7 ms·

Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to

by AJRF 5y ago

Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. Obviously it doesn't always work like that.

pawelwentpawel 5y ago
I went through a marathon of interviews for one FAANG company (8 in total - coding screen, 4x in first round, 3x in second round). I did enough preparation to remember quite a couple of the Leetcode solutions by heart. I was pretty much a code printer if I got one of those, not much thinking involved anymore. I reckon it was clearly visible that I've seen a similar question before which is unavoidable if you've done enough prep. While it's probably not what an interviewer is looking for, having the most common solutions memorised gives you an advantage of time. A coding interview usually consists of two challenges. If you get stuck on the first one and take too much time to answer it, you won't have enough time to go through the second one. To avoid the code printer perception you can always go through an explanation what alternative solutions could be applied to the given problem, what their complexities would be and why the one presented is the best.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  You need to act and pretend to think it through. Then you seem like a brilliant programmer they want to hire rather than someone that recently worked on the problem.
tchalla 5y ago
> Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. And yet, they routinely do pass these interviews.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
keyb0ardninja 5y ago
> Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. You could solve all these questions as long as you are good at problem solving, *given enough time*. However, with tight time constraints and perfomance pressure, the only way you could solve all these questions is memorizing and practicing all these algorithms.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  There was a hilarious rant about a FAANG hiring question that was something like: "Write an algorithm for detecting if a linked list has any loops in it, in linear time, using a constant amount of memory." Apparently the correct answer is to use "Robert W. Floyd's tortoise and hare algorithm", which is trivial to explain and code. The catch? It took a decade of computer science research between the original statement of the problem and Floyd discovering the solution. So... no worries, you have an hour, a marker, and a whiteboard. Your time starts: now.
  - porb121 5y ago
    it took a few million years until Newton figured out basic mechanics. but i don't think it's unreasonable to ask a junior engineer some basic kinematics questions!
    - Macha 5y ago
      A software engineer? Sounds totally unreasonable. A mechanical engineer, sure, it's going to be required material on their education. The tortoise and hare algorithm is not the foundational skill required to make software work the way an understanding of motion is for building structures. That's why it's often omitted from educational material yet these people are able to produce usable software after even something like a bootcamp (which I guarantee basically no bootcamps ever touched this algorithm). I'm not sure I approve of asking even more well known algorithms like Djikstra's algorithm or A* in a job interview, unless the role was something that specifically required that area of knowledge like building pathfinders for video games or robots or something.
sdevonoes 5y ago
> the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. I thought it was exactly those who Google wants to pass. Anecdote: ex-colleague of mine who is not specially bright studied 3 months how to "crack the coding interview" and got a job at Google. His knowledge about algorithms and data structures was like mine: I know what a tree is, I know there exists operations one can perform on them and some of them are more performant/efficient than others... but I would need to Google how to "reverse a binary tree" if I had to do it in less than 1h.
- pinewurst 5y ago
  I read an article recently about Google’s fairly awful interactions with HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities). One thing that caught my eye was Google’s disapproval of seemingly standard CS programs in favor of a syllabus for cramming algorithms into student heads. That was one of their excuses for hiring differentials.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  I’m trying to think of how many tree structures I’ve encountered in all the projects I’ve ever programmed on, in my entire career. Maybe one or two?
  - AJRF 5y ago
    You probably aren't the demographic Google want/needs to hire by the sound of it.
    - Macha 5y ago
      A perusal of Google's recent software track record would indicate that optimum efficiency aided by a wide knowledge of a library of algorithms and manual implementation of the same is either not what Google actually cares about, or if it was what they think they care about, not effectively delivered by the steps they take to achieve it.
  - Macha 5y ago
zealsham 5y ago
I've always said that FAANG don't hire professional software engineers, they only hire professional leet coders
omgwtfbbq 5y ago
>Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. That's just absurd. If someone with no "algorithm" experience who was a good problem solver had to work out an answer from scratch for the interview its almost certain they're going to find the brute force answer and FAANGs pretty universally want the most efficient one so these people would routinely fail. Its totally clear that what FAANG hiring optimizes for is recent CS graduates who passed tough Algorithm weed out courses at well known colleges in the past 18-24 months. They are young with no families or obligations and are happy to work 12 hour days at Google because they have hip open offices and ping pong tables.

by AJRF 5y ago

pawelwentpawel 5y ago

I went through a marathon of interviews for one FAANG company (8 in total - coding screen, 4x in first round, 3x in second round). I did enough preparation to remember quite a couple of the Leetcode solutions by heart. I was pretty much a code printer if I got one of those, not much thinking involved anymore. I reckon it was clearly visible that I've seen a similar question before which is unavoidable if you've done enough prep. While it's probably not what an interviewer is looking for, having the most common solutions memorised gives you an advantage of time. A coding interview usually consists of two challenges. If you get stuck on the first one and take too much time to answer it, you won't have enough time to go through the second one. To avoid the code printer perception you can always go through an explanation what alternative solutions could be applied to the given problem, what their complexities would be and why the one presented is the best.

bcrosby95 5y ago
You need to act and pretend to think it through. Then you seem like a brilliant programmer they want to hire rather than someone that recently worked on the problem.

tchalla 5y ago

> Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. And yet, they routinely do pass these interviews.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

keyb0ardninja 5y ago

> Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. You could solve all these questions as long as you are good at problem solving, *given enough time*. However, with tight time constraints and perfomance pressure, the only way you could solve all these questions is memorizing and practicing all these algorithms.

jiggawatts 5y ago
There was a hilarious rant about a FAANG hiring question that was something like: "Write an algorithm for detecting if a linked list has any loops in it, in linear time, using a constant amount of memory." Apparently the correct answer is to use "Robert W. Floyd's tortoise and hare algorithm", which is trivial to explain and code. The catch? It took a decade of computer science research between the original statement of the problem and Floyd discovering the solution. So... no worries, you have an hour, a marker, and a whiteboard. Your time starts: now.
- porb121 5y ago
  it took a few million years until Newton figured out basic mechanics. but i don't think it's unreasonable to ask a junior engineer some basic kinematics questions!
  - Macha 5y ago
    A software engineer? Sounds totally unreasonable. A mechanical engineer, sure, it's going to be required material on their education. The tortoise and hare algorithm is not the foundational skill required to make software work the way an understanding of motion is for building structures. That's why it's often omitted from educational material yet these people are able to produce usable software after even something like a bootcamp (which I guarantee basically no bootcamps ever touched this algorithm). I'm not sure I approve of asking even more well known algorithms like Djikstra's algorithm or A* in a job interview, unless the role was something that specifically required that area of knowledge like building pathfinders for video games or robots or something.

sdevonoes 5y ago

> the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. I thought it was exactly those who Google wants to pass. Anecdote: ex-colleague of mine who is not specially bright studied 3 months how to "crack the coding interview" and got a job at Google. His knowledge about algorithms and data structures was like mine: I know what a tree is, I know there exists operations one can perform on them and some of them are more performant/efficient than others... but I would need to Google how to "reverse a binary tree" if I had to do it in less than 1h.

pinewurst 5y ago
I read an article recently about Google’s fairly awful interactions with HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities). One thing that caught my eye was Google’s disapproval of seemingly standard CS programs in favor of a syllabus for cramming algorithms into student heads. That was one of their excuses for hiring differentials.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
I’m trying to think of how many tree structures I’ve encountered in all the projects I’ve ever programmed on, in my entire career. Maybe one or two?
- AJRF 5y ago
  You probably aren't the demographic Google want/needs to hire by the sound of it.
  - Macha 5y ago
    A perusal of Google's recent software track record would indicate that optimum efficiency aided by a wide knowledge of a library of algorithms and manual implementation of the same is either not what Google actually cares about, or if it was what they think they care about, not effectively delivered by the steps they take to achieve it.
- Macha 5y ago

zealsham 5y ago

I've always said that FAANG don't hire professional software engineers, they only hire professional leet coders

omgwtfbbq 5y ago

>Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. That's just absurd. If someone with no "algorithm" experience who was a good problem solver had to work out an answer from scratch for the interview its almost certain they're going to find the brute force answer and FAANGs pretty universally want the most efficient one so these people would routinely fail. Its totally clear that what FAANG hiring optimizes for is recent CS graduates who passed tough Algorithm weed out courses at well known colleges in the past 18-24 months. They are young with no families or obligations and are happy to work 12 hour days at Google because they have hip open offices and ping pong tables.