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> There are plenty of passionate software engineers who think those problems are actually fun. There are plenty of passionate software engineers who don’t. Com

> There are plenty of passionate software engineers who think those problems are actually fun. There are plenty of passionate software engineers who don’t. Competitive programmers maybe. I like writing naive code that does something useful, where useful sometimes mean performance. When you revisit or just step away from the problem, you’ll have an aha moment of how to solve it more efficiently, or more elegantly. The Leetcode style interview expects finding that insight in the first 5-10 minutes of the interview. Here, more grinding increases the probability you arrive that rote insight. Rote memorization is not very fun, especially for software engineers who like assembling complex things from simple primitives and first principles.

anyfoo 5y ago
So? I did write that not having fun with that is not a red flag for me, and listed qualities that can be assessed from such an interview independently of whether someone has fun with it or not. I do have fun with computer science problems, and it translates into an appetite to solving tricky technical problems in my job. I have peers that are similar, given that pre-COVID I remember us discussing other people's interview questions purely for the fun of discussing them. If the job specifically calls for tricky problem solving on a regular basis then, yes, I think a certain passion and appetite visible in the interview helps, but I'm well aware that that's not universal. For example, I assume (not that I know, feel free to correct me) that in frontend development of websites, something I can see is a lot of work and which I respect, other qualities are more important than a passion for intricate technical and/or computer science puzzles. (In fact, I think you are right that there certainly are subfields where trying to come up with an intricate solution, instead of a known and proven one, can be rather detrimental.)

anyfoo 5y ago

So? I did write that not having fun with that is not a red flag for me, and listed qualities that can be assessed from such an interview independently of whether someone has fun with it or not. I do have fun with computer science problems, and it translates into an appetite to solving tricky technical problems in my job. I have peers that are similar, given that pre-COVID I remember us discussing other people's interview questions purely for the fun of discussing them. If the job specifically calls for tricky problem solving on a regular basis then, yes, I think a certain passion and appetite visible in the interview helps, but I'm well aware that that's not universal. For example, I assume (not that I know, feel free to correct me) that in frontend development of websites, something I can see is a lot of work and which I respect, other qualities are more important than a passion for intricate technical and/or computer science puzzles. (In fact, I think you are right that there certainly are subfields where trying to come up with an intricate solution, instead of a known and proven one, can be rather detrimental.)