7 ms·

Somebody here on HN recently shared the notion that leetcode tests are a legal way to discriminate by age or lifestyle, as older and well-rounded developers do

Somebody here on HN recently shared the notion that leetcode tests are a legal way to discriminate by age or lifestyle, as older and well-rounded developers do not have the time or inclination to grind on such things.

tofurocks 5y ago
I don't understand what you mean here - would a company not want a well rounded developer ?
- scollet 5y ago
  Harder to exploit experience.
- tclancy 5y ago
  We are expensive, tend to tell the younger devs to tell each other their salaries and not put up with bad management.
- lolinder 5y ago
  The large companies don't need tens of thousands of system architects. They need tens of thousands of coders who can do what they're told on small parts of a system without fussing too much about the bigger picture. I think that's what OP is referring to—leetcode filters for young developers who don't need to understand all the reasons why they're doing what they're doing.
  - a10c 5y ago
    Why would a well rounded senior developer be interviewing for a role that requires a code monkey?
    - kodah 5y ago
      No job is ever phrased as needing a code-monkey and no one wants to think of themselves as a primate doing a very specific task.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      Why would you put out ads for senior engineers when you'll make them perform code monkey tasks?
      - hiptobecubic 5y ago
        Every job has random overhead and your productivity is boosted quite a lot by already being familiar with some random bullshit problem like "don't configure your test environment this way or you'll run out of file handles after a day or two." Hiring more experienced people means fewer delays due to issues like that, even for boring "code-monkey" work.
throwaway_merig 5y ago
They are convenient and standardized ways of testing. These "legal ways to discriminate" that companies come up with are nonsense, that's not what is happening.
chrismv48 5y ago
This doesn't make sense to me. I work in a FAANG and we are desperate to hire senior engineers and it wouldn't make any sense for us to turn our nose up at older candidates.
IThoughtYouGNU 5y ago
I believe this hypothesis.
throwaway894345 5y ago
Seems like this could cut either way. Yeah, older people are more likely to have other priorities, but they’re also more likely to be financially secure and thus able to trade money for time to study. Also, they’re more likely to have gained time management/prioritization skills and discipline that they could apply toward studying. Ultimately it seems like arguing that older people lack time or inclination depends on ageist stereotypes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- foldr 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I am one of the older people in our dev team, and also once of the only people who cares even slightly about big O. I’m talking simple stuff, like knowing whether indexing a given list data type is constant time or O(n). To be fair, it’s not particularly relevant to what we do.
  - ericbarrett 5y ago
    I think asking a candidate some basic big-O notation questions in an interview is great. Asking a DevOps candidate if a search algorithm developed and published in 2018 is O(n log(n)) or O(n log(n) K^(log n)), and then dinging them for not getting a perfectly correct answer, is over the top the kind of stuff that's used for age discrimination. Not because the young candidate will know it, but rather they will be excused for "almost getting it" and "having a good attitude" etc. in the hiring committee.
- nosianu 5y ago
  I think the argument is that more experienced people are less willing to do useless things just because somebody wants them to. I could never go back to university for that reason - studying, fine, I did a ton of courses on edX and Coursera, but I pick what interests me and a lot of test problems you are given (at least in my experience, at university and later online) too often are more about understanding the intent of the person creating the problem rather than anything useful. I could also never go back to the army (Germany, mandatory service, battle tank mechanic) and take commands from some guy who just wants to posture. I'm not any less willing to study than I was at university - but now I refuse to do what I think is useless or meaningless. Studying for tests is high on that anti-list. Not all tests, I had no issues with tests I took for things that needed certification, e.g. sailing or for the pilot license, but that stuff was useful in practice and not nearly as over the top because those tests were not designed to "weed out weaklings". EDIT: An anecdote for that last phrase After writing the comment I got curious and googled that exact phrase. I found this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smythe_(physicist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smythe_(physicist) > He authored a textbook on electromagnetism called Static and Dynamic Electricity, which was a widely used reference in the field during the 20th century. His electromagnetism course was modeled after the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos examinations and designed to "weed out weaklings." Smythe's course was so infamous that future Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Vernon Smith switched to electrical engineering from physics to avoid it.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
As a successful developer well past middle age, I find this to be nonsense. The most common complaint I hear around this is "yeah, that discriminates against people who don't have time to grind to do the preparation." Why is it weird that people should spend time preparing for ask for a new job? I mean, ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions, or how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards). If you don't want to spend time preparing for job interviews, then fine, don't. But don't claim "discrimination" when there are those of us willing to sacrifice to put in the hours to prepare.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards). They only do it once, though, not for every single interview.
- nhoughto 5y ago
  Was going to disagree but ended up coming around to the argument. I guess the difference is at a certain point preparation turns into a wasteful arms race, it’s not just a reasonable amount of effort put into your next gig but too much effort on things that don’t really represent real day to day / reality. Not sure where the line is, but there is definitely waste and it definitely favors those with spare time. Does seem like there is a growing movement to explicitly not do leetcode style reviews at many places which is good.
- tuyiown 5y ago
  > ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions Training is basically the main work performer has to do to earn his life, and all training is valuable. You could compare with professional athlete and see how it’s absurd. > If you don't want to spend time preparing for job interviews, then fine, don't. The idea is that you have to understand the process. If you don’t see the point of certain exercise, you search for a rationalization, and discrimination looks like a good one. Also, the discrimination is not against people that won’t train for interview, but to give a bias to people that don’t evaluate returns on their invested time
ur-whale 5y ago
> a legal way to discriminate Interviews are by definition a legal way to discriminate.

tofurocks 5y ago

I don't understand what you mean here - would a company not want a well rounded developer ?

scollet 5y ago
Harder to exploit experience.
tclancy 5y ago
We are expensive, tend to tell the younger devs to tell each other their salaries and not put up with bad management.
lolinder 5y ago
The large companies don't need tens of thousands of system architects. They need tens of thousands of coders who can do what they're told on small parts of a system without fussing too much about the bigger picture. I think that's what OP is referring to—leetcode filters for young developers who don't need to understand all the reasons why they're doing what they're doing.
- a10c 5y ago
  Why would a well rounded senior developer be interviewing for a role that requires a code monkey?
  - kodah 5y ago
    No job is ever phrased as needing a code-monkey and no one wants to think of themselves as a primate doing a very specific task.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Why would you put out ads for senior engineers when you'll make them perform code monkey tasks?
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      Every job has random overhead and your productivity is boosted quite a lot by already being familiar with some random bullshit problem like "don't configure your test environment this way or you'll run out of file handles after a day or two." Hiring more experienced people means fewer delays due to issues like that, even for boring "code-monkey" work.

throwaway_merig 5y ago

They are convenient and standardized ways of testing. These "legal ways to discriminate" that companies come up with are nonsense, that's not what is happening.

chrismv48 5y ago

This doesn't make sense to me. I work in a FAANG and we are desperate to hire senior engineers and it wouldn't make any sense for us to turn our nose up at older candidates.

IThoughtYouGNU 5y ago

I believe this hypothesis.

throwaway894345 5y ago

Seems like this could cut either way. Yeah, older people are more likely to have other priorities, but they’re also more likely to be financially secure and thus able to trade money for time to study. Also, they’re more likely to have gained time management/prioritization skills and discipline that they could apply toward studying. Ultimately it seems like arguing that older people lack time or inclination depends on ageist stereotypes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
foldr 5y ago
Anecdotally, I am one of the older people in our dev team, and also once of the only people who cares even slightly about big O. I’m talking simple stuff, like knowing whether indexing a given list data type is constant time or O(n). To be fair, it’s not particularly relevant to what we do.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  I think asking a candidate some basic big-O notation questions in an interview is great. Asking a DevOps candidate if a search algorithm developed and published in 2018 is O(n log(n)) or O(n log(n) K^(log n)), and then dinging them for not getting a perfectly correct answer, is over the top the kind of stuff that's used for age discrimination. Not because the young candidate will know it, but rather they will be excused for "almost getting it" and "having a good attitude" etc. in the hiring committee.
nosianu 5y ago
I think the argument is that more experienced people are less willing to do useless things just because somebody wants them to. I could never go back to university for that reason - studying, fine, I did a ton of courses on edX and Coursera, but I pick what interests me and a lot of test problems you are given (at least in my experience, at university and later online) too often are more about understanding the intent of the person creating the problem rather than anything useful. I could also never go back to the army (Germany, mandatory service, battle tank mechanic) and take commands from some guy who just wants to posture. I'm not any less willing to study than I was at university - but now I refuse to do what I think is useless or meaningless. Studying for tests is high on that anti-list. Not all tests, I had no issues with tests I took for things that needed certification, e.g. sailing or for the pilot license, but that stuff was useful in practice and not nearly as over the top because those tests were not designed to "weed out weaklings". EDIT: An anecdote for that last phrase After writing the comment I got curious and googled that exact phrase. I found this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smythe_(physicist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smythe_(physicist) > He authored a textbook on electromagnetism called Static and Dynamic Electricity, which was a widely used reference in the field during the 20th century. His electromagnetism course was modeled after the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos examinations and designed to "weed out weaklings." Smythe's course was so infamous that future Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Vernon Smith switched to electrical engineering from physics to avoid it.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

As a successful developer well past middle age, I find this to be nonsense. The most common complaint I hear around this is "yeah, that discriminates against people who don't have time to grind to do the preparation." Why is it weird that people should spend time preparing for ask for a new job? I mean, ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions, or how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards). If you don't want to spend time preparing for job interviews, then fine, don't. But don't claim "discrimination" when there are those of us willing to sacrifice to put in the hours to prepare.

lelanthran 5y ago
> how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards). They only do it once, though, not for every single interview.
nhoughto 5y ago
Was going to disagree but ended up coming around to the argument. I guess the difference is at a certain point preparation turns into a wasteful arms race, it’s not just a reasonable amount of effort put into your next gig but too much effort on things that don’t really represent real day to day / reality. Not sure where the line is, but there is definitely waste and it definitely favors those with spare time. Does seem like there is a growing movement to explicitly not do leetcode style reviews at many places which is good.
tuyiown 5y ago
> ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions Training is basically the main work performer has to do to earn his life, and all training is valuable. You could compare with professional athlete and see how it’s absurd. > If you don't want to spend time preparing for job interviews, then fine, don't. The idea is that you have to understand the process. If you don’t see the point of certain exercise, you search for a rationalization, and discrimination looks like a good one. Also, the discrimination is not against people that won’t train for interview, but to give a bias to people that don’t evaluate returns on their invested time

ur-whale 5y ago

> a legal way to discriminate Interviews are by definition a legal way to discriminate.