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I'm glad that you have had this experience! However, passing leetcode questions will typically open up new job opportunities and increase total compensation. A

I'm glad that you have had this experience! However, passing leetcode questions will typically open up new job opportunities and increase total compensation. Anecdotally, I actually find it a good filtering signal for top talent. That is, all the best engineers I've worked with have always been able to crush leetcode interview questions, even if they find the questions annoying. I think it is probably only a good filter if truly trying to hire the top 1% of engineers. Almost nobody is though, as is evident from their undifferentiated pay scale.

neilv 3y ago
Leetcode interviews are for people who studied and practiced for Leetcode interviews specifically. It doesn't have much to do with programming, and has almost zero to do with software engineering.
- VirusNewbie 3y ago
  Lists, sets, graph traversals, parsing, knowing when to use hashmaps, using recursion, knowing when to use a priority queue don’t have much to do with programming or software engineering?
  - neilv 3y ago
    CS101 algorithms and data structures of course are relevant to programming. But Leetcode interviews in practice aren't about knowing those. If they were, people would not prep for months specifically for Leetcode, and FAANG recruiters wouldn't advise spending months rehearsing for those (for everyone from undergrads with CS101 fresh in mind, to senior engineers who routinely use those in real-world situations). Prep with titles like "Cracking the Coding Interview" aren't about understanding or practicing software engineering. They're about passing fratbro pledge hazing rituals.
    - VirusNewbie 3y ago
      >But Leetcode interviews in practice aren't about knowing those. I'm going to guess about 85% of leetcode questions that are asked by top copmanies fall into the CS101 algorithms and data structures bucket. Seriously you can go to leetcode right now and look at Meta's most common interview questions and almost all of them are basic data structure questions. I'm not saying passing the interviews are easy. You definitely have to practice coding fast (at least, I did!). Sure the questions may have a twist, but most of the time there's no esoteric weird algorithms.

neilv 3y ago

Leetcode interviews are for people who studied and practiced for Leetcode interviews specifically. It doesn't have much to do with programming, and has almost zero to do with software engineering.

VirusNewbie 3y ago
Lists, sets, graph traversals, parsing, knowing when to use hashmaps, using recursion, knowing when to use a priority queue don’t have much to do with programming or software engineering?
- neilv 3y ago
  CS101 algorithms and data structures of course are relevant to programming. But Leetcode interviews in practice aren't about knowing those. If they were, people would not prep for months specifically for Leetcode, and FAANG recruiters wouldn't advise spending months rehearsing for those (for everyone from undergrads with CS101 fresh in mind, to senior engineers who routinely use those in real-world situations). Prep with titles like "Cracking the Coding Interview" aren't about understanding or practicing software engineering. They're about passing fratbro pledge hazing rituals.
  - VirusNewbie 3y ago
    >But Leetcode interviews in practice aren't about knowing those. I'm going to guess about 85% of leetcode questions that are asked by top copmanies fall into the CS101 algorithms and data structures bucket. Seriously you can go to leetcode right now and look at Meta's most common interview questions and almost all of them are basic data structure questions. I'm not saying passing the interviews are easy. You definitely have to practice coding fast (at least, I did!). Sure the questions may have a twist, but most of the time there's no esoteric weird algorithms.