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It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

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Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#81

Post by esco27 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #71
ionwake wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with you seanhunter ( and everyone else mostly) so please dont take offence I could be wrong but the following is my opinion. I am thankful most companies are gatekept by people who think like you as I feel it gives me and my company an advantage. In the UK over the course of nearly 20 years I was asked by random interviews to do "fizzbuzz" which I always refused to do out of principle. The prob…

Many people fail fizzbuzz. Most interview questions at big tech are not much harder than fizzbuzz. You are not qualified to be a software engineer if you can't write fizzbuzz after seeing it for the first time in your life.

FizzBuzz trips people up for all kinds of reasons: fear of ‘gotcha’ questions, nerves, overthinking, or even feeling insulted by how basic it is. Sure, some fail because they can’t program—but passing doesn’t mean much either. It just means they’re good at FizzBuzz, not necessarily at solving real problems.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#82

Post by mettamage »

maeln wrote: post #35

Honestly, if you are Google, Meta, Netflix, etc, and/or pay largely above the market rate, fine, go for it. What I don't get is when start-up, who struggle to recruit, do the same. I have been on both side of the recruitment process. I wrote some technical tests. The thing is, it is very hard to evaluate someone level with synthetic test, and leetcode, a.k.a hope-you-know-the-right-algo-for-this-question, type of tes…

What do you mean by good communication? I feel different fields mean different things with it. E.g. in the consulting world you need to be able to deal with people their emotions. In software engineering, I don't think I ever really experienced this. However, I did experience it as a teacher [1, 2].

With software engineering I feel it's related to HN culture. Of course not everything, but a lot of it. Some things I can think of that software engineers would consider good communication is: (1) steelmanning arguments, (2) clear/logical communication and (3) concise, not long-winded. But often times, I don't hear/see anything about: (1) dealing with emotions or (2) the ability to reduce tension by being playful for example.

How do you see this?

[1] e.g. a student picking the wrong course and being utterly dejected and making the class toxic but it's not really her fault because the way this course was promoted was a bit too optimistic in its marketing.

[2] A student thinking that they're not good enough and they start crying on the spot.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#83

Post by esco27 »

paxys wrote: post #78
zeroCalories wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people fail fizzbuzz. Most interview questions at big tech are not much harder than fizzbuzz. You are not qualified to be a software engineer if you can't write fizzbuzz after seeing it for the first time in your life.

"Many people" is an understatement. In my experience 70%+ of applicants fail basic fizzbuzz or reverse a string level questions. If you think these questions are beneath you, good, you've just made my job easier as an interviewer.

No, you’ve just optimized for a lazy metric. You’re filtering for people who can handle trivia under pressure, not necessarily good engineers.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#84

Post by uberman »

11101010001100 wrote: post #44
remram wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tweet is about "grinding", eg the time-consuming prep work before interviews. I think.

I'm a prof. I grind when I prepare a lecture. It's part of the job.

Grind? Really? I work in higher ed and I teach. Prepping even a new course is not grinding. Teaching a course where you are professor of record is certainly not grinding unless you dont know the topic at all. If that is the case though you should not be lecturing for this class.

The only legit excuse for grinding here is if you did not do any prep.

Doing your job even with a 4/4 load is not grinding.

Research proposals and research projects might require grinding. Prepping lectures no way.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#85

Post by mettamage »

m_rpn wrote: post #46
imbusy111 wrote: post #20

Just to give some balance here, I'll state a seemingly unpopular opinion. Personally, I have not had issues doing complex coding questions in interviews, or at work. And it becomes clear pretty quickly on the job, when your co-worker has weak computer science fundamentals. Reasoning from first principles is a very powerful technique.

The issue for me is that even if you have strong computer science fundamentals and lots of experience most of the time you won't be able to come up with an advanced optimized algorithm (that took years of research) on the spot, which is what is often required in these kind of interviews. Even if you manage the average kid that grinded leetcode for years will appear a better candidate than you, maybe he really is, but…

To be fair, while grinding shows opportunity of having enough time. It also shows determination and grit. I have determination and grit in other areas of life, but when it comes to leetcoding, I find it hard to have it.

I find it much more easily to have grit when it comes to dating/romance. I already feel it, it's a few orders of magnitude higher, at least on an emotional level that is. The strong motivator there is the rebellious belief/thought of "I won't be ignored! I deserve love too!" (I think everyone does). It's a trauma (little t) response. I'm married nowadays because of that drive, I'm currently reading the 7 Principles To Make Marriage Work.

But leetcode? In a good week, I do like 5 problems.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#86

Post by marcosdumay »

paxys wrote: post #70
marcosdumay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's possibly some worldview mismatch on your comment, because leetcode isn't "basic scales" programming for any specialty. It's much closer to expect your world famous violin player to sing on the stage than it is to expect them to play scales on the violin. But then, maybe not. Some people call all kinds of random exercises by "leetcode". The author may be one of those, I don't know if anybody can know this.

Basic data structures and algorithms knowledge is a base skill that will translate to better success in any software job. Yes you may not be coding graphs in your day job (although you might - I have personally done it before), but someone who can grasp stuff like BFS vs DFS and Dijkstra's algorithm will absolutely be better at the job than someone who comes in and says "idk who cares, I'll just use a library".

> BFS vs DFS

Yet, on the real world the answer is always one of "either" or "neither".

Anyway, most leetcode aren't of the type of "a widely applicable algorithm solves this". People only know the algorithms that apply to them because they studied those problems specifically.

And notice that one of the algorithms on your post is named after a researcher from the 80s. That's some 40 years after computer science became a thing. That's how long it took the entire humanity for learning it without anybody specifically telling it to them.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#87

Post by mettamage »

billy99k wrote: post #2

LeetCode and similar tests are why I got out of software development as a career. I was tired of jumping through hoops on interviews.

> Which career path did you choose instead?

Thirding this (sandeep1998 and sidpatil were before me)

I became a data analyst recently by the way. They say the field is oversaturated, but I don't think this is true if you're coming from a solid software engineering background.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#88

Post by paxys »

esco27 wrote: post #83
paxys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people" is an understatement. In my experience 70%+ of applicants fail basic fizzbuzz or reverse a string level questions. If you think these questions are beneath you, good, you've just made my job easier as an interviewer.

No, you’ve just optimized for a lazy metric. You’re filtering for people who can handle trivia under pressure, not necessarily good engineers.

If you are applying for a job in the front office of an NBA franchise, and I ask you "which team did Michael Jordan play for?", answering with "this is a useless trivia question, it is beneath me, I can easily google it, how does it matter?" will mean you are not going any further in the interview. You can then complain about it online all you want, but that's how it is.

Similarly, if I ask you "write a program in your language of choice that prints all even numbers from 1 to 100", you can either cry about it or take the 3 minutes and actually do it. If you can't, it's a pretty clear signal that you don't actually write code in your day job and aren't suited for this one.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#89

Post by toastercat »

instig007 wrote: post #65

> I have written more code than most people If by most people you mean non-programmers, then maybe. Otherwise it sounds like a whining of a B-player who just realized they've never had skills sufficient for NFL. The fact of the matter is the better you're in understanding CS and the underlying mathematical domains, the easier the leetcode questions get, it always has been and always will be. And contrary to most beli…

> But most people just prefer spending their time on infortainment and being presumptious on Twitter, than actually learning stuff.

Yeah that or wasting their time working on open-source or side projects, which typically has a poor return on investment. One of the biggest things I learned after years of trying to work in open-source is that it is not worth it (financially). The employers who pay the best salaries do not care unless the project you work on is very closely related. Even then, you are way, way better off grinding Leetcode instead.

Re: It is humiliating to have to do LeetCode grinding for

#90

Post by yobbo »

The poster sees it like Hans Zimmer (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls066405124/) being asked to play scales on a piano as an audition for writing a movie score, and then being rejected for some mistake. Indeed, that would be humiliating.

In reality, it is more like a football penalty shootout after a match has ended in a draw. There are too many (over?) qualified candidates, and coding interviews are more fair than choosing randomly.

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