4 ms·

I bet half of HR’s questions are stolen from someone else anyway. I hope ppl who write coding questions for a living check their site out for stolen exercises

I bet half of HR’s questions are stolen from someone else anyway. I hope ppl who write coding questions for a living check their site out for stolen exercises they’re so concerned about.

cute_boi 5y ago
Most of them are simple modification of algorithm course like A star algorithm, DFS, BFS and they have gall to dmca repo. Idk how can HR is so spineless to report such DMCA. Companies shouldn't use such platform to write coding question.
- TuringNYC 5y ago
  I think Cormen, Leiserson,Rivest, and Stein could probably DMCA takedown all of Hacker Rank. The questions are not much different from the textbook.
  - CornCobs 5y ago
    Offtopic but TIL what CLRS stood for
kamaal 5y ago
Indeed. The standard practice while designing these questions is to take what already exists(Classic DS/Algo questions, questions on other OJ sites) and then add puzzle aspects to them, or a slight variation in the solution that involves a 'small trick' to it. Leetcode almost feels like the defacto question bank for people who want to do interview prep. People just take questions from there and add small variations to it. At this point in time this is worse than judging math skills by checking a persons memorisation of multiplication tables. Only people who ace these tests are unproductive at their current jobs, and spend whole days memorising these things. If you are hiring based on these tests. You are quite literally hiring wrongest possible people for the job. Nobody answering these questions are inventing novel algorithms for the questions asked.
- xtracto 5y ago
  This was 100% the case for a startup I worked for 4 years ago: we actually used hackerrank and asked 3 of their questions. We realized that the people who better answered them were college kids /recent graduates who had specialised in algorithmic puzzle solving. They mainly programmed in C , but their code was way too far away of what you would like to see in a production environment. The best people for us were the ones that had spent their free time checking different technologies and doing crazy projects (like reverse engineering something, or developing a small game)
  - kamaal 5y ago
    This is so important and most people don't realize this. Ability to build things quickly, make tools, write/rewrite stuff. All this is so much more important than memory skills, or even for that matter novel algorithm design skills(even questions that demand novel algorithms are rare in most production environments). That given, it's a shame that our interview skills are no where close to hiring people who can build anything at all. The problem is a lot of these top companies have tons of money and time, to spend doing these things. They can even end up hiring the wrong people and it wouldn't matter all that much because they have lots of money, and every once in a while a genuine contributor slips in and makes up for everyone else. Now everyone wants to do this, when they don't have the same conditions.

I bet half of HR’s questions are stolen from someone else anyway. I hope ppl who write coding questions for a living check their site out for stolen exercises they’re so concerned about.

cute_boi 5y ago

Most of them are simple modification of algorithm course like A star algorithm, DFS, BFS and they have gall to dmca repo. Idk how can HR is so spineless to report such DMCA. Companies shouldn't use such platform to write coding question.

TuringNYC 5y ago
I think Cormen, Leiserson,Rivest, and Stein could probably DMCA takedown all of Hacker Rank. The questions are not much different from the textbook.
- CornCobs 5y ago
  Offtopic but TIL what CLRS stood for

kamaal 5y ago

Indeed. The standard practice while designing these questions is to take what already exists(Classic DS/Algo questions, questions on other OJ sites) and then add puzzle aspects to them, or a slight variation in the solution that involves a 'small trick' to it. Leetcode almost feels like the defacto question bank for people who want to do interview prep. People just take questions from there and add small variations to it. At this point in time this is worse than judging math skills by checking a persons memorisation of multiplication tables. Only people who ace these tests are unproductive at their current jobs, and spend whole days memorising these things. If you are hiring based on these tests. You are quite literally hiring wrongest possible people for the job. Nobody answering these questions are inventing novel algorithms for the questions asked.

xtracto 5y ago
This was 100% the case for a startup I worked for 4 years ago: we actually used hackerrank and asked 3 of their questions. We realized that the people who better answered them were college kids /recent graduates who had specialised in algorithmic puzzle solving. They mainly programmed in C , but their code was way too far away of what you would like to see in a production environment. The best people for us were the ones that had spent their free time checking different technologies and doing crazy projects (like reverse engineering something, or developing a small game)
- kamaal 5y ago
  This is so important and most people don't realize this. Ability to build things quickly, make tools, write/rewrite stuff. All this is so much more important than memory skills, or even for that matter novel algorithm design skills(even questions that demand novel algorithms are rare in most production environments). That given, it's a shame that our interview skills are no where close to hiring people who can build anything at all. The problem is a lot of these top companies have tons of money and time, to spend doing these things. They can even end up hiring the wrong people and it wouldn't matter all that much because they have lots of money, and every once in a while a genuine contributor slips in and makes up for everyone else. Now everyone wants to do this, when they don't have the same conditions.