A Big Misconception About Coding Interviews (Jr. Developer)

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There is this big misconception that if you want to get a job in tech you need to learn the ins and outs of data structures and algorithms before you're even ready to start interviewing. In this video, I explain why this isn't the case for the majority of software developers.
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Footage was shot on a Canon EOS m50 & DJI Mavic Air.

[Souljacker]

I've been a dev for 20 years, never needed those, not even for interviews

[Perfidion]

So... Google devs, how often during the course of your day do you invert binary trees?

[therustguy]

The reason most companies ask DS like leetcode/hackerrank questions is to test your problem solving skills. Most times you don't even have to get the questions right but your approach to solving it is what counts. Except for most unforgiving big tech companies like Google and Co. Well for me i don't want to work for Google... Loool

[RomanTchekashov]

Well maybe it depends on your location. One of my friends spent about 6th month to get a job in California. All the companies not just FAANG asked CS! He solved about 600 problems in LeetCode and eventually get a job as a backend dev in one of the startups there. I suppose only frontend devs could pay less attention to CS but others have to. Especially if you want to move there from abroad.

[hunggamerofficial]

One of the most questions i got out of CEOs from tech companies in my interviews is
"What makes you stand out to other candidates"????
I don't know how to answer this question, really, because i don't see this question is realistic.
Not to mention, if you do stand out, there's a chance that you won't fit in with the "Cubicle culture" or whatever culture that the companies want you to follow.
On the outside, the CEOs of these companies always say "You have to be different", but on the inside, they expect you to just stand in line and do what everybody else does.
Therefore, i really don't get the point of the "what makes you stand out" question

[cass_]

Thank you for making this. I feel like I've been on edge with so much anxiety lately and need to remind myself that it's not all DS&A. I've been wanting to apply for internships and don't care for big tech/faang companies at all. This makes me feel better about applying now.

[FahmiEshaq]

I once asked an interviewer from a large Canadian firm why do you even ask mind-puzzling algorithmic, data structure, academic CS questions during an interview. It does not reflect the interviewee's ability of programming real-world applications; acing these CS academic interview questions doesn't mean the person can do the job. He replied (paraphrased it) "Correct! You are right but asking these data structure questions are the only way of us to know whether the candidate can program and think like a programmer. Candidate's experience is a big plus, reviewing their portfolio code is ok but we can't easily trust it. Everyone can claim and talk. A candidate could've gotten it from the net. Who knows? We need to confirm candidate's programming skills but we don't have the luxury of time to offer candidates temporary projects for proofs so we choose the route of asking hands-on fundamental data structures/algorithmic questions to have confidence of candidate's ability to solve problems programmatically."

[SirXtC]

thank God they did not ask me any algo or data structure questions on my first job, they made me do a live chat as homework and I had to present it in about 3 days. which got me the job. but they never asked me about algos and such. been there for about 2 months already and its going really well.

[sannge]

everyone knows its a big misconceptions, but interviews are constructed that way. So, there you go.

[debra-kayeelliott]

Thanks for this video. As a self-learning developer using various resources to teach myself and looking at all the info out there between senior devs / people who have been in the tech industry 5 - 10+ years, it sometimes seems hopeless to get a job if you don't know / can't burst your brain with Data Structures & Algorithms.

[aggin_amurai]

Richard Monson-Haefel - coder, lead, architecht for more than 25 years, author of several books - he describes the struggle of finding a job cause of hard data-struct/algos questions on interviews.

[kirill]

Don't forget that he is a mobile dev.

For a backend development you do need a bit more understanding of algorithm efficiency (big O) and some common programming patterns and core principles (clean architecture, SOLID)

[pavitkailay]

Well said buddy!! Shedding light to both sides of the coin without taking a bias.

[qwarlockz]

This is actually great to hear. I came into programming late. So I always have that ... eep I dont know that! feeling. I have actually been in the industry forever. But in between gigs I am always feeling like I have to smack leet code. I have never actually had a leet codey interview question. I still want to get better at those. But really when I do them... I always feel like these questions make you really good at answering... these questions.. they never feel like they are going to be really helpful in actually coding. Great vid!

[bessermt]

4:18 You meant to add... from memory without looking up anything while being watched and judged by someone you never met with little sleep who often doesn't know the answer to the question themselves even though they got to see the question days ahead of time.

[Vos_Ceez]

Lots of devs, especially juniors will appreciate this. I recently conducted an interview for senior SE that was very casual and more conversational given that my résumé had good experience and was marketable. Not a single algo or data structure question but more about who I am and what I want for my career and the position.

[MOhan-urei]

Most of my time got fade away in simply thinking what to choose - leetcode or coding

[tedbendixson]

It's actually kind of hilarious because I have been doing quite a lot of lower level programming for this video game I've been making. I wrote a game engine from scratch and still didn't need to do anything with binary trees, linked lists, or any of the common sort of interview fare.

Over the last 20 years, hardware architecture has changed such that the chief bottleneck usually isn't the CPU's ability to execute instructions. It's memory access, in particular memory that is far away from the CPU.

That means you can usually achieve better performance by intentionally controlling the layout of your application's memory, making certain frequently accessed pieces of data close to one another in memory so they stay in the CPU's various levels of cache.

And can you guess which data structure is usually the most efficient at keeping stuff hot in the cache? Plain old boring arrays.

Obviously an N^2 algorithm is still going to be N^2, and data structures definitely have their place for specific kinds of problems. But there are a lot of games and game engines you can build that don't need to use those kinds of algorithms or data structures at all.

I have a game that runs at 60 FPS, and it doesn't use graphs or nodes or trees or anything. It's just a boring old array full of game entities. The CPU can whip through that array so quickly that it's actually less efficient to to use a more advanced data structure to represent game state because it might mean the CPU needs to access memory in some faraway location.

It takes ~3 cycles to access data in L1 Cache. The same data, accessed from main memory, takes ~ 300 cycles. Controlling the memory layout and packing data close together can get you a 100X boost.

I'm guessing few people at the FAANG companies want to talk about this because it's not amenable to the traditional high school / college test-taking hegemony. Heaven forbid we just talk to people about what they're doing and what they're interested in and not grill them on abstract questions they didn't study for because it didn't apply to the thing they're making.

FAANG companies have their place for people who don't mind following orders and are okay spending their time studying up on abstract ideas. But I have to think they lose quite a few creative people who would prefer to spend their time building cool things and learning by making.

[chinomsojohnson]

Another way to avoid this kind of interviews is to focus on platforms no one is interested in. Salesforce developers at even FAANG companies do not get DSA interviews.

[fennecinspace]

I don't even interview for jobs that have in desc : "requires extensive knowledge in data structures and algos" .. i have a CS degree and i studied that shit. But any job that requires them to pass the interview is a job that you don't want ... data structures don't build software, and inverting binary tree can be copied and pasted from anywhere online. good devs aren't represented by knowledge over DS, better devs are all about code design, project structure, teamwork, speed vs quality ..etc