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I hate to say it, but I got no discernible advantage from my non-trivial coding projects during my last job search. My time would have been far better spent jus

I hate to say it, but I got no discernible advantage from my non-trivial coding projects during my last job search. My time would have been far better spent just grinding leetcode, from a purely economic perspective. I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun, but I probably would have gotten more offers.

returningfory 7y ago
100% percent my experience too. In the last 3 months I've been on-site at 3 of the FAANG companies. Not a single interviewer brought up the large personal projects I've done and which are given decent space on my resume; my weeks of leetcoding was definitely far far far more beneficial for getting a job.
- shitoujizu 7y ago
  sometimes feels very sad about this since one's value should be reflected by the awesome projects he has done. I think it's just laziness of the FAANG companies. If the interviewer is well prepared and keeps digging the resume, then he should know the candidate is good or not. But by leetcoding, it's simpler for them, just keep asking the repeated questions.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    they look at your resume in any seriousness after you pass leetcode rounds,
  - glouwbug 7y ago
    From my personal experience, a company wants a "yes man", someone who will do as they command. From their perspective, if you can't pass (or refuse!) the coding challenge, you're already in the red flag zone. That's just how it is. The funny thing is that a single fairly large personal project will develop your engineering skills 42 times that of the hundred something leetcode problems you solved for your FAANG interviews. One teaches deep long term critical thinking. The other short term critical thinking. You won't see any small short sighted systems out in the real world.
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    I understand why FAANG does it. The problem is that other companies are just cargo culting.
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    I think that if your hobby projects will be important for many people: i.e. you develop something with the importance npm, or Ruby on Rails, or Vue.js, FAANG companies will make you offers without asking you leetcode kind of questions.
    - cheese4242 7y ago
      I read that the guy who invented Homebrew still had to go through the leetcode interview at Google (which they failed) so I'm not sure if they ever waive the interview requirements?
      - DeathArrow 7y ago
        Somehow I don't imagine Ken Thompson willing to answer leetcode questions. If anything, he should be the one doing the asking.
    - shitoujizu 7y ago
      This is not true. Not so many people can set up popular and awesome projects like npm or vue.js. These are top level programers. But for other people you can not say they are not good enough to be qualified.

returningfory 7y ago

100% percent my experience too. In the last 3 months I've been on-site at 3 of the FAANG companies. Not a single interviewer brought up the large personal projects I've done and which are given decent space on my resume; my weeks of leetcoding was definitely far far far more beneficial for getting a job.

shitoujizu 7y ago
sometimes feels very sad about this since one's value should be reflected by the awesome projects he has done. I think it's just laziness of the FAANG companies. If the interviewer is well prepared and keeps digging the resume, then he should know the candidate is good or not. But by leetcoding, it's simpler for them, just keep asking the repeated questions.
- dominotw 7y ago
  they look at your resume in any seriousness after you pass leetcode rounds,
- glouwbug 7y ago
  From my personal experience, a company wants a "yes man", someone who will do as they command. From their perspective, if you can't pass (or refuse!) the coding challenge, you're already in the red flag zone. That's just how it is. The funny thing is that a single fairly large personal project will develop your engineering skills 42 times that of the hundred something leetcode problems you solved for your FAANG interviews. One teaches deep long term critical thinking. The other short term critical thinking. You won't see any small short sighted systems out in the real world.
- arvinsim 7y ago
  I understand why FAANG does it. The problem is that other companies are just cargo culting.
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  I think that if your hobby projects will be important for many people: i.e. you develop something with the importance npm, or Ruby on Rails, or Vue.js, FAANG companies will make you offers without asking you leetcode kind of questions.
  - cheese4242 7y ago
    I read that the guy who invented Homebrew still had to go through the leetcode interview at Google (which they failed) so I'm not sure if they ever waive the interview requirements?
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      Somehow I don't imagine Ken Thompson willing to answer leetcode questions. If anything, he should be the one doing the asking.
  - shitoujizu 7y ago
    This is not true. Not so many people can set up popular and awesome projects like npm or vue.js. These are top level programers. But for other people you can not say they are not good enough to be qualified.