3 ms·

I can only hope that an employer seriously using this in an interview is looking at how someone codes, not necessarily that they get a result in 3 hours; I can

by kdtsh 4y ago

I can only hope that an employer seriously using this in an interview is looking at how someone codes, not necessarily that they get a result in 3 hours; I can also only hope that they explain this to the interviewee. At best, assuming no prior knowledge, it tests an interviewees understanding of the broad structure of a given procedural programming language and their use of whatever tools are available to them on the day (hopefully this at least includes coreutils). It has to be treated as a kind-of-realistic, fun challenge on an existing code base; otherwise it is meaningless. Stories about someone so frustrated they threw their laptop on the floor are genuinely sad. Like, what are people trying to achieve with a test like this if that is a possible outcome? No one would expect a solution to this in 3 hours under normal conditions, regardless of whether someone can push one out - I got something going in an hour, and I have no idea what the hell to make of the code base now except that a) it builds and b) it works according to the fairly vague parameters of the task, i.e. input `mult age 10` to your telnet session and get 380. Regression testing be damned, especially considering there are no parameters for testing (does that 3 hours involve rewriting a bunch of Perl to support the interviewee's hacky changes? It takes a while to run `make test` ...) Other commenters are saying that it is outrageous to expect someone to put in 3 hours work, without pay, to produce a meaningful result. I agree, as this is notionally their profession, and people are not generally in the business of handing out their work for free. That being said, I haven't had to deal with Leetcode in my career (yet) but from what I've heard it sure beats that.

mihaitodor 4y ago
> That being said, I haven't had to deal with Leetcode in my career (yet) but from what I've heard it sure beats that. Lucky you... I'm at my 8th job now and Leetcode-style interviews pushed me to the point where I ask up front if this is part of the interview process, because, as stated on my LinkedIn, "I have a personal policy against any type of live coding or online coding tests during interviews and I don't enjoy or engage in any form of competitive programming". If that's a showstopper for them, then they need to find someone else.
- kdtsh 4y ago
  I have great respect for that. By all accounts Leetcode sounds absolutely tedious at best and more often an insulting, demeaning waste of time.
- db48x 4y ago
  An interesting personal policy. Why don’t you want to do any programming during an interview for a programming position?
  - mihaitodor 4y ago
    No programming position would ever require me to work in such an adversarial setting. I'd quit on the spot if it did. Having said that, on a personal level, the issue is related to the long-term psychological impact that such practices have on me. I could write entire pages about how I felt during each of the interviews where I was asked to write code and the countless nights I lost sleep due to that, even though some happened over 10 years ago, but, then again, it will only trigger negative emotions that I'm trying really hard to avoid. Since I'm usually optimistic and a total people pleaser, it took a lot of effort from my side to say never again to this practice after trying in vain for over 8 years to get into FAANG-like companies and, again and again, bumping into yet another person who couldn't resist lecturing me on how "I'm supposed to train myself for such tests". Guess what? I did waste a lot of time training and still I failed dozens of such interviews. Then again, I always managed to land a programming position where the interviewers didn't ask me to code in front of them or under time pressure. I'm at my 8th job now and, after 15 years in this career, I'm confident that I'll never have to put myself through such interviews again, which I make sure to state up front since it's not negotiable. If you're curious, you can see some of my work here: https://github.com/mihaitodor https://github.com/mihaitodor
    - db48x 4y ago
      Yea, I don’t get it. This isn’t describing an adversarial process at all. There’s not intended to be any time pressure either, since the task is chosen to be easy enough to finish in half the available time. I can certainly understand having gone through annoying interviews; that’s very common. Some interviews are even purposefully designed to be difficult to pass, which can be very frustrating to the candidates. But this question is just asking for a practical demonstration of a candidate’s abilities. It’s not a trick question, it’s not a puzzle, and there’s no secret handshake.

by kdtsh 4y ago

mihaitodor 4y ago

> That being said, I haven't had to deal with Leetcode in my career (yet) but from what I've heard it sure beats that. Lucky you... I'm at my 8th job now and Leetcode-style interviews pushed me to the point where I ask up front if this is part of the interview process, because, as stated on my LinkedIn, "I have a personal policy against any type of live coding or online coding tests during interviews and I don't enjoy or engage in any form of competitive programming". If that's a showstopper for them, then they need to find someone else.

kdtsh 4y ago
I have great respect for that. By all accounts Leetcode sounds absolutely tedious at best and more often an insulting, demeaning waste of time.
db48x 4y ago
An interesting personal policy. Why don’t you want to do any programming during an interview for a programming position?
- mihaitodor 4y ago
  No programming position would ever require me to work in such an adversarial setting. I'd quit on the spot if it did. Having said that, on a personal level, the issue is related to the long-term psychological impact that such practices have on me. I could write entire pages about how I felt during each of the interviews where I was asked to write code and the countless nights I lost sleep due to that, even though some happened over 10 years ago, but, then again, it will only trigger negative emotions that I'm trying really hard to avoid. Since I'm usually optimistic and a total people pleaser, it took a lot of effort from my side to say never again to this practice after trying in vain for over 8 years to get into FAANG-like companies and, again and again, bumping into yet another person who couldn't resist lecturing me on how "I'm supposed to train myself for such tests". Guess what? I did waste a lot of time training and still I failed dozens of such interviews. Then again, I always managed to land a programming position where the interviewers didn't ask me to code in front of them or under time pressure. I'm at my 8th job now and, after 15 years in this career, I'm confident that I'll never have to put myself through such interviews again, which I make sure to state up front since it's not negotiable. If you're curious, you can see some of my work here: https://github.com/mihaitodor https://github.com/mihaitodor
  - db48x 4y ago
    Yea, I don’t get it. This isn’t describing an adversarial process at all. There’s not intended to be any time pressure either, since the task is chosen to be easy enough to finish in half the available time. I can certainly understand having gone through annoying interviews; that’s very common. Some interviews are even purposefully designed to be difficult to pass, which can be very frustrating to the candidates. But this question is just asking for a practical demonstration of a candidate’s abilities. It’s not a trick question, it’s not a puzzle, and there’s no secret handshake.