretty much any problem hard, speaking more broadly here)
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends what you’re hiring for. Firstly the interview should be structured with an aim to maximize correlation between success on the interview and success on the job. If you’re not thinking along these lines you aren’t even playing the game. For most startups, the right criteria to screen for is pace and quality of code, plus work ethic. You can ask a relatively easy coding problem, whether it be algorithmic/data st…
Can you elaborate on the distinction between coding competency and leetcoding? I agree with you that leetcode is terrible but I don’t quite follow how your suggestion is very different in practice.
Coding competency:
- Can they code quickly?
- Do they know common APIs offhand? (Not have to look up)
- Do they write code in a readable fashion?
- Do they consider tests?
- Do they think more deeply about code structure? Immutability, single source of truth, DRY, not overengineering
You can understand all of this by asking a very easy problem that is written in 50-100 LOC. I tend to ask them to implement a certain data structure, where the naive solution is obvious, but still requires ~50 LOC. Then there’s a better runtime solution so I can assess theory as well, but I dont judge primarily on that, or care too much if they figure it out.
You may be surprised how much signal you can get out of asking somebody to implement a class with a few APIs and basic loops/data structures.
The simple fact that people who don’t train specifically for leetcode, don’t do well at it is effectively proof that it’s weakly correlated with real world work results. Otherwise people who are effective in the real world would automatically do well with leetcode. Speaking more to the harder problems though, the easier problems are much more correlated
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, and I’ve competed at the highest level in programming competitions. Most of my peers there would not be good hires. Top level programming competitions are like top level spelling bees. You need to have as many algorithms memorized as possible in code . That’s right. You need to be able to recite code by memory to pump out algorithm functions as quickly as possible since libs aren’t allowed generally. This is…
So you've competed at the highest level of programming competitions, but you also seem to be doing work on Upwork [1]? That seems pretty unusual... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34935440#34935783
…yes? Lol. I’ve moonlighted on upwork for easy cash in the past. Not all of us made 200k/year in our first job out of college a decade and a half ago.
Yes, I was part of a USA team in an international competition. I won our region.
For what it’s worth, competitive programming isn’t like sports. The playing field isn’t that good, and the amount of work it takes to make it past regionals and to an international competition is waaaay less than any sport or even something like chess I suspect.
Re: Goodbye to Google Code Jam
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you've competed at the highest level of programming competitions, but you also seem to be doing work on Upwork [1]? That seems pretty unusual... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34935440#34935783
I do not know the OP and I cannot prove or disprove any claims they make about their life, but I can indirectly attest to the following: I was competing around 2008-2010 at the regional level of the ICPC in Central Europe and indeed, our team's approach at the time had some memorization aspects as well. (Our university had a significant amount of support for the competitions, with some coaching as well as a course th…
Central Europe and Russia take competitive programming far more seriously than the U.S., from what my professors told me. It took very little effort to take first in a university wide competition and join the team that represented the school and went on to win the region. I suspect most Central European teams would sweep the USA.