3 ms·

I agree that take home projects and pair programming are nowhere near ideal, but I think the advantage you mention for the "leetcode" white boarding is one of t

I agree that take home projects and pair programming are nowhere near ideal, but I think the advantage you mention for the "leetcode" white boarding is one of the main disadvantages. If all you need to do is study these and memorize their solutions then what is it showing us of your actual ability. I personally when I interview candidates prefer to get to know them and how they think before I even try to understand their ability to problem solve. Knowing the language or algorithms are all easy to learn things. Knowing how to naturally be curious and solve problems is a far more difficult skill to learn and demonstrate, but it is easy to evaluate indirectly.

marcinzm 6y ago
>Knowing how to naturally be curious and solve problems is a far more difficult skill to learn and demonstrate, but it is easy to evaluate indirectly. That's what leetcode used to test and then people optimized for it and now it tests memorization. At scale things work differently than in isolated cases. I've also found that most problem solving interviews really test how well I've seen the problem before and how well I can lie about seeing it before. Interview enough candidates and the good problem solvers will look dumb compared to the ones who simply saw it before and can act like they didn't.