14 ms·

I've been at it intensively for a couple months and my mind simply refuses to cooperate. If anything, after having done 400+ problems I seem to be worse at them

• drjasonharrison 5y ago
  Where is this generation's "Moving Mount Fuji" that explains the history of leetcode puzzles and their ineffectiveness? https://m.slashdot.org/story/34239 https://m.slashdot.org/story/34239
  • LAC-Tech 5y ago
    Moving Mount Fuji I see someone at microsoft was a fan of The Shamen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpjnzxtZ6Qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpjnzxtZ6Qg
    • selimthegrim 5y ago
      The video is unavailable.
      • why_only_15 5y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQ98A-6mG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQ98A-6mG8 should be available for US users
  • actually_a_dog 5y ago
    I wonder that as well. I don't see any significant connection between Leetcode or Leetcode-style questions and anything resembling what a company theoretically should be looking for in an engineer. The only thing I can come up with is that being able to memorize or otherwise internalize so many different problems is a proxy for intelligence (general mental ability). If so, I suspect it's a fairly weak proxy. But, is that it? In the US, at least, not a lot of employers will give a straight up test of general mental ability (IQ test), likely because they see it as potentially attracting lawsuits. This is because IQ tests show a well-documented racial disparity in scores, which has not been shown to be correlated with anything genetic. Rather, the problem is either traced back to differences in family socioeconomic status growing up, or cultural bias issues with the tests. Everything in the previous paragraph can be verified in a few minutes of Googling, so, I'm not going to litter this comment with citations when the obvious keywords will produce the information mentioned here. But, everything else, including what's to follow this, should be considered pure speculation on my part. Given all this context, I can only think of 2 obvious reasons companies resort to using LC or LC-style interviews: 1. As a proxy for a test of general mental ability, as previously mentioned, or 2. Cargo culting, as with the whole "How would you move Mt. Fuji?" phenomenon. I don't personally have a great deal of insight into which it is, or, if there's a third explanation that I'm completely missing. I also don't know whether there's any research supporting or refuting the idea that LC puzzles provide a valid interview signal for software engineers. All I really know is that these type of problems exercise skills that are not what one uses on the job as a SWE, so, it seems rather illogical to use them as a main component of your hiring process.
    • dnissley 5y ago
      It's a weak proxy for general mental ability, but it's also a signal for high conscientiousness -- someone willing to spend a couple months studying to the test is showing that they have the ability to work hard on something over some length of time.
      • actually_a_dog 5y ago
        Why not bring back the civil service exams of Imperial China, then? Surely one's willingness to undertake extended study of the classics of Chinese literature, and to master a stylized form of discourse about them is also a signal of conscientiousness, isn't it? As a "bonus," this is likely to take far longer than the few months people spend practicing Leetcode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay
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  • kazinator 5y ago
    I would move Mount Fuji by having it situated on an island where like three continental plates meet, and then just kick back and watch. So to speak.
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• Fattestmoron 5y ago
  You are dead on. I am burnt out from my previous position and jumping through hoops for people who don't know what they are doing. The science degree was useful for when I did advanced math, before the finance industry figured it would just abandon complex math in favor of statistical learning.
  • omginternets 5y ago
    There are jobs that are not like this. I’m very happy with my current employer. They’re hiring. Want an intro?
    • Fattestmoron 5y ago
      Sure, thanks, I'd appreciate it, or at least it would be interesting to see what is being done in that area.
      • omginternets 5y ago
        Can you give me your email address (or Matrix, if you have it)? I’ll shoot you a message and we can have a quick chat about it. Plus, it seems like you could use a bit of good conversation :)
  • xscott 5y ago
    There are definitely places that value non-formulaic advanced math. I spent most of the last 20 years (before retiring) doing signal processing, and some of it was very research oriented (no standard answers). Don't get me wrong, I burned out for other reasons, but if you're looking for a job writing math oriented software, they are out there. Maybe consider finding a new area. Maybe take a break first though :-)
• dpweb 5y ago
  Who cares what companies want or trying to chase some huge payday. It’s all very boring. What we do is a craft. Those things on lc are the foundations of our craft. I want to know everything about my craft, and a lifelong student of it, so I like sites like lc. I’ll take it over trying read page after page of some big comp sci book.
  • omginternets 5y ago
    Most of the interesting stuff is in papers and books, not on leetcode …
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    It sounds like that website is a shallow representation of this craft. A big part is working with stakeholders in a project, understanding needs and communicating what is possible. Only a portion of the craft is about writing algorithms.
  • baq 5y ago
    In the industry computer science knowledge is useful on average once a month when you decide between a hash map or a vector. The hard part is figuring out what the customer actually wants.
    • josephg 5y ago
      > once a month This is incredibly dependant on your company, team and role. I’ve been knee deep in data structures and algorithms for the last year. When I was at (FAANG) years ago I worked with people who did this stuff full time. You’ll find roles which use these skills in AI, AAA game dev, finance, operating systems and so on. But probably 95% of commercial work is styling and wiring buttons. Even at big tech companies most of the work is plumbing. The skills you learn on leetcode are completely irrelevant in those roles.
      • giantg2 5y ago
        Depends on where you are in finance. I work for a financial company an nobody I worked with was dedicated to algorithms. They seem to rather take the finance PhDs and teach them how to code rather than use developers for that stuff. The rest of us are just handling boring plumbing.
• jjav 5y ago
  This leetcode (and similar) nonsense is really ruining our industry. I've been delivering commercial products (that's the goal, no?) for over twenty years, regularly get high praise and top ranks in reviews, get promoted often including to "distinguished" and "chief" levels (always as a technical IC, not in management). Yet.. no way I'd ever pass any of these leetcode style memorization interviews. I guess companies think that proves I can't develop? Funny. But sad. Our industry should not be like this. Personally I feel lucky that this leetcode interview disease started after I was fairly senior already, so I'm getting hired based on track record and connections who love to hire me to deliver products. Hopefully, fingers crossed, that'll carry me to retirement. But if I was in my 20s or early 30s, I'd be looking to leave tech entirely and go into something else where experience is actually appreciated and valued. None of my high school friends who went into medicine, law, finance, etc have this type of problem in their industries.
  • onion2k 5y ago
    I've been delivering commercial products (that's the goal, no?) No. Once a company grows to a sufficient size the goal stops being delivering products and starts being not ^&*£ing up the product that generates a lot of money. The aim is to hire people who won't get things wrong, either by making errors or by introducing new unproven ideas.
    • jjav 5y ago
      "Deliver commercial products" includes the part of continuing to deliver those products over many years and many releases, without any regressions. It's part of the job.
      • onion2k 5y ago
        OK, but it's a different set of skills. Leetcode challenges optimize for finding devs that believe there's One True Way to do things, and that creatively deviating or using a mathematically non-optimal solution for reasons outside of the code itself is Bad and Wrong. If you want to continue delivering a successful product without breaking things those are good things to look for.
• _0ffh 5y ago
  Surely! If what you want is uniform, interchangeable cogwheels for the machine, you check if your candidates can act as uniform, interchangeable cogwheels for the machine.
  • ngc248 5y ago
    If everyone is different, how will you decide whom to pick? or filter out. This is why there are standardized tests etc. In our industry it is leetcode, it is a grind, but it is what it is, a standardized filter.
    • _0ffh 5y ago
      It depends on how your shop is organised. Big corps like interchangeability in their work force, because they wouldn't even know how to allocate their employees as individuals. Smaller shops are better able to exploit specific skill profiles and may even tailor some business decisions to make the best use of their specific strengths.
    • vanusa 5y ago
      If everyone is different, how will you decide whom to pick? Remember those "thinking outside the box" skills we're supposed to have? This is what we need to start using them on.
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  > Tried architectures/patterns are what is expected. Don't forget that software engineering is often up to 100 people team sport. If every repo and every algorithm has a special snowflake unique flair put upon it, then you have to relearn everything each time you open someone else's repo... also you cannot directly hire for the work, instead you have to hire smart people who start nearly at zero to rapidly learn the nuance of each repo they work on. This is a young man's[2] game (before intelligence crystalizes and energy levels wane) If there is a good amount of run of the mill computerscience/eng then you can hire people who can start fast(er) and they can build off assumption rather than on having a bunch of special code precariously "cached" in their working memory. [1]: I'm speaking in generalities, yes some young people are tired/fixed mindset, yes some older people are energetic/flexible -- but afaik the psychology/science bears this difference out