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I think the point is that it can be hard to legitimately solve some of those tricky leetcode-style problems under time pressure, with no access to outside resou
by brokencode 4y ago
I think the point is that it can be hard to legitimately solve some of those tricky leetcode-style problems under time pressure, with no access to outside resources, and with the knowledge that somebody is judging your every move.
Memorizing the common problems gives you a big leg up on being able to successfully pass an interview.
- tstrimple 4y agoHonestly the "right" answer in most of these types of questions is to search for a popular existing implementation. There is never a "we've got to solve this bubble sort algorithm in a locked room with no internet access" scenario. I get that they want to select for people who can solve problems by thinking their way through solutions with code, but I've never been convinced that solving leet code challenges is the way to do that. I'd also much rather solve problems without writing a bunch of code that has to be maintained, so engineers familiar with the tooling ecosystem for their platform of choice should be highly valued.
- newbYhrly 4y agoIsn’t that exactly what they’re optimizing for. They don’t want thinkers who re-invent the wheel?
- Kranar 4y agoWhile memorization is involved, people make it seem like you need to memorize specific solutions to specific leetcode problems, and that's just not only false but also a bizzare and almost impossible strategy. What you do need to memorize are a small group of algorithmic designs and have a good sense of when to apply each one. The main ones include divide and conquer, greedy, graph, and what seems to be the hardest of them all, dynamic programming algorithms. It's disappointing that so few developers know these or are comfortable with these designs since employing them provides significant speedups to what would otherwise involve deeply nested loops or other naive brute force solutions. Becoming familiar with the broad set of algorithm designs is something most competent developers should invest some time in, and it's not like it requires years and years to become good at it but the benefits are enormous.
- senderista 4y agoI have literally seen interviewees expected to come up with Floyd’s linked-list cycle-finding algorithm independently (or rather, pretend they did).
- morelisp 4y agoChapter 2 (iirc, or at least an early one) of a well-known textbook also expects you to do this. It is non-obvious, but so are a lot of real problems. I agree it’s probably mostly memorized as an answer today, but I don’t think it’s fundamentally a bad question.
- raydev 4y agoDid this book ask you to time yourself and solve it within 20 minutes?
- morelisp 4y agoNot only that, I had to pay for my own lunch and it took four weeks for it to finally say it wasn't hiring me. Is the problem with leetcode the content or the process? The process is utterly broken, but any time hiring comes up it feels like most complaints are about the content.