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Delving into the individual is complicated because it brings up enormous amounts of pop psychology. We're not as good as evaluating people as we think. It's nar

Delving into the individual is complicated because it brings up enormous amounts of pop psychology. We're not as good as evaluating people as we think. It's nary impossible to tell how competent someone is in a discussion, really what we can see is their communications skills, presentation, confidence, and maybe EQ/general intelligence and hints of subject matter knowledge. Leetcode, far from silly, is far more likely to get an idea of whether or not they can do the job ahead of them. Joel Spoolsky speaks to this directly: get people to code. In my younger years, I noticed that there was zero correlation between the quality of code of all of my mentors/seniors and their work ethic, composure, communication skills etc.. Great, thoughtful organized thinkers who could barely code. Great leaders with lazy schleppy code. Obnoxious weird guys obsessive over absolute perfection (to greater or lesser extent). Leetcoding on completely irrelevant or arcane things is a waste of time, but given a very straight forward, general problem which 'homework' wouldn't have helped with - works well. A big misunderstanding about leeting is people think that the problem being solved is 'test worthy', like an exam - and really it shouldn't at all. The other issue relates to people's ability to slog through documentation and find solutions to tricky problems because that's what we do 1/2 the time but is harder to test. Someone who can take basic requirements, understand them, communicate the tradeoffs, and write something approaching 'clean code' after a couple of iterations - that's worth gold. It also requires kind of a 'rounded experience' with a bunch of tech so that they have at least a bit of intuition for it. I honestly feel the best devs are not the one's extohlling some kind of genius, or deep knowledge, but rather more of an 'extreme common sense' where they can absorb all of the fuzz of a situation and produce something simple and coherent. I feel the 'personal' issues relevant will also come out well enough during some basic leeting, though obviously that part of the interviewing has to be done.

wildrhythms 5y ago
I absolutely disagree with this. Engineers are perfectly capable of walking through a problem with a candidate and almost immediately measuring their ability in how they approach it. In fact, I would argue that engineers are the most qualified to assess a candidates engineering ability. If the contention is that Leetcode measures the bare minimum, the lowest bar, the 100-course material, then what does that say about the people who are being hired? An interview should be far more nuanced and compassionate than that.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Well you're disagreeing with the best practices of the industry. Spolksy articulates it well here [1] "Engineers are perfectly capable of walking through a problem with a candidate and almost immediately measuring their ability in how they approach it" Software is not Engineering in the classical sense, and almost zero software is Engineering, and almost zero developers have a formal Engineering background. The material reality of Software is understanding problems spaces and producing coherent solutions, sometimes at different scale, sometimes using different bits of tech, but a degree of coding ability is definitely a necessary aspect. So if we adjust your statement: 'Only a developer can judge a developer' - of course - that's the point of leeting. In what scenario would 'talking' in abstractions about something be more useful than 'actually doing it'? Coding is a huge part of the job. Of course, it's not everything, and some devs. may have really strong skills and yet a narrow view of things, but that's actually easier to change. Getting along is important as well, so that's why we have an interview ... but there's no avoiding leeting/close whiteboarding. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...

wildrhythms 5y ago

I absolutely disagree with this. Engineers are perfectly capable of walking through a problem with a candidate and almost immediately measuring their ability in how they approach it. In fact, I would argue that engineers are the most qualified to assess a candidates engineering ability. If the contention is that Leetcode measures the bare minimum, the lowest bar, the 100-course material, then what does that say about the people who are being hired? An interview should be far more nuanced and compassionate than that.

jollybean 5y ago
Well you're disagreeing with the best practices of the industry. Spolksy articulates it well here [1] "Engineers are perfectly capable of walking through a problem with a candidate and almost immediately measuring their ability in how they approach it" Software is not Engineering in the classical sense, and almost zero software is Engineering, and almost zero developers have a formal Engineering background. The material reality of Software is understanding problems spaces and producing coherent solutions, sometimes at different scale, sometimes using different bits of tech, but a degree of coding ability is definitely a necessary aspect. So if we adjust your statement: 'Only a developer can judge a developer' - of course - that's the point of leeting. In what scenario would 'talking' in abstractions about something be more useful than 'actually doing it'? Coding is a huge part of the job. Of course, it's not everything, and some devs. may have really strong skills and yet a narrow view of things, but that's actually easier to change. Getting along is important as well, so that's why we have an interview ... but there's no avoiding leeting/close whiteboarding. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...