5 ms·

I suspect it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test. Which for most hiring decisions is t

I suspect it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test. Which for most hiring decisions is the more important factor. I would under no circumstances hire someone who couldn't at least get the brute-force level solutions and talk intelligently about performance concerns. IMO, the disdain from LeetCode from developers vs. its continued use disconnect stems from the fact that we developers tend to assume that the goal of the hiring process is to find the very best possible candidate, whereas the goal in reality is to find somebody "good enough" as efficiently as possible.

activitypea 4y ago
The disdain is fueled by companies' behavior. Your approach makes sense, but if that were the case, then a DSA whiteboard interview should be a fail/pass -- a company shouldn't prefer a candidate that managed to cook up an O(n log n) solution over a candidate that only got a solution in O(n2). In my experience, no company doing whiteboard interviews works like that. As OP themselves said in another comment, "it's not a binary yes/no, but gives a range to score the candidate" At the end of the day, you can't test for negatives and just pick a random person that doesn't fail anything. You need to have a defined set of values to look for in a candidate, and to design an interview that tests for those values. That's why I hate DSAs -- for most (all?) companies, they're treated as dogma rather than a pragmatic solution to a difficult problem.
- vkou 4y ago
  I don't ask just one question in a DSA interview. I ask multiple related questions, and if a candidate struggles with one of them, I probe for strengths in other areas. No one answer to a question in that interview is a pass or fail. But the interview, holistically, is a pass or fail, or a conditional[1] pass. [1] I was impresssed by some aspects of the candidate, but there are notable, significant weaknesses. Please determine if other interviewers have detected similar weaknesses, or if the candidate just got unlucky with my particular question.
lisasays 4y ago
I suspect it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test. Unfortunately the OP seems to be using it in the former sense (when applied to the tries solution that he things will separate the "good" candidates from the plodding lunkheads).
Paul-Craft 4y ago
> ...[companies and interviewers] that the goal of the hiring process is to find the very best possible candidate, whereas the goal in reality is to find somebody "good enough" as efficiently as possible. I suppose that's why mathematicians came up with the idea of "optimal stopping." There are literally tons of scenarios out there where the goal isn't to get "the very best possible candidate," but to get someone "good enough," or maybe even the best person you can get after putting a reasonable amount of time and effort into searching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  You appear to be shadowbanned.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    New account.
  - Paul-Craft 4y ago
    Huh, well. That's no good. People upvoted me, so I'm assuming it's fixed now. Since you're the only one who's mentioned it, I'm guessing you made it happen, so, thanks. :)
kolbe 4y ago
"it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test." This is also an unproven statement with dubious validity. I come from the trading world where the leetcode equivalent is a brain teaser. After much deliberation, the only thing we could think of for why a brain teaser was useful was that it often proved someone wanted the job so badly that they memorized all the brain teasers. And that type of dedication and drive is what we really wanted. To me, I don't understand why someone who develops with advanced IDEs, using complex tools and libraries, is in the least bit judged by putting them in front of what is essentially a text editor, and asking them to solve a problem that's of no relevance to their job, using no tools that they're comfortable with
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  You can use all the IDEs and tools and libraries you want, at the end of the day you still need to know how to read and write code. If you can't pound out a FizzBuzz-level without help, no amount of tooling, IDEs, or libraries is going to make you capable of developing software. Period. If someone tells me they can develop software in a language, and they can't write ~10 lines of code, that tells me they lied. It's like when getting lifeguard certified they require you to dive down to the bottom and grab a brick. Nothing at all in the day-to-day job of lifeguard requires retrieving submerged bricks, but the set of people who possess the swimming skills to be a lifeguard is fully included within the set of people who dive to the bottom to grab a brick.
  - behdad 4y ago
    Thanks for the brick example. I'm going to use that a lot!
    - singleshot_ 4y ago
      Lifeguard here. The brick is actually part of lifeguard training, at least where I'm from.
      - 4y ago
twic 4y ago
I can tell you the reason for the continued use of leetcode (or similar) at my company. We started giving junior candidates a leetcode-ish test with a low bar for passing to screen out really weak programmers. Everyone who passed went on to on-site interviews. Interviewers complained about having too many interviews to do. So the recruitment team just cranked up the score required to pass. Bingo, less work for interviewers. Sadly everyone who makes it to an on-site is now a competitive programming enthusiast who is probably a really poor fit to actually working in software development. Many people are vaguely aware of this problem, but nobody has a strong incentive to put in the work to come up with anything better.
IshKebab 4y ago
I agree that leetcode questions are great for quickly eliminating bad candidates, but this question has the classic problem of being way too hard. Like 50% of leetcode questions are difficult dynamic programming problems (why the obsession with dynamic programming?). Even in the most algorithm heavy job I've had which actually did involve coming up with novel algorithms there was 0 dynamic programming. And most programming jobs involve no complex algorithms at all. At most you have to be a little careful to avoid N^2 occasionally. Leetcode is great for filtering out bad candidates but if your solution involves dynamic programming it is too hard for an interview.

activitypea 4y ago

The disdain is fueled by companies' behavior. Your approach makes sense, but if that were the case, then a DSA whiteboard interview should be a fail/pass -- a company shouldn't prefer a candidate that managed to cook up an O(n log n) solution over a candidate that only got a solution in O(n2). In my experience, no company doing whiteboard interviews works like that. As OP themselves said in another comment, "it's not a binary yes/no, but gives a range to score the candidate" At the end of the day, you can't test for negatives and just pick a random person that doesn't fail anything. You need to have a defined set of values to look for in a candidate, and to design an interview that tests for those values. That's why I hate DSAs -- for most (all?) companies, they're treated as dogma rather than a pragmatic solution to a difficult problem.

vkou 4y ago
I don't ask just one question in a DSA interview. I ask multiple related questions, and if a candidate struggles with one of them, I probe for strengths in other areas. No one answer to a question in that interview is a pass or fail. But the interview, holistically, is a pass or fail, or a conditional[1] pass. [1] I was impresssed by some aspects of the candidate, but there are notable, significant weaknesses. Please determine if other interviewers have detected similar weaknesses, or if the candidate just got unlucky with my particular question.

lisasays 4y ago

I suspect it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test. Unfortunately the OP seems to be using it in the former sense (when applied to the tries solution that he things will separate the "good" candidates from the plodding lunkheads).

Paul-Craft 4y ago

> ...[companies and interviewers] that the goal of the hiring process is to find the very best possible candidate, whereas the goal in reality is to find somebody "good enough" as efficiently as possible. I suppose that's why mathematicians came up with the idea of "optimal stopping." There are literally tons of scenarios out there where the goal isn't to get "the very best possible candidate," but to get someone "good enough," or maybe even the best person you can get after putting a reasonable amount of time and effort into searching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping

CrazyStat 4y ago
You appear to be shadowbanned.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  New account.
- Paul-Craft 4y ago
  Huh, well. That's no good. People upvoted me, so I'm assuming it's fixed now. Since you're the only one who's mentioned it, I'm guessing you made it happen, so, thanks. :)

kolbe 4y ago

"it's less useful as a "this person will excel" test and more useful as a "this person won't fail miserably" test." This is also an unproven statement with dubious validity. I come from the trading world where the leetcode equivalent is a brain teaser. After much deliberation, the only thing we could think of for why a brain teaser was useful was that it often proved someone wanted the job so badly that they memorized all the brain teasers. And that type of dedication and drive is what we really wanted. To me, I don't understand why someone who develops with advanced IDEs, using complex tools and libraries, is in the least bit judged by putting them in front of what is essentially a text editor, and asking them to solve a problem that's of no relevance to their job, using no tools that they're comfortable with

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
You can use all the IDEs and tools and libraries you want, at the end of the day you still need to know how to read and write code. If you can't pound out a FizzBuzz-level without help, no amount of tooling, IDEs, or libraries is going to make you capable of developing software. Period. If someone tells me they can develop software in a language, and they can't write ~10 lines of code, that tells me they lied. It's like when getting lifeguard certified they require you to dive down to the bottom and grab a brick. Nothing at all in the day-to-day job of lifeguard requires retrieving submerged bricks, but the set of people who possess the swimming skills to be a lifeguard is fully included within the set of people who dive to the bottom to grab a brick.
- behdad 4y ago
  Thanks for the brick example. I'm going to use that a lot!
  - singleshot_ 4y ago
    Lifeguard here. The brick is actually part of lifeguard training, at least where I'm from.
    - 4y ago

twic 4y ago

I can tell you the reason for the continued use of leetcode (or similar) at my company. We started giving junior candidates a leetcode-ish test with a low bar for passing to screen out really weak programmers. Everyone who passed went on to on-site interviews. Interviewers complained about having too many interviews to do. So the recruitment team just cranked up the score required to pass. Bingo, less work for interviewers. Sadly everyone who makes it to an on-site is now a competitive programming enthusiast who is probably a really poor fit to actually working in software development. Many people are vaguely aware of this problem, but nobody has a strong incentive to put in the work to come up with anything better.

IshKebab 4y ago

I agree that leetcode questions are great for quickly eliminating bad candidates, but this question has the classic problem of being way too hard. Like 50% of leetcode questions are difficult dynamic programming problems (why the obsession with dynamic programming?). Even in the most algorithm heavy job I've had which actually did involve coming up with novel algorithms there was 0 dynamic programming. And most programming jobs involve no complex algorithms at all. At most you have to be a little careful to avoid N^2 occasionally. Leetcode is great for filtering out bad candidates but if your solution involves dynamic programming it is too hard for an interview.