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I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

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Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#461

Post by diminoten »

BryantD wrote: post #220
diminoten wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably per-team, someone on here mentioned that's how Google works at least. Someone I know did an AWS interview round during business school, and they do this thing called "bar raising" (IIRC) that involves one of the interviewers literally doing something unpleasant to see how you react (e.g. picking their teeth in the camera, cutting you off when you speak). Very odd.

That is not what bar raising is intended to be. There's always a bar raiser in an Amazon interview loop who is not affiliated with the hiring team. They ask the same kinds of questions as the rest of the interviewers in the same way, but they're not influenced by how much the team needs to make the hire, which in theory prevents the team from lowering the bar just to get a warm body in. I'm not saying your friend did…

It was a generally accepted practice based on talking to the folks who interviewed with Amazon during my wife's time at Kellogg that one interview would be conducted by someone (an interviewer who had done 100+ interviews) who would be unpleasant in some way.

I'm guessing the way Amazon interview for business roles is somehow different than how they interview for specific team positions. As I understand it, MBA hires aren't filling specific gaps on teams, since the hiring process is so long and involves an internship. There wouldn't be a "team" to lower the bar for, in other words.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#462

Post by diminoten »

School-Cotton wrote: post #222
diminoten wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably per-team, someone on here mentioned that's how Google works at least. Someone I know did an AWS interview round during business school, and they do this thing called "bar raising" (IIRC) that involves one of the interviewers literally doing something unpleasant to see how you react (e.g. picking their teeth in the camera, cutting you off when you speak). Very odd.

I have worked at Amazon, and can categorically say that this description of their interview process is false.

Like false as in I made it up or false as in it's not your experience?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#463

Post by diminoten »

scottLobster wrote: post #419
diminoten wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally no way to not ask that snarkily. Don't do it. Also, it reeks of "justice driven opinion having" which is scary beyond reason for an employer, e.g. "They didn't ask for this feature the right way so I'm not going to deliver it/deliver it in a way that makes them unhappy."

I know it's the internet, but you seem to projecting a certain tone onto my statements that wouldn't be there. I don't know where you got "justice driven opinion having" from, it's mission-driven opinion having. They need to know I can code my way out of a shoe-box, and in return I need to know they can lead a team of engineers through a Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit. Someone who gets defensive about an honest, neutral-ton…

But that's not what you're accomplishing by asking that question, you're taking a moral position beyond your role on a topic you're not an expert in. What you're demonstrating is your lack of perspective and a hubris that can poison a team, turning it into a snake put where people "neutrally" question every decision.

The mere fact that you think you can neutrally ask a question like that is a red flag.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#464

Post by diminoten »

sbov wrote: post #207
diminoten wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally no way to not ask that snarkily. Don't do it. Also, it reeks of "justice driven opinion having" which is scary beyond reason for an employer, e.g. "They didn't ask for this feature the right way so I'm not going to deliver it/deliver it in a way that makes them unhappy."

There's plenty of ways to do it non-snarkily. Interviews go both ways. If you have a problem simply saying something like "nah, these are just screening problems, it's hard to come up with good ones" then it sounds like there's deeper problems here. Like, the company having issues recognizing even obvious flaws in its own processes.

You will be looking for jobs forever if you read that much into every interaction, and possibly for good reason.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#465

Post by hjk05 »

blub wrote: post #400
hjk05 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's utterly insane the expectations that interviewers have. Not really though. They always manage to fill the position. Interview’s see the system as unfair because they think their interview happens in a vacuum. You get x questions answer all correctly and your awarded with a job. So naturally you complain when you feel half the questions are too advanced or that more brain understanding is enough. In reality the…

> In reality the interviews are just a sorting, and when everyone can answer the relevant questions you start asking harder ones because “we picked a candidate at random from those who got the questions right” is just not a satisfying endstate. That's just silly. If they can answer the relevant questions, they're qualified period.

If you are filling one position, it doesn’t matter if 20 people technically qualify, you hire one.

Imagine a single resturant forced to hire 200 chefs because each of them managed to live up to the minimum qualifying criteria for the position...

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#466

Post by scottLobster »

diminoten wrote: post #463
scottLobster wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's the internet, but you seem to projecting a certain tone onto my statements that wouldn't be there. I don't know where you got "justice driven opinion having" from, it's mission-driven opinion having. They need to know I can code my way out of a shoe-box, and in return I need to know they can lead a team of engineers through a Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit. Someone who gets defensive about an honest, neutral-ton…

But that's not what you're accomplishing by asking that question, you're taking a moral position beyond your role on a topic you're not an expert in. What you're demonstrating is your lack of perspective and a hubris that can poison a team, turning it into a snake put where people "neutrally" question every decision. The mere fact that you think you can neutrally ask a question like that is a red flag.

Or I'm just politely asking for confirmation of what I'm interviewing for, as I'm participating in said interview. You sound like that proverbial manager who refused to hire someone because at the lunch interview the candidate put salt on his fries before trying them, and the hiring manager extrapolated that to mean he doesn't properly analyze situations before acting.

As for "role" and "expert", you seem to think that in an interview my job is to be subordinate. Quite the contrary, at present I'm not unemployed and my bills are paid. I'm looking for an upgrade, not a necessity. So in an interview I'm still deciding if the company is worthy of my subordination/my making them more money. I may not be leadership, but I can pick which leader to support. Leaders who are oversensitive to basic, polite questioning during a job interview clearly don't want/need help that badly.

Now once a subordinate, obviously there are times/places for questions and times/places when they are not helpful. But if you consider questioning decisions in general "poison" for your team, and you fear your team turning into a "snake pit" if someone starts asking questions, then that points to a severe lack of trust and/or poor communication between you and your subordinates. Either of which would turn me away even if you offered to double my salary.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#467

Post by blub »

coleifer wrote: post #289
jpeterson wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 90%+ of the hiring signal can be projected onto "hours spent on leetcode" is exactly why this process has become a parody of itself.

Who cares. It might as well be experimental theatre for all I care. If I want the job, I'll put in the effort. It's that simple.

Using your simple logic, the company could ask you to walk on all fours and eat grass and you'd put in the effort, if you want the job.

We're irritated with the current interview practices, because the gauntlet that many of us have to run is not only wasteful, but it's also harming the profession. If one has to jump through the same old hoops their entire professional life only to be thrown out at 40, what's the point of building a career in software engineering?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#468

Post by blub »

_pgmf wrote: post #286
scarface74 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don’t think I would want to work for a company full of people hired via that process. I’ve met too many smart people(tm) who spend more time arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of pin than they spend figuring out how they can ship software faster/better/profitably.

I don't understand why you feel it's necessary to share your personal justifications (rationalizations), other than you're trying to normalize your own mediocrity. Which, by definition, already is normal.

Call it caring about ones profession and having a just hiring culture if you must.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#469

Post by School-Cotton »

diminoten wrote: post #462
School-Cotton wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked at Amazon, and can categorically say that this description of their interview process is false.

Like false as in I made it up or false as in it's not your experience?

False as in not true. Amazon does not have a policy of interviewers intentionally making candidates uncomfortable.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#470

Post by kragen »

geebee wrote: post #367
pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Wow. That's a hell of a loop. That said, this does seem like another reiteration of the "senior engineer couldn't write fizz buzz" story, though this particular example is amusing. I can write fizz buzz. Hell, I've interviewed enough that I can print all permutations of a string (or all permutations of a set and/or subsets of that set). I used to be able to implement merge sort in 45 minutes at the whiteboard, but I…

The original story here wasn't about code written in an interview, but code written on the job by someone who wouldn't have been hired if they'd had to write code in the interview.

But, 45 minutes for mergesort? I mean, it's not fizzbuzz, but this took me seven minutes, and it passed the test on the first run (well, not counting the test runs that verified the test was invoking an empty function and correctly reporting that None wasn't the correctly sorted list). Does it have some kind of subtle bug I'm missing?

    def mergesort(items):
        return (items if len(items)
If I were doing it on a whiteboard I'd probably want to use something like http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/paperalgo rather than Python, but I can't imagine it would take 45 minutes. Do you mean in assembly language or something? In minimal space (none of the logarithmic number of copies required by this version)?

I agree that these are not very basic coding skills, but they are kind of basic coding skills, I think? Like, it's covered in the first part of an undergraduate CS curriculum, isn't it?

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