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Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assig

Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders. I am ashamed to admit that I too, am one, and probably will continue to be one until I make it into such an "endgame" company.

mav3rick 6y ago
What's your endgame ?
- chii 6y ago
  To me, the "best" endgame is to obtain enough saved capital to found your own (small?) business to which you can generate and capture value directly.
  - throwaway_goog 6y ago
    I did that and found that I hated it. There's a lot of bullshit that you have to deal with in a small business: incorporation papers, taxes, staying away from the zillions of people who try to scam or extort small business owners, sales, finances, etc. If you're wealthy enough that you don't really need revenue and can pay people for that, you'll likely find that being wealthy just exposes how money won't make you happy anyway.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      A better endgame might be finding the job that you actually enjoy doing, moment to moment, so that while you're working it doesn't feel like you're working. Never have to work a day in your life and all that...
      - ornornor 6y ago
        I don’t know how true this is. The moment you take money to do something is when some or all of the fun gets sucked out of it.
    - hated 6y ago
      I actually enjoy working with all that bureaucracy because at least I know I'm not serving ads to people.
      - wolco2 6y ago
        Why are ads suddenly so evil? Ads are paided messages.
        ornornor 6y ago
        They’re designed to trick you into acting against your best interests. To push you to spend money you don’t have on shit you don’t need to impress people you don’t like, to quote a witty whoever wrote this.
        throwaway201103 6y ago
        I'd say that sounds like George Carlin but just a guess.
        hated 6y ago
        Which part?
        wolco2 6y ago
        At one end they exist to inform and offer you a service. I've clicked on ads and purchased and have been better off for it. No tricks involved but it did save me 1/2 off the original price I normally purchase from another store. Who I am impressing with my canned milk buy? Ads that show a lifestyle that tricks you into believing you can become something you are not is a small segment perhaps larger on social media. I don't see any of that or if I did it doesn't register. But I do see can of milk for sale. I go through fliers and get coupons. I get email ads on products I purchased for discounts. Even those store displays with toilet paper are a form of advertising. I don't mind them and often buy a pack if on sale.
        asdff 6y ago
    - asdff 6y ago
      I feel like the people who say money won't make you happy need to have their eyes checked. Sure, piles of money don't do anything, but money among many things gives you opportunity to have experiences with other people, and a buffer from stressful situations, and imo that is the crux of happiness. Now you can take that flight to see your family members regularly. You can now have a house large enough where if you have guests over they no longer have to sleep on the floor. You no longer are held hostage with the fear that you will be bankrupted by your aging parent's health issues. You can afford to bury your loved ones. You no longer have to make compromises with your children's lives that you wish you didn't have to make. Your basic needs will always be met. You are de facto exempt from physical labor since you can afford to pay others to maintain your life like a prince. Sure, money in itself doesn't buy happiness. But it buys you a lot of opportunities to be very very happy, and serves as personal insurance towards things that might put the average person into a tent on the sidewalk.
      - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        I think when people say that they are assuming you have reached a level where you can meet your basic needs. We are talking about programming jobs here, not cashiers in the local supermarket.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    I think the best endgame is financial independence... having enough invested capital so you can live off the proceeds. FIRE.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- 2sk21 6y ago
  I just "won" my endgame :-) I recently retired after working 29 years in software development. I was always very well paid but a notch below the FAANG-level. I always focused relentlessly on achieving financial independence by saving and investing as much as I could using Boglehead techniques. I can now do whatever I want.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Did you start at 21 ? If yes, do you regret not enjoying your 20s and keeping it for your 50s when you're older.
    - 2sk21 6y ago
      I got a PhD so I started a bit late but I do not regret spending my 20s as a grad student. At least when I started working, a PhD came in useful. I should note that this was a long time ago so my advice may be less relevant today. In general, my advice is to save as much as you can early in your career. Thanks to the power of compounding, $1000 saved in your twenties is worth a lot more than $1000 in your forties.
wolco2 6y ago
That's interesting and truly insightful. Doing a good job in a previous role doesn't matter anymore because everyone relys on the leetcode score.
- FlaSheridn 6y ago
  That’s surely an exaggeration; _any_ part of the interview offers opportunity to mess up.
dx87 6y ago
Yeah, I burned myself out really bad trying to go above and beyond for a few years at various companies. Just ended up frustrated, making no more money than people coasting in the same position, and still got laid off during downsizing instead of the people who spent time playing office politics and going out to happy hour with the supervisor. I feel kind of guilty now though, because I actually managed to get hired at a really good company a few years ago, but I can't work up the motivation to put in as much effort as I did before. Now I'm the one coasting (still not schmoozing though), and see other new people making the same mistake I did.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Working hard for a raise/promotion is a losing strategy. Working hard so you can change jobs every 18-24 months with big salary jumps is rather easy to do consistently. Trying to get a promotion is deciding to compete for one position in one company with essentially every qualified candidate in the world. It’s easy to see how looking for a better job every so often has better odds for success.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    I don't think so at all. I have worked hard, and had a lot of fun at now two of the FAANG's. Sure the reward has not been like winning the startup lottery, but if you told myself 20 years ago I would have this impact and earn this much money I would not have believed it. I totally suck at politics, and have seen others rise quicker, but doing good work does get rewarded in my experience.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      I guess this observation doesn’t really apply to the FAANGs quite as much. They have such an insatiable demand for labor that it’s much easier to work your way up to more money consistently over time. I guess you just find the level you want to coast at. I haven’t won the start up lottery either. But I have been able to be fully employed as a contractor with a very good hourly rate for quite a long time. Which probably means I’m coasting right now. But I still manage to bump my rates up every so often, so maybe not.
MattGaiser 6y ago
I switched jobs just a few months ago. I interviewed for a couple places. Nobody cared about what I previously did. It was either all algos or architecture.
sudeepj 6y ago
> Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders That sums up very nicely. This reminds me of a quote: "Passing an exam with good grades/marks only show that you are really good in passing the exam" -- By (don't remember)
eyelidlessness 6y ago
This is so sad to read. I made my way into a tech career in what would properly be described as “hacker” in the traditional sense, though I never applied the term to myself. I came into a ton of formal knowledge and became quite talented through paths that opened with recognition of my experience and skills. I’m going into the job market for the first time in a few years and this is exactly what I feared. That said, I’m still very talented and I’m not going to let it shake me. Y’all can have the rat race, I’ll go find myself a place I can be productive.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. Don't know that I would describe myself as talented though, but definitely driven.
  - workthistime 6y ago
    > Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. I’m at the point I’m seriously considering this, and I’m just not sure I can do it. Everytime I run through the possibilities in my head nothing adds up. The only viable careers for me to switch into are a) not interesting or b) pay depressingly little and would require me to obtain expensive credentials.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Check out this thread [0] I started the other day, there are a couple of recommendations there. One of the jobs mentioned is free time rich and money OK, and the other I don't know what the payment is like, but would require credentials. If you haven't worked in foodservice yet, I actually highly recommend it as an experience, at least in a short term sense. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243187
colordrops 6y ago
I've never done that and only focused on doing as great a job as possible, and landed jobs at multiple companies many would consider "endgame" without knowing the k-nearest neighbors algorithm. Some companies or at least hiring managers are wise enough to look for what makes a productive individual rather than someone who chases the metric.
dnautics 6y ago
When I was a hiring manager at the previous company I was at, I gave an interview where I gave an exact description of what I wanted coded. No algorithm tricks (you could solve it faster with a paradigm, but it wasn't necessary) actually this is a problem I remember having to solve for homework in intro HS CS class 25 years ago. I was checking to see if the candidate could 1. read documents. 2. ask questions. 3 identify corner cases. 4. identify why the problem was hard 5. actually try out their code instead of just thinking about it. One candidate used a very troublesome technique to try and solve it, and proudly declared, "I am sure this works". I knew it didn't - but it took me one hour to find the bug, and in order to find the bug I had to write a property test. This is SUPER dangerous behavior IMO. Code Reviews will not catch everything, so if you have a dishonest coder you can wind up in trouble. He got hired for another team "this is literally the best hash table I have ever seen". Unfortunately all of the candidates were clearly folks who had practiced their leetcoder skills. Nobody completed the problem correctly. However, I was okay with partial answers that fulfilled some of the softer qualities I was looking for The other folks who were interviewing gave one of the candidates who bombed my part rave reviews. I got steamrolled into hiring him onto my team, and sure enough he didn't read documents, he didn't try out his code. In the month that I worked with him he did not push any code. I left.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- _benj 6y ago
  This is really interesting. On a previous company my coding test was "build a contact manager application with python and Vue.js" and I really loved that! It was something I could do in less than 10 hours or so. The role was full-stack web dev and I got it. I've been considering screening companies based on what their hiring process is. How do you think that could be assessed, say, companies that eveluate real-life experience vs. leetcoder skills?
  - dnautics 6y ago
    one of the companies I interviewed at had a question where they showed me a bug in what looked to be an old version of their UI and I had to debug it as a pair with them piloting. I didn't get the job (probably in part because as an "almost totally backend" it took me a bit of time to decide to look at the web console), but it was literally the best interview I'd been on. It really exercised everything you could possibly want to know about a full stack dev, and was done in 25 minutes.
jdreaver 6y ago
This is inconsistent with my experience in my most recent round of interviews. I interviewed at a few places at a senior/staff level, and most of my interviews were behavioral, architectural, or discussions about past work. The few leetcode-style or coding questions I had were easily prepared for from my ~40 hours of interview-specific coding prep. There is zero chance I would have gotten those interviews or passed them without excelling at my job. My resume would have looked terrible if I didn't go above and beyond at my last role, and I would have given weak answers to some of the questions I was asked if I didn't have real experience with the subject matter or a relevant situation. I think I understand why you have the perspective you have. Indeed, many modern software interviews can feel far removed from the actual job, and we all know that even well-executed interviews sometimes result in decisions barely better than a coin flip. However, unless you really enjoy leetcode, I can't think of anything more depressing than studying for interviews all day. Also, it is hard to prepare for interviews at higher levels (senior/staff) without actual experience produced by doing a good job.
- ra7 6y ago
  I completely agree with his, as someone who has recently completed several interviews for senior level. I used to think everything depended on Leetcode questions, but I was surprised to find out how much of the focus was on design, past experience and leadership. Leetcode is "easy" to crack with some (considerable) amount of hard work and they know that. But you can't make up past experience in behavioral interviews as you get found out very quickly.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Yes, but in my experience you need both. If you are not willing to put in some time at leetcode it might not go well. Of course you can still get lucky, but better to be prepared.
    - ra7 6y ago
      Oh, you definitely need both. But there is a misconception that Leetcode skills alone is enough, but for more senior roles you get judged on more than that.
echelon 6y ago
Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or trade school. Building a simple website will require JS package management, kubernetes, and AWS. The "free tier" will fall away. Employees aren't excited by what they do: People job hop for promos, raises, and resume fodder, not because there's an actual interest in the product. The majority of software projects are mundane glue, pipes, optimization tweaks, or migrations. Companies don't care about employees: Wages are adjusted for cost of living. Companies are trying to hire more outside of California in order to lower wages across the board. Employees at "passion project" companies (gaming, SpaceX, Tesla) are overworked and underpaid. Incentives are wrong: Google bestows promos on launches, not KTLO. Google kills products that make customers and engineers happy and doesn't spend enough effort to make them better. The industry is eating the commons: The web is turning into shit. Devices are being locked down. Ads and tracking are everywhere. Open source is being co-opted, but the benefits are not returned. The cool things to hack on and integrate with (remember "mashups"?) are all siloed up, full of ads, and dumbed down to the most basic products. The Internet now treats everyone using it like we're all brainless idiots to be injected with dopamine. Like we're not smart enough to choose how to consume it. And working for companies in this field now feels like working for the insurance industry. Optimize for the average.
- cambalache 6y ago
  The moment the MBA types discovered there were plenty of VC money to get if you exploit the socially inept nerds it was game over.
  - kokey 6y ago
    I guess for some people the social part is either painful or difficult so for them it's easier to just become masters at the leetcode game.
- crb002 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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ra7 6y ago
> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. I totally see the logic. But the problem with this is on day 1 of the new job where you've moved up a level by successfully completing Leetcode-style interviews, you're now expected to do more and know more. And that's hard if you've only invested the bare minimum in your previous job and haven't maximized your learning. So now you need to not only give more than the bare minimum at your current job, you need to also constantly keep your Leetcode skills up to date.
vmception 6y ago
10 years of experience here Early this year I got good at these problems and the ones I would actually encounter, above the average (based on time to solve, efficiency), as well as the system design interviews and I honestly think the behavioral interviews too, but decision makers just do not want to pay me over $180k. Whether thats salary at a Series B, C or midsize company or big tech companies whose total comp would be closer to $400k alongside a slightly lower cash comp I questioned my competency, how I come across and everything. I subsequently let recruiters push me at the $125k range and I got a lot of offers. It was like a totally different and endearing experience, just like I had seen earlier in my career at those and lower comp ranges So instead I created and sold some digital currencies for 7 figures I think I would still like the validation of doing a year or two in the big tech circuit, especially because I could earn the shares and write calls on them without risking my prior capital, while being less likely to incur liability or bring attention to myself like in entrepreneurial endeavors But I really hate that people are not able to value my contributions accurately. In fact I dont think they are valuing that at all, it felt like people were expecting a different kind of person: more stereotypical unsociable programmer at the higher comp and experience ranges. But regarding experience I also did a resume variation with less years of experience.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  You created the digital currencies and sold them? So you came up with your own coin then? When was this and how did you convince people to buy it, unless you had an active project for it (or you were intentionally fleecing them)? You could possibly get away with that a few years ago when people were throwing a bunch of money away on vaporware ICOs, but it's getting cracked down on more now.
  - vmception 6y ago
    The key for US compliance is to build a form of consumptive utility before the sale and never talk to your actual or potential buyers about the things they want to talk about (future prices, exchange listings). Look at IMVU’s no action letter for the kind of guidance US lawyers have been giving but nobody has been able to talk about. The SEC publicly agreed and I can confirm it matches the guidance given to many projects.
ConcernedCoder 6y ago
I go "above and beyond" all the time, but not because I think it's going to get me "somewhere". It's the type of person I strive to be, and that's good enough for me.
- sixdimensional 6y ago
  As much as I sometimes wish I could be rewarded just a bit better for going above and beyond, I have to agree with you here. I appreciate your philosophy. Ultimately, intrinsic motivation won’t always make us rich, but it might help us be happy and fulfilled. And in the rare occasion that health, wealth and happiness all align, what a good life we can enjoy. Here here!
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    It's OK as long as you don't burn yourself out. You have to find a way to make it sustainable if you want to keep enjoying it through your career.
yourabstraction 6y ago
Yup, I jumped into the if you can't beat em, join em camp with leetcode. I Did 160 problems (likely low for many people) before my last job search, and I now make 3x what I used to. I gotta admit it's a hell of an ego boost to crush coding questions in interviews; being completely in the flow and cranking out flawless code. It makes me wonder how much money I left on the table the last 10 years, because I went the route of great software engineer -> great interviewer, instead of great interviewer -> great software engineer. Also, I have to say I really came to enjoy doing leetcode, and learned (really re-learned) a lot of interesting things.
- polishdude20 6y ago
  Did you just start off doing leetcode questions online and learned from the solutions? I'd study leetcode stuff if I could even start getting interviews to show my skills :/
  - yourabstraction 6y ago
    Yes, and I went against the standard advice to not look at the solution until you solve it yourself. I think for the first 50-100 problems it's best to not think too hard about it before looking at the solution, gaining a full understanding, and writing an implementation or three (building that muscle memory so to speak). At this point, you'll have many more tools in your kit (graph traversal, search, dynamic programming, queues, heaps, stacks, etc.) and you can work on coming up with your own solutions to new problems. But I found it to be a waste of time staring at a problem for hours when I didn't already have the fundamentals in place to tackle it. The other thing I did was watch youtube videos to get a better grounding in some of the data structures that I struggled with. I mostly did this wish graphs, as I was always terrible at graph problems and never had to apply them in my career. I found this series of videos to be extremely good. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDV1Zeh2NRsDGO4--qE8yH72HFL1Km93P https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDV1Zeh2NRsDGO4--qE8y...
    - gofreddygo 6y ago
      Excellent practical advice. That part of just following the solution for the first 50-100 problems is spot on. It resonates very well with my experience learning math by first following the "solved" examples, fully understanding them, then solving similar "simple" problems, repeating them till they fit into muscle memory and only then attempting the challenging ones. First challenge I faced with leetcode is they do not have a concept or technique map. Similar to the chapter index in any math textbook, each dealing with a specific technique, concept or pattern. For example the idea of using a hash to store a running sum is useful for a class of problems like finding the longest sequence that adds to a specified sum, longest sequence of equal no of 0s and 1s. Yet, there was and still isn't a page or resource where such a pattern was described. Solving leetcode feels like swimming upstream, one problem at a time, looking for patterns. Some are well described (Kadane for example) but most aren't. I looked around the web but couldn't find any resources that helped me with this. I wonder if we could, at your experience, list some concepts and techniques that can be repeatedly useful. I believe that could cut the prep time by a good degree. Second related problem to this is retention. With this master technique map, it would become easier to review and revise quickly. (I tried spaced rep, not useful) The most effective strategy for me has been to put everything in one book.I have multiple index pages with lists of similar problems pointing the page numbers with the solution. I have been able to get better at data structures using this approach now I'm at the leetcode phase. Appreciate your response.
kmonsen 6y ago
I mean why not both? I worked hard and do my best in my job, but I also do leetcode and others a few times a month just to make sure I can still get another job if I need to. I am not professional leetcoder, but good enough if I need to in addition to my experience that has been good enough so far.
- decafninja 6y ago
  Because time is a finite resource.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  His point is why bother do the former when the latter is how you get the next job?
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Because it's not the latter that gets you the next job in many cases. After you've been in the industry for a while, you are likely to be referred for jobs by former colleagues, or even invited by those former colleagues to come and interview at their new companies. If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      At which point you’ll have to do leetcode problems in the interview you got via the referral. Former colleagues in most cases can just get you out of the application lottery - that’s it. This is less true in PMish roles where there really isn’t a technical leetcode style interview or at the exec level where the friend is the hiring manager or ultimate decider. In most cases though? Leetcode still gets you the job.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Because leetcode is way more boring than making things? Also you learn a lot more by trying to do a good job and working with smart people, they are just not that easy to bring out in an interview. That being said if you think it’s right for you, go for it.
Ericson2314 6y ago
And so productivity falls until we live in squalor amidst the old ruins but every person is busy.
- voodootrucker 6y ago
  Exactly this. The parent takes no systemic affects into account, only individual actor greed. In the academic sense of those terms.
twblalock 6y ago
> Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. After you've been in the industry for a while, you are likely to be referred for jobs by former colleagues, or even invited by those former colleagues to come and interview at their new companies. If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this, because they enjoyed working with you and want to work with you again. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  > If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this, because they enjoyed working with you and want to work with you again. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems. Then, once they put your name in, you get a Lettcode-style interview. That's the way every company I have worked for has worked.
aszen 6y ago
And what about job satisfaction, not doing an actual good job and spending miserable time doing leetcode is not going to add much worth to my day to day happiness. I instead always suggest to do a good job regardless (note that doesn't mean doing long hours just working with care). There are more important things than career ladder like integrity, honesty, work ethic and meaningful work. Don't let societal policies compromise your inner values.
- voodootrucker 6y ago
  I can't over-stress how important this is. Societal trends come and go, and unfit ones eventually go. Stand your ground, and do the right thing, always. You won't necessarily win if you do, but you will lose yourself if you don't.
- harimau777 6y ago
  Life has a way of beating the ability to care about those things out of you.
gumby 6y ago
> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. I feel precisely the opposite: if you work somewhere with people you like working with (and who like working with you) then you will start to get hired through your network, not through your mad leetcode skillz. That's what networking really is, not "networking sessions" or various going through the motions you'll hear described in a seminar. It's simple human connections from people saying "Hey, I'd like to work with decafninja again" or "Oh, you need a frobnitz expert? You know, I know someone called decafninja who might be able to help you."
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  No dude, I’ve been burned by exactly what that poster described. Being well networked just gets your application opened. The leetcode is what gets you hired. The people who would hire me without leetcode were either trying to take advantage of me or have never been my coworkers. As another commenter said: Leetcode, leetcode, leetcode.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    I think it really depends on how and where you get referred. Bigger companies are likely to be process heavy and inflexible. My last three interviews and job moves have all been from referrals or old colleagues. None had coding challenges and all resulted in job offers. But that was a small satellite team for a big org and two early stage startups. It’s also a consequence of timing and luck though. I’d definitely be prepping harder for job hunting.
    - decafninja 6y ago
      I've gotten lots of referrals from old colleagues and bosses, but as the previous poster has said, all that has resulted in is opening the door to an leetcode interview. Also timeframe is significant too. I'd say 5-10 years ago, fewer companies (especially outside the tech industry) were leetcoding candidates. Now, many of those same companies (including my current) are all leetcoding candidates.
gofreddygo 6y ago
I feel you. I feel fooled too. I worked my ass off at nameless orgs that were willing to hire a no-credential computer science graduate. Always going "above and beyond", built a reputation for getting things done, almost always delivered stuff on time, took ownership, covered up for changing and incomplete requirements, entertained last minute pivots, did what a team lead and architect should be doing even though was always paid as a dev. This basically meant I spent late nights and weekends at home or office getting shit for work done. I've also on many occasions, put fires out in my own and other teams. I always got flattered in all my appraisals, with all my superiors including the CTO of our org. Almost 10 years in, I feel fooled for not seeing the forest for the trees. What a waste of time it all has been ! I get paid the highest that a non FAANG org is willing to pay for my skillset. I always get handed the harder, weirder things and it never ends. I cannot clear these crazy interviews at these endgame orgs without a heavy investment of time grinding stuff of negligible value. Prepping now is an investment that will take months balancing family time and work load. All I had to do a few years ago was just stop. Take a deep breath. Leetcode. Leetcode. Leetcode. Get into the weeds of my favorite language. Build a compiler. Get some research published in some journal or write a book or give some talks. Contribute to open source projects enough to get my name in. Schmooze a bit. Market myself more. And let the projects at work go fk itself ( They did end up that way anyway ) Would have paid off more than what my full time jobs have paid me for the last 10 years. Edit: some comments seem to suggest they learnt a lot of their skills "on the job" and would not have landed their current dream job without it. I am strongly biased to believe there are more blue winged raccoons roaming around in this country than such people who got hired at FAANGs because of what the learned on the job at non-FAANG orgs. All non-loss-making, salary-paying orgs use standard stacks with standard components in two or more enterprise-y languages glued together with a shit ton of in house coded garbage running in production with some standard relational DB. Go try to make your resume sparkle and stand out with that experience. You spend enough time in these ecosystems in production and you see yourself keeping a safe distance from anything that is new, look at any new platform with skepticism and quickly realize how painful that upstream swim is to make fundamental changes in such environments. I still have scars to show from the time (among other fun times) I tried to get cassandra into our production systems only to later be told by the cassandra folks to "RTFM, before doing anything fancy" Its a full time job to keep those up and running not some skill a dev would pick up "on the job"
trimbo 6y ago
This is a truly remarkable take I've never heard before. I honestly wonder if it's true. If it's actually true--and if poor quality of work and reputation mean nothing, just leetcode--it seems like that is just a side effect of extremely rapid expansion and/or churn. Because no employer would willingly hire people like that. That'd be absurd. So the only reason that would be possible if the hiring manager never got wind of someone's work ethic or quality. And it seems like that's only possible with enough disjointedness in the people network, combined with hiring practices that don't care about it.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It does sound distopian. However if it's really true then employers only have themselves to blame. Potential employees are reacting to the incentives in front of them.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    In my narrow experience, I have not seen much proof that my employer can: 1) Interview with any sort of success 2) Judge merit after getting the position I think a lot more people may be operating on intuition than you realize.
- decafninja 6y ago
  I currently produce average to slightly above average quality work while being a "Professional Leetcoder". All my performance reviews have been positive. I could produce significantly better and/or faster work by going "above and beyond", but other than a sentimental feeling of self satisfaction, why bother?
ganafagol 6y ago
There is a point to "staying current" beyond chances in future interviews. Imagine working at a company that has basically found its niche, is doing well, just not growing much so only hiring really slowly. Everybody around you has been there for 20+ years. Everybody working like 20-30 years ago. This kind of bubble is dangerous, not just for the employees' future chances on the job market, but for the company itself. To find the best solutions to the problems in their market, the company needs to stay cutting edge with its tech too. Otherwisr they will get outcompeted in no time. And by doing so, it profits the employees too. If everybody has been around for 20+ years but stays really current, even just for the sake of the company, their employability stays high too! It's a win-win. These rants about "I'm back on the job market and now have to re-learn coding" tend to be a strong sign of complacency. "I already went through this and now want peace and quiet, why am I being forced to learn something new?" Well, because the world is evolving. Keep evolving with it, or gradually disappear in obsolescence. If you don't then that's not just bad for your job chances but even for your company. You'd not want to work at a place that still uses VB6 just because it was hip 20 years ago when everybody was hired. FWIW I work at a company where we are strongly encouraged to stay on top of the game so that we stay competitive in the market. That automatically keeps everybody employable.
- blobbers 6y ago
  I don't think it's a strong sign of complacency. I think people just don't do toy problems involve coding breadth first searches or determining bipartite graphs. How often to people really write dynamic programming algos in 45 minutes. They don't - they think and tinker. Algorithms can be beautiful to code but most of the time is not spent on this sort of thing. It's fixing null pointer exceptions or parsing json requests or whatever javascript front end engineers do. You definitely have to prepare.
  - ganafagol 6y ago
    Please. Neither the original article nor my comment where about interviews asking to implement a breadth first search. That's a different topic. This was about him having to learn C# since it wasn't really around 20 years ago. And having to polish up Python cause it was very different 20 years ago. And other programming practices. You definitely need to stay up to date on the stuff that's relevant to your job. Not because of interviews, but because .. it's your job. If you prepare for an interview and notice that's what's holding you back, then you definitely started to grow complaceny in your job. And maybe your environment made you become that way, then it's not a good environment. If you are up to date on this, then writing a BFS from scratch or debugging a null pointer issue or even json will be a piece of cake. Interview questions are an excuse to have a technical conversation, not to see if you remember some algo from school.
pjmlp 6y ago
The problem is that you never know when you make it to the end game company. I thought about it a couple of times, and then synergies came into play.
jjav 6y ago
> Professional Interviewers It is such a tragedy for our industry. Personally, I don't participate. And encourage everyone to opt out. I want, and do, spend all my efforts in delivering best performing, most secure real products, making customers happy and the infrastructure and code maintainable. I have as much impostor syndrome as anyone (or probably more than most) but very slowly over many years and long string of managers who gush about my performance and always give me highest possible reviews, I've come to accept (if not actually believe) that I'm very good at what I do. And yet, no way I could ever "pass" one of these whiteboard algorithm monkeydance interviews. A company wants to judge based on nonsense that has nothing to do with the job? Then you don't get to hire me, a proven expert with a track record of success. Enjoy hiring a team of people who've spent their life doing artificial exercises and (as a consequence) haven't put much effort into building actual products. I do what I can to improve the industry hiring. I do interview lots of candidates and will never do so via whiteboard monkeydance. I interview based on their experience doing real work, based on the resume. I encourage everyone to do the same and put and end (at least slightly reduce) the leetcode nonsense that's killing the hiring culture.
Olreich 6y ago
I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all. There’s only so many tricks available in these interviews. I’m sure I’m biased, but if you know how to program, programming interviews are pretty easy. I think if you are becoming a Professional Leetcoder, you’re still learning how to do basic programming.
kemiller2002 6y ago
I understand where you are coming from, but I honestly disagree. I always try and do the best job possible, but I don't do it for the company, I do it for me. I think of it as training to make myself better. I am always looking out for my skills and experience, so when the next opportunity comes around, I'm ready to take it. You could say that it's resume stuffing, but I don't think of it and mean it that way. I want to see how things work and practice what I know. I want to incorporate that knowledge and associate it with my past experiences to figure out new things.
- decafninja 6y ago
  I've been where you were at too. The problem is, no matter how good of a real day to day job I've done and what practical real world skills I've learned, "when the next opportunity comes around" as you say, I wasn't ready to take it - because I got burned by leetcode interviews that have nothing to do with the above. I too, want to do everything you mention, but until I get past the leetcode gatekeepers, it doesn't matter.
ghaff 6y ago
>until I make it into such an "endgame" company. Unless you're close to retirement and don't really need the money, it's unlikely you'll know when you're there. Companies change and/or get into trouble, managers change, projects get canceled, etc. I've been at companies I spent quite a few years at and I still came close to quitting for various reasons (and eventually did). I'd submit there is no predictable endgame over more than a 2-3 year time horizon.
- decafninja 6y ago
  You're right that "endgame" is different from person to person, and also in the same person's lifetime. My current company was something I would have considered endgame at the start of my career. Now it's not. A company I'd consider to be currently endgame (say, FAANG), may not be 10 years later. For the sake of discussion, as I mentioned in my original comment, I would simply define an endgame company as one where I'd be satisfied staying for a while without further ambition about finding the next great thing. Where I'd be content doing a helluva great job and not even think about leetcode. My best friend ended up at one of the FAANGs a few years ago and is doing exactly that. Although he is now afraid that his leetcode skills have atrophied and he'd fail interviews horribly if for whatever (involuntary) reason he ends up having to look for another job. But he has no short term intention of leaving and thus hasn't been grinding leetcode for a while.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I confess that, as someone who has never been primarily a developer (done a number of different things over time), I find this whole leetcode thing beyond strange. I have never in my life studied for interviews other than reading up on a specific company I'm interviewing with. ADDED: And every job since the one out of grad school decades ago has been directly through someone I knew.
    - decafninja 6y ago
      You're not the only one. My wife finds the whole thing bizarre. As do my non-techie friends. My wife's best friend thought it stupid (actually, I agree - it is stupid). Then she started dating a SWE, who is apparently also leetcoding in his spare time.
skeeter2020 6y ago
IF yopur #1 skill is grinding leetcode and continually jumping by being an expert interviewer, when & why would you ever stop? Have you not in fact discovered that this is your endgame? The parallels with how we envision hell are obvious...
mtnGoat 6y ago
I dont know if I like this advice. I feel like you will never find a home at any company if you are always looking for the next one. It's like a relationship, you'll never truly love the one you are with, if you keep dating or looking at others. Plus, just a general poor moral value, IMHO.
- decafninja 6y ago
  It used to be that staying at one company a long time was considered a good thing. Nowadays, at least in tech, quite a few people consider it a red flag. The world we now live in.
golergka 6y ago
> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Does it mean that CV credentials like "developed requirements for a complex system, built it from scratch and overcome significant technical challenges in doing so" don't mean anything, in your opinion? Because in my experience interviewing, things like this get a lot of attention, are discussed in depth and leave impression on the interviewer. I think that my results interviewing would be significantly worse if it was just "fixed bugs and did incremental improvements" instead. But again, I have very little experience (or desire) interviewing at FAANGs of the world, may be they do things differently?

mav3rick 6y ago

What's your endgame ?

chii 6y ago
To me, the "best" endgame is to obtain enough saved capital to found your own (small?) business to which you can generate and capture value directly.
- throwaway_goog 6y ago
  I did that and found that I hated it. There's a lot of bullshit that you have to deal with in a small business: incorporation papers, taxes, staying away from the zillions of people who try to scam or extort small business owners, sales, finances, etc. If you're wealthy enough that you don't really need revenue and can pay people for that, you'll likely find that being wealthy just exposes how money won't make you happy anyway.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    A better endgame might be finding the job that you actually enjoy doing, moment to moment, so that while you're working it doesn't feel like you're working. Never have to work a day in your life and all that...
    - ornornor 6y ago
      I don’t know how true this is. The moment you take money to do something is when some or all of the fun gets sucked out of it.
  - hated 6y ago
    I actually enjoy working with all that bureaucracy because at least I know I'm not serving ads to people.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      Why are ads suddenly so evil? Ads are paided messages.
      - ornornor 6y ago
        They’re designed to trick you into acting against your best interests. To push you to spend money you don’t have on shit you don’t need to impress people you don’t like, to quote a witty whoever wrote this.
        throwaway201103 6y ago
        I'd say that sounds like George Carlin but just a guess.
        hated 6y ago
        Which part?
        wolco2 6y ago
        At one end they exist to inform and offer you a service. I've clicked on ads and purchased and have been better off for it. No tricks involved but it did save me 1/2 off the original price I normally purchase from another store. Who I am impressing with my canned milk buy? Ads that show a lifestyle that tricks you into believing you can become something you are not is a small segment perhaps larger on social media. I don't see any of that or if I did it doesn't register. But I do see can of milk for sale. I go through fliers and get coupons. I get email ads on products I purchased for discounts. Even those store displays with toilet paper are a form of advertising. I don't mind them and often buy a pack if on sale.
      - asdff 6y ago
  - asdff 6y ago
    I feel like the people who say money won't make you happy need to have their eyes checked. Sure, piles of money don't do anything, but money among many things gives you opportunity to have experiences with other people, and a buffer from stressful situations, and imo that is the crux of happiness. Now you can take that flight to see your family members regularly. You can now have a house large enough where if you have guests over they no longer have to sleep on the floor. You no longer are held hostage with the fear that you will be bankrupted by your aging parent's health issues. You can afford to bury your loved ones. You no longer have to make compromises with your children's lives that you wish you didn't have to make. Your basic needs will always be met. You are de facto exempt from physical labor since you can afford to pay others to maintain your life like a prince. Sure, money in itself doesn't buy happiness. But it buys you a lot of opportunities to be very very happy, and serves as personal insurance towards things that might put the average person into a tent on the sidewalk.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      I think when people say that they are assuming you have reached a level where you can meet your basic needs. We are talking about programming jobs here, not cashiers in the local supermarket.
- icedchai 6y ago
  I think the best endgame is financial independence... having enough invested capital so you can live off the proceeds. FIRE.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
2sk21 6y ago
I just "won" my endgame :-) I recently retired after working 29 years in software development. I was always very well paid but a notch below the FAANG-level. I always focused relentlessly on achieving financial independence by saving and investing as much as I could using Boglehead techniques. I can now do whatever I want.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Did you start at 21 ? If yes, do you regret not enjoying your 20s and keeping it for your 50s when you're older.
  - 2sk21 6y ago
    I got a PhD so I started a bit late but I do not regret spending my 20s as a grad student. At least when I started working, a PhD came in useful. I should note that this was a long time ago so my advice may be less relevant today. In general, my advice is to save as much as you can early in your career. Thanks to the power of compounding, $1000 saved in your twenties is worth a lot more than $1000 in your forties.

wolco2 6y ago

That's interesting and truly insightful. Doing a good job in a previous role doesn't matter anymore because everyone relys on the leetcode score.

FlaSheridn 6y ago
That’s surely an exaggeration; _any_ part of the interview offers opportunity to mess up.

dx87 6y ago

Yeah, I burned myself out really bad trying to go above and beyond for a few years at various companies. Just ended up frustrated, making no more money than people coasting in the same position, and still got laid off during downsizing instead of the people who spent time playing office politics and going out to happy hour with the supervisor. I feel kind of guilty now though, because I actually managed to get hired at a really good company a few years ago, but I can't work up the motivation to put in as much effort as I did before. Now I'm the one coasting (still not schmoozing though), and see other new people making the same mistake I did.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Working hard for a raise/promotion is a losing strategy. Working hard so you can change jobs every 18-24 months with big salary jumps is rather easy to do consistently. Trying to get a promotion is deciding to compete for one position in one company with essentially every qualified candidate in the world. It’s easy to see how looking for a better job every so often has better odds for success.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  I don't think so at all. I have worked hard, and had a lot of fun at now two of the FAANG's. Sure the reward has not been like winning the startup lottery, but if you told myself 20 years ago I would have this impact and earn this much money I would not have believed it. I totally suck at politics, and have seen others rise quicker, but doing good work does get rewarded in my experience.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    I guess this observation doesn’t really apply to the FAANGs quite as much. They have such an insatiable demand for labor that it’s much easier to work your way up to more money consistently over time. I guess you just find the level you want to coast at. I haven’t won the start up lottery either. But I have been able to be fully employed as a contractor with a very good hourly rate for quite a long time. Which probably means I’m coasting right now. But I still manage to bump my rates up every so often, so maybe not.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I switched jobs just a few months ago. I interviewed for a couple places. Nobody cared about what I previously did. It was either all algos or architecture.

sudeepj 6y ago

> Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders That sums up very nicely. This reminds me of a quote: "Passing an exam with good grades/marks only show that you are really good in passing the exam" -- By (don't remember)

eyelidlessness 6y ago

This is so sad to read. I made my way into a tech career in what would properly be described as “hacker” in the traditional sense, though I never applied the term to myself. I came into a ton of formal knowledge and became quite talented through paths that opened with recognition of my experience and skills. I’m going into the job market for the first time in a few years and this is exactly what I feared. That said, I’m still very talented and I’m not going to let it shake me. Y’all can have the rat race, I’ll go find myself a place I can be productive.

Shared404 6y ago
Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. Don't know that I would describe myself as talented though, but definitely driven.
- workthistime 6y ago
  > Hoping the best for you. I'm hoping to either follow a similar path, or dodge computing entirely as a career path, find an interesting job, and keep it as a hobby where I have the chance to work on interesting problems. I’m at the point I’m seriously considering this, and I’m just not sure I can do it. Everytime I run through the possibilities in my head nothing adds up. The only viable careers for me to switch into are a) not interesting or b) pay depressingly little and would require me to obtain expensive credentials.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Check out this thread [0] I started the other day, there are a couple of recommendations there. One of the jobs mentioned is free time rich and money OK, and the other I don't know what the payment is like, but would require credentials. If you haven't worked in foodservice yet, I actually highly recommend it as an experience, at least in a short term sense. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25243187

colordrops 6y ago

I've never done that and only focused on doing as great a job as possible, and landed jobs at multiple companies many would consider "endgame" without knowing the k-nearest neighbors algorithm. Some companies or at least hiring managers are wise enough to look for what makes a productive individual rather than someone who chases the metric.

dnautics 6y ago

When I was a hiring manager at the previous company I was at, I gave an interview where I gave an exact description of what I wanted coded. No algorithm tricks (you could solve it faster with a paradigm, but it wasn't necessary) actually this is a problem I remember having to solve for homework in intro HS CS class 25 years ago. I was checking to see if the candidate could 1. read documents. 2. ask questions. 3 identify corner cases. 4. identify why the problem was hard 5. actually try out their code instead of just thinking about it. One candidate used a very troublesome technique to try and solve it, and proudly declared, "I am sure this works". I knew it didn't - but it took me one hour to find the bug, and in order to find the bug I had to write a property test. This is SUPER dangerous behavior IMO. Code Reviews will not catch everything, so if you have a dishonest coder you can wind up in trouble. He got hired for another team "this is literally the best hash table I have ever seen". Unfortunately all of the candidates were clearly folks who had practiced their leetcoder skills. Nobody completed the problem correctly. However, I was okay with partial answers that fulfilled some of the softer qualities I was looking for The other folks who were interviewing gave one of the candidates who bombed my part rave reviews. I got steamrolled into hiring him onto my team, and sure enough he didn't read documents, he didn't try out his code. In the month that I worked with him he did not push any code. I left.

deleted 6y ago
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_benj 6y ago
This is really interesting. On a previous company my coding test was "build a contact manager application with python and Vue.js" and I really loved that! It was something I could do in less than 10 hours or so. The role was full-stack web dev and I got it. I've been considering screening companies based on what their hiring process is. How do you think that could be assessed, say, companies that eveluate real-life experience vs. leetcoder skills?
- dnautics 6y ago
  one of the companies I interviewed at had a question where they showed me a bug in what looked to be an old version of their UI and I had to debug it as a pair with them piloting. I didn't get the job (probably in part because as an "almost totally backend" it took me a bit of time to decide to look at the web console), but it was literally the best interview I'd been on. It really exercised everything you could possibly want to know about a full stack dev, and was done in 25 minutes.

jdreaver 6y ago

This is inconsistent with my experience in my most recent round of interviews. I interviewed at a few places at a senior/staff level, and most of my interviews were behavioral, architectural, or discussions about past work. The few leetcode-style or coding questions I had were easily prepared for from my ~40 hours of interview-specific coding prep. There is zero chance I would have gotten those interviews or passed them without excelling at my job. My resume would have looked terrible if I didn't go above and beyond at my last role, and I would have given weak answers to some of the questions I was asked if I didn't have real experience with the subject matter or a relevant situation. I think I understand why you have the perspective you have. Indeed, many modern software interviews can feel far removed from the actual job, and we all know that even well-executed interviews sometimes result in decisions barely better than a coin flip. However, unless you really enjoy leetcode, I can't think of anything more depressing than studying for interviews all day. Also, it is hard to prepare for interviews at higher levels (senior/staff) without actual experience produced by doing a good job.

ra7 6y ago
I completely agree with his, as someone who has recently completed several interviews for senior level. I used to think everything depended on Leetcode questions, but I was surprised to find out how much of the focus was on design, past experience and leadership. Leetcode is "easy" to crack with some (considerable) amount of hard work and they know that. But you can't make up past experience in behavioral interviews as you get found out very quickly.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Yes, but in my experience you need both. If you are not willing to put in some time at leetcode it might not go well. Of course you can still get lucky, but better to be prepared.
  - ra7 6y ago
    Oh, you definitely need both. But there is a misconception that Leetcode skills alone is enough, but for more senior roles you get judged on more than that.

echelon 6y ago

Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or trade school. Building a simple website will require JS package management, kubernetes, and AWS. The "free tier" will fall away. Employees aren't excited by what they do: People job hop for promos, raises, and resume fodder, not because there's an actual interest in the product. The majority of software projects are mundane glue, pipes, optimization tweaks, or migrations. Companies don't care about employees: Wages are adjusted for cost of living. Companies are trying to hire more outside of California in order to lower wages across the board. Employees at "passion project" companies (gaming, SpaceX, Tesla) are overworked and underpaid. Incentives are wrong: Google bestows promos on launches, not KTLO. Google kills products that make customers and engineers happy and doesn't spend enough effort to make them better. The industry is eating the commons: The web is turning into shit. Devices are being locked down. Ads and tracking are everywhere. Open source is being co-opted, but the benefits are not returned. The cool things to hack on and integrate with (remember "mashups"?) are all siloed up, full of ads, and dumbed down to the most basic products. The Internet now treats everyone using it like we're all brainless idiots to be injected with dopamine. Like we're not smart enough to choose how to consume it. And working for companies in this field now feels like working for the insurance industry. Optimize for the average.

cambalache 6y ago
The moment the MBA types discovered there were plenty of VC money to get if you exploit the socially inept nerds it was game over.
- kokey 6y ago
  I guess for some people the social part is either painful or difficult so for them it's easier to just become masters at the leetcode game.
crb002 6y ago

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ra7 6y ago

> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. I totally see the logic. But the problem with this is on day 1 of the new job where you've moved up a level by successfully completing Leetcode-style interviews, you're now expected to do more and know more. And that's hard if you've only invested the bare minimum in your previous job and haven't maximized your learning. So now you need to not only give more than the bare minimum at your current job, you need to also constantly keep your Leetcode skills up to date.

vmception 6y ago

10 years of experience here Early this year I got good at these problems and the ones I would actually encounter, above the average (based on time to solve, efficiency), as well as the system design interviews and I honestly think the behavioral interviews too, but decision makers just do not want to pay me over $180k. Whether thats salary at a Series B, C or midsize company or big tech companies whose total comp would be closer to $400k alongside a slightly lower cash comp I questioned my competency, how I come across and everything. I subsequently let recruiters push me at the $125k range and I got a lot of offers. It was like a totally different and endearing experience, just like I had seen earlier in my career at those and lower comp ranges So instead I created and sold some digital currencies for 7 figures I think I would still like the validation of doing a year or two in the big tech circuit, especially because I could earn the shares and write calls on them without risking my prior capital, while being less likely to incur liability or bring attention to myself like in entrepreneurial endeavors But I really hate that people are not able to value my contributions accurately. In fact I dont think they are valuing that at all, it felt like people were expecting a different kind of person: more stereotypical unsociable programmer at the higher comp and experience ranges. But regarding experience I also did a resume variation with less years of experience.

cableshaft 6y ago
You created the digital currencies and sold them? So you came up with your own coin then? When was this and how did you convince people to buy it, unless you had an active project for it (or you were intentionally fleecing them)? You could possibly get away with that a few years ago when people were throwing a bunch of money away on vaporware ICOs, but it's getting cracked down on more now.
- vmception 6y ago
  The key for US compliance is to build a form of consumptive utility before the sale and never talk to your actual or potential buyers about the things they want to talk about (future prices, exchange listings). Look at IMVU’s no action letter for the kind of guidance US lawyers have been giving but nobody has been able to talk about. The SEC publicly agreed and I can confirm it matches the guidance given to many projects.

ConcernedCoder 6y ago

I go "above and beyond" all the time, but not because I think it's going to get me "somewhere". It's the type of person I strive to be, and that's good enough for me.

sixdimensional 6y ago
As much as I sometimes wish I could be rewarded just a bit better for going above and beyond, I have to agree with you here. I appreciate your philosophy. Ultimately, intrinsic motivation won’t always make us rich, but it might help us be happy and fulfilled. And in the rare occasion that health, wealth and happiness all align, what a good life we can enjoy. Here here!
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's OK as long as you don't burn yourself out. You have to find a way to make it sustainable if you want to keep enjoying it through your career.

yourabstraction 6y ago

Yup, I jumped into the if you can't beat em, join em camp with leetcode. I Did 160 problems (likely low for many people) before my last job search, and I now make 3x what I used to. I gotta admit it's a hell of an ego boost to crush coding questions in interviews; being completely in the flow and cranking out flawless code. It makes me wonder how much money I left on the table the last 10 years, because I went the route of great software engineer -> great interviewer, instead of great interviewer -> great software engineer. Also, I have to say I really came to enjoy doing leetcode, and learned (really re-learned) a lot of interesting things.

polishdude20 6y ago
Did you just start off doing leetcode questions online and learned from the solutions? I'd study leetcode stuff if I could even start getting interviews to show my skills :/
- yourabstraction 6y ago
  Yes, and I went against the standard advice to not look at the solution until you solve it yourself. I think for the first 50-100 problems it's best to not think too hard about it before looking at the solution, gaining a full understanding, and writing an implementation or three (building that muscle memory so to speak). At this point, you'll have many more tools in your kit (graph traversal, search, dynamic programming, queues, heaps, stacks, etc.) and you can work on coming up with your own solutions to new problems. But I found it to be a waste of time staring at a problem for hours when I didn't already have the fundamentals in place to tackle it. The other thing I did was watch youtube videos to get a better grounding in some of the data structures that I struggled with. I mostly did this wish graphs, as I was always terrible at graph problems and never had to apply them in my career. I found this series of videos to be extremely good. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDV1Zeh2NRsDGO4--qE8yH72HFL1Km93P https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDV1Zeh2NRsDGO4--qE8y...
  - gofreddygo 6y ago
    Excellent practical advice. That part of just following the solution for the first 50-100 problems is spot on. It resonates very well with my experience learning math by first following the "solved" examples, fully understanding them, then solving similar "simple" problems, repeating them till they fit into muscle memory and only then attempting the challenging ones. First challenge I faced with leetcode is they do not have a concept or technique map. Similar to the chapter index in any math textbook, each dealing with a specific technique, concept or pattern. For example the idea of using a hash to store a running sum is useful for a class of problems like finding the longest sequence that adds to a specified sum, longest sequence of equal no of 0s and 1s. Yet, there was and still isn't a page or resource where such a pattern was described. Solving leetcode feels like swimming upstream, one problem at a time, looking for patterns. Some are well described (Kadane for example) but most aren't. I looked around the web but couldn't find any resources that helped me with this. I wonder if we could, at your experience, list some concepts and techniques that can be repeatedly useful. I believe that could cut the prep time by a good degree. Second related problem to this is retention. With this master technique map, it would become easier to review and revise quickly. (I tried spaced rep, not useful) The most effective strategy for me has been to put everything in one book.I have multiple index pages with lists of similar problems pointing the page numbers with the solution. I have been able to get better at data structures using this approach now I'm at the leetcode phase. Appreciate your response.

kmonsen 6y ago

I mean why not both? I worked hard and do my best in my job, but I also do leetcode and others a few times a month just to make sure I can still get another job if I need to. I am not professional leetcoder, but good enough if I need to in addition to my experience that has been good enough so far.

decafninja 6y ago
Because time is a finite resource.
MattGaiser 6y ago
His point is why bother do the former when the latter is how you get the next job?
- twblalock 6y ago
  Because it's not the latter that gets you the next job in many cases. After you've been in the industry for a while, you are likely to be referred for jobs by former colleagues, or even invited by those former colleagues to come and interview at their new companies. If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    At which point you’ll have to do leetcode problems in the interview you got via the referral. Former colleagues in most cases can just get you out of the application lottery - that’s it. This is less true in PMish roles where there really isn’t a technical leetcode style interview or at the exec level where the friend is the hiring manager or ultimate decider. In most cases though? Leetcode still gets you the job.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Because leetcode is way more boring than making things? Also you learn a lot more by trying to do a good job and working with smart people, they are just not that easy to bring out in an interview. That being said if you think it’s right for you, go for it.

Ericson2314 6y ago

And so productivity falls until we live in squalor amidst the old ruins but every person is busy.

voodootrucker 6y ago
Exactly this. The parent takes no systemic affects into account, only individual actor greed. In the academic sense of those terms.

twblalock 6y ago

> Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. After you've been in the industry for a while, you are likely to be referred for jobs by former colleagues, or even invited by those former colleagues to come and interview at their new companies. If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this, because they enjoyed working with you and want to work with you again. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems.

vonmoltke 6y ago
> If you excel at your job, your former colleagues will be more likely to do this, because they enjoyed working with you and want to work with you again. They very likely have no idea how good you are at Leetcode-style problems. Then, once they put your name in, you get a Lettcode-style interview. That's the way every company I have worked for has worked.

aszen 6y ago

And what about job satisfaction, not doing an actual good job and spending miserable time doing leetcode is not going to add much worth to my day to day happiness. I instead always suggest to do a good job regardless (note that doesn't mean doing long hours just working with care). There are more important things than career ladder like integrity, honesty, work ethic and meaningful work. Don't let societal policies compromise your inner values.

voodootrucker 6y ago
I can't over-stress how important this is. Societal trends come and go, and unfit ones eventually go. Stand your ground, and do the right thing, always. You won't necessarily win if you do, but you will lose yourself if you don't.
harimau777 6y ago
Life has a way of beating the ability to care about those things out of you.

gumby 6y ago

> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. I feel precisely the opposite: if you work somewhere with people you like working with (and who like working with you) then you will start to get hired through your network, not through your mad leetcode skillz. That's what networking really is, not "networking sessions" or various going through the motions you'll hear described in a seminar. It's simple human connections from people saying "Hey, I'd like to work with decafninja again" or "Oh, you need a frobnitz expert? You know, I know someone called decafninja who might be able to help you."

an_opabinia 6y ago
No dude, I’ve been burned by exactly what that poster described. Being well networked just gets your application opened. The leetcode is what gets you hired. The people who would hire me without leetcode were either trying to take advantage of me or have never been my coworkers. As another commenter said: Leetcode, leetcode, leetcode.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  I think it really depends on how and where you get referred. Bigger companies are likely to be process heavy and inflexible. My last three interviews and job moves have all been from referrals or old colleagues. None had coding challenges and all resulted in job offers. But that was a small satellite team for a big org and two early stage startups. It’s also a consequence of timing and luck though. I’d definitely be prepping harder for job hunting.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    I've gotten lots of referrals from old colleagues and bosses, but as the previous poster has said, all that has resulted in is opening the door to an leetcode interview. Also timeframe is significant too. I'd say 5-10 years ago, fewer companies (especially outside the tech industry) were leetcoding candidates. Now, many of those same companies (including my current) are all leetcoding candidates.

gofreddygo 6y ago

I feel you. I feel fooled too. I worked my ass off at nameless orgs that were willing to hire a no-credential computer science graduate. Always going "above and beyond", built a reputation for getting things done, almost always delivered stuff on time, took ownership, covered up for changing and incomplete requirements, entertained last minute pivots, did what a team lead and architect should be doing even though was always paid as a dev. This basically meant I spent late nights and weekends at home or office getting shit for work done. I've also on many occasions, put fires out in my own and other teams. I always got flattered in all my appraisals, with all my superiors including the CTO of our org. Almost 10 years in, I feel fooled for not seeing the forest for the trees. What a waste of time it all has been ! I get paid the highest that a non FAANG org is willing to pay for my skillset. I always get handed the harder, weirder things and it never ends. I cannot clear these crazy interviews at these endgame orgs without a heavy investment of time grinding stuff of negligible value. Prepping now is an investment that will take months balancing family time and work load. All I had to do a few years ago was just stop. Take a deep breath. Leetcode. Leetcode. Leetcode. Get into the weeds of my favorite language. Build a compiler. Get some research published in some journal or write a book or give some talks. Contribute to open source projects enough to get my name in. Schmooze a bit. Market myself more. And let the projects at work go fk itself ( They did end up that way anyway ) Would have paid off more than what my full time jobs have paid me for the last 10 years. Edit: some comments seem to suggest they learnt a lot of their skills "on the job" and would not have landed their current dream job without it. I am strongly biased to believe there are more blue winged raccoons roaming around in this country than such people who got hired at FAANGs because of what the learned on the job at non-FAANG orgs. All non-loss-making, salary-paying orgs use standard stacks with standard components in two or more enterprise-y languages glued together with a shit ton of in house coded garbage running in production with some standard relational DB. Go try to make your resume sparkle and stand out with that experience. You spend enough time in these ecosystems in production and you see yourself keeping a safe distance from anything that is new, look at any new platform with skepticism and quickly realize how painful that upstream swim is to make fundamental changes in such environments. I still have scars to show from the time (among other fun times) I tried to get cassandra into our production systems only to later be told by the cassandra folks to "RTFM, before doing anything fancy" Its a full time job to keep those up and running not some skill a dev would pick up "on the job"

trimbo 6y ago

This is a truly remarkable take I've never heard before. I honestly wonder if it's true. If it's actually true--and if poor quality of work and reputation mean nothing, just leetcode--it seems like that is just a side effect of extremely rapid expansion and/or churn. Because no employer would willingly hire people like that. That'd be absurd. So the only reason that would be possible if the hiring manager never got wind of someone's work ethic or quality. And it seems like that's only possible with enough disjointedness in the people network, combined with hiring practices that don't care about it.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It does sound distopian. However if it's really true then employers only have themselves to blame. Potential employees are reacting to the incentives in front of them.
- everdrive 6y ago
  In my narrow experience, I have not seen much proof that my employer can: 1) Interview with any sort of success 2) Judge merit after getting the position I think a lot more people may be operating on intuition than you realize.
decafninja 6y ago
I currently produce average to slightly above average quality work while being a "Professional Leetcoder". All my performance reviews have been positive. I could produce significantly better and/or faster work by going "above and beyond", but other than a sentimental feeling of self satisfaction, why bother?

ganafagol 6y ago

There is a point to "staying current" beyond chances in future interviews. Imagine working at a company that has basically found its niche, is doing well, just not growing much so only hiring really slowly. Everybody around you has been there for 20+ years. Everybody working like 20-30 years ago. This kind of bubble is dangerous, not just for the employees' future chances on the job market, but for the company itself. To find the best solutions to the problems in their market, the company needs to stay cutting edge with its tech too. Otherwisr they will get outcompeted in no time. And by doing so, it profits the employees too. If everybody has been around for 20+ years but stays really current, even just for the sake of the company, their employability stays high too! It's a win-win. These rants about "I'm back on the job market and now have to re-learn coding" tend to be a strong sign of complacency. "I already went through this and now want peace and quiet, why am I being forced to learn something new?" Well, because the world is evolving. Keep evolving with it, or gradually disappear in obsolescence. If you don't then that's not just bad for your job chances but even for your company. You'd not want to work at a place that still uses VB6 just because it was hip 20 years ago when everybody was hired. FWIW I work at a company where we are strongly encouraged to stay on top of the game so that we stay competitive in the market. That automatically keeps everybody employable.

blobbers 6y ago
I don't think it's a strong sign of complacency. I think people just don't do toy problems involve coding breadth first searches or determining bipartite graphs. How often to people really write dynamic programming algos in 45 minutes. They don't - they think and tinker. Algorithms can be beautiful to code but most of the time is not spent on this sort of thing. It's fixing null pointer exceptions or parsing json requests or whatever javascript front end engineers do. You definitely have to prepare.
- ganafagol 6y ago
  Please. Neither the original article nor my comment where about interviews asking to implement a breadth first search. That's a different topic. This was about him having to learn C# since it wasn't really around 20 years ago. And having to polish up Python cause it was very different 20 years ago. And other programming practices. You definitely need to stay up to date on the stuff that's relevant to your job. Not because of interviews, but because .. it's your job. If you prepare for an interview and notice that's what's holding you back, then you definitely started to grow complaceny in your job. And maybe your environment made you become that way, then it's not a good environment. If you are up to date on this, then writing a BFS from scratch or debugging a null pointer issue or even json will be a piece of cake. Interview questions are an excuse to have a technical conversation, not to see if you remember some algo from school.

pjmlp 6y ago

The problem is that you never know when you make it to the end game company. I thought about it a couple of times, and then synergies came into play.

jjav 6y ago

> Professional Interviewers It is such a tragedy for our industry. Personally, I don't participate. And encourage everyone to opt out. I want, and do, spend all my efforts in delivering best performing, most secure real products, making customers happy and the infrastructure and code maintainable. I have as much impostor syndrome as anyone (or probably more than most) but very slowly over many years and long string of managers who gush about my performance and always give me highest possible reviews, I've come to accept (if not actually believe) that I'm very good at what I do. And yet, no way I could ever "pass" one of these whiteboard algorithm monkeydance interviews. A company wants to judge based on nonsense that has nothing to do with the job? Then you don't get to hire me, a proven expert with a track record of success. Enjoy hiring a team of people who've spent their life doing artificial exercises and (as a consequence) haven't put much effort into building actual products. I do what I can to improve the industry hiring. I do interview lots of candidates and will never do so via whiteboard monkeydance. I interview based on their experience doing real work, based on the resume. I encourage everyone to do the same and put and end (at least slightly reduce) the leetcode nonsense that's killing the hiring culture.

Olreich 6y ago

I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all. There’s only so many tricks available in these interviews. I’m sure I’m biased, but if you know how to program, programming interviews are pretty easy. I think if you are becoming a Professional Leetcoder, you’re still learning how to do basic programming.

kemiller2002 6y ago

I understand where you are coming from, but I honestly disagree. I always try and do the best job possible, but I don't do it for the company, I do it for me. I think of it as training to make myself better. I am always looking out for my skills and experience, so when the next opportunity comes around, I'm ready to take it. You could say that it's resume stuffing, but I don't think of it and mean it that way. I want to see how things work and practice what I know. I want to incorporate that knowledge and associate it with my past experiences to figure out new things.

decafninja 6y ago
I've been where you were at too. The problem is, no matter how good of a real day to day job I've done and what practical real world skills I've learned, "when the next opportunity comes around" as you say, I wasn't ready to take it - because I got burned by leetcode interviews that have nothing to do with the above. I too, want to do everything you mention, but until I get past the leetcode gatekeepers, it doesn't matter.

ghaff 6y ago

>until I make it into such an "endgame" company. Unless you're close to retirement and don't really need the money, it's unlikely you'll know when you're there. Companies change and/or get into trouble, managers change, projects get canceled, etc. I've been at companies I spent quite a few years at and I still came close to quitting for various reasons (and eventually did). I'd submit there is no predictable endgame over more than a 2-3 year time horizon.

decafninja 6y ago
You're right that "endgame" is different from person to person, and also in the same person's lifetime. My current company was something I would have considered endgame at the start of my career. Now it's not. A company I'd consider to be currently endgame (say, FAANG), may not be 10 years later. For the sake of discussion, as I mentioned in my original comment, I would simply define an endgame company as one where I'd be satisfied staying for a while without further ambition about finding the next great thing. Where I'd be content doing a helluva great job and not even think about leetcode. My best friend ended up at one of the FAANGs a few years ago and is doing exactly that. Although he is now afraid that his leetcode skills have atrophied and he'd fail interviews horribly if for whatever (involuntary) reason he ends up having to look for another job. But he has no short term intention of leaving and thus hasn't been grinding leetcode for a while.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I confess that, as someone who has never been primarily a developer (done a number of different things over time), I find this whole leetcode thing beyond strange. I have never in my life studied for interviews other than reading up on a specific company I'm interviewing with. ADDED: And every job since the one out of grad school decades ago has been directly through someone I knew.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    You're not the only one. My wife finds the whole thing bizarre. As do my non-techie friends. My wife's best friend thought it stupid (actually, I agree - it is stupid). Then she started dating a SWE, who is apparently also leetcoding in his spare time.

skeeter2020 6y ago

IF yopur #1 skill is grinding leetcode and continually jumping by being an expert interviewer, when & why would you ever stop? Have you not in fact discovered that this is your endgame? The parallels with how we envision hell are obvious...

mtnGoat 6y ago

I dont know if I like this advice. I feel like you will never find a home at any company if you are always looking for the next one. It's like a relationship, you'll never truly love the one you are with, if you keep dating or looking at others. Plus, just a general poor moral value, IMHO.

decafninja 6y ago
It used to be that staying at one company a long time was considered a good thing. Nowadays, at least in tech, quite a few people consider it a red flag. The world we now live in.

golergka 6y ago

> I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Does it mean that CV credentials like "developed requirements for a complex system, built it from scratch and overcome significant technical challenges in doing so" don't mean anything, in your opinion? Because in my experience interviewing, things like this get a lot of attention, are discussed in depth and leave impression on the interviewer. I think that my results interviewing would be significantly worse if it was just "fixed bugs and did incremental improvements" instead. But again, I have very little experience (or desire) interviewing at FAANGs of the world, may be they do things differently?