Coding interviews have gotten Harder

#neetcode #leetcode #python

[LumberPanda]

My team has a few leet-code-easy-esque on our standard interview. It's rare that they get them wrong, because realistically they've seen them before, but rather than make them harder we've gone to asking the candidates describe it out loud instead of using a whiteboard (if they're able to speak).

In the end we're not hiring someone for how good they are at leetcode. If they run into a new problem or algorithm they can google it, YouTube it, GPT it nowadays too, etc. Being able to communicate a programming idea without writing out something line by line seems to be a less common skill and a bigger indicator of success.

[EvilTim]

Honestly I think it's a red flag about a company if I just get hard leetcode questions as a test of my skill.

[schan]

I think if the question is hard, the interviewer should allocate at least 40 minutes for it, not 20 or 25 minutes. I once had a hiring manager who gave me less than 20 minutes for a leetcode hard. I knew he was not interested in hiring me after going through the resume and just gave me a question and not really interested if I solved it or not.

[wforbes]

The last interviews I conducted were just trivia questions, 5 questions per part of our stack. If they got a trivia question right we continued the conversation on that topic and I asked harder and harder questions up to what the job really required, or until we reached the limit of the candidate's knowledge. No trick questions or anything, totally safe to say they didn't know but follow it up with explaining how they would look up or learn that topic. I emailed all the first questions out to the candidates 1-2 days before so they'd see what it'd involve. Probably wouldn't work for all dev jobs or companies, but so far its worked out really well for the fullstack stuff my group does.

[playea]

For the vast majority of jobs, being able to answer easy leet code questions, having a good grasp of the subfield/ relevant tech stack and having some side projects that showcase time investment should be all that is needed.

[maxmudc]

I add tweaks and ambiguities to easy/medium questions and observe if a candidate can explain his thinking process clearly and logically and catch corner cases which often lead to bugs in production

[TehCourier]

I realised that in my 2nd month in, when my senior distinguished engineer had no idea what leetcode was and he said he just had to make a simple button on JavaScript back then.

[roadMapLearner]

Yes I really appreciate that u brought this out. I bought the book and i was baffled that the concepts were really so simple and ditched the book completely. That book alone wouldnt help me to work with leetcode style problems

[baetz]

It's straight to the point, explains both why there are hard interview questions and why it makes no sense. I like approach in Meta where they give you 2 easier problems rather then 1 hard so that you give them more material to rate you on their 4 scales

[amdbest]

You are absolutely right, well tbh most interviews ask easy to medium leetcode questions, but sometimes interviewers surprise me with hard sht, im pretty sure hard leetcode poblems are not designed for interviews, these kinda questions you need to analyze and think of them and then come with a solution, after yhat you relize there is even a better solution.

[VirendraBG]

I allow candidates to use Google during interview. Still they fail to answer properly. Even to basic questions. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️
I found really difficult to find Laravel full stack developer. 🤐

[sukapow]

Seems very silly to suffered a lot of leetcode problems just to get a job. "Oh you gotta suffered like me to get a living able wage job". Some people don't get enough time for this. You get young kids grind leetcode problems as well lol

It's a endless sad loop from my prospective.

But you forgot back in the early 2000s, getting a decent laptop/computer used to cost a lot of money. Laptop used to be thick as h3ll lol

[goldenducky]

What you said is very true, unfortunately most large tech companies are blinded by this dogma.

[Shagidelic]

Its just like chess. It all comes down to who can remember the most patterns and then recognise the place to use them (btw Go is far better game than chess).
No company needs there devs to resolve any unprecedented issue with clever algorithms excpt may be hardcore scientists like nuclear, microbiology, or space.

[ssamani]

Leetcode interviews are such a red flag imo. They don’t account for thought process, potential for growth, ability to collaborate with others nor acumen for mentorship. I’ve seen so many mediocre programmers get hired because they’re able to regurgitate a canned response to a leetcode problem. It also causes these programmers to have a big head that “I can solve this obscure problem that will have zero real world applications” they seem to think they’re better than everyone when they really can’t engineer their way out of a paper bag.

[duskclopse]

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing for the FAANGs of the world to make their interviewing process difficult to hire the best out of the best candidates.

I do think however the influence of FAANG style interviews proliferating into the entire industry as a whole as the golden standard is a problem that companies need to correct.

[frstchan]

Companies shouldn't require knowledge that they are not using in their company. If the job is to build a Web API you shouldn't need to know complex algorithms....

[helker]

system design questions >>>> DSA questions

[watchagain]

Not all companies are comfortable with a code that no one is the team are sure about underlying it. e.g. How might fail or create bugs in future, it is important that they can understand it, if it is too advanced they don't like it.

[PROdotes]

The difficulty of the problem is irrelevant, tho... The point is to see how you're problem solving and how you work in general... You can solve the problem and not get hired, or not solve it and get hired...