91–100 of 133 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that might be a bit narrow. It's humiliating not because you need to bear your ignorance in front of a judgemental audience. (although that part certainly is not comfortable) It's humiliating because the leetcode is not actually representative of anything you'll need to know to do the job. It's an exercise which selections for who can jump through the most hoops, and doesn't really select for the actual job s…
That depends entirely on the problem they ask you to solve. All the technical interviews I've done have been completely reasonable basic programming tasks. Yet I always get really good feedback, did one a few weeks ago where the interviewer said it was the best technical interview he'd had in years. I felt like it could have gone better, and like I could have done just as well years ago when I was fresh out of univer…
This isn't necessarily meant as a complaint, but this is yet another way in which leet code may not really fit the job that's being performed; the company is attempting to get as much work done as possible and for whatever reason is not very incentivized to ensure that the work is done to a high standard. In other words, the super complex leet code sorts of techniques will just never in practice be utilized.
Now to your point, whether or not you find yourself in this situation is going to depend on your job and your company.
If you think something you have to do in an interview is “humiliating” when all they’re asking you to do is demonstrate some skill on a whiteboard you have some self-reflection to do. I don’t personally think leetcode is that great for interviews but candidates who act like it’s above them to figure out problems etc have a serious problem. In other fields this is not only completely normal but absolutely something pe…
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…
If you think something you have to do in an interview is “humiliating” when all they’re asking you to do is demonstrate some skill on a whiteboard you have some self-reflection to do. I don’t personally think leetcode is that great for interviews but candidates who act like it’s above them to figure out problems etc have a serious problem. In other fields this is not only completely normal but absolutely something pe…
Agree with everything but I don't know think James Maynard was actually being interviewed during that video.
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…
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".
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.
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.
If you think something you have to do in an interview is “humiliating” when all they’re asking you to do is demonstrate some skill on a whiteboard you have some self-reflection to do. I don’t personally think leetcode is that great for interviews but candidates who act like it’s above them to figure out problems etc have a serious problem. In other fields this is not only completely normal but absolutely something pe…
I like leetcode, and I think the practice is defensible. To be fair, I've made a lot of mental loops to get there. However, I'm also sympathetic to the "leetcode is useless because you don't do it in your day to day" camp. I used to lean more towards my mental loop side. But nowadays there has been a big question due to a recent job interview I did. I recently applied to become a data analyst at a F500 company. It se…
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.