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I've been interviewing people for Software Eng jobs for more than 10 years an I haven't used leetcode style problems for like 8 of those years. Leetcode interv

I've been interviewing people for Software Eng jobs for more than 10 years an I haven't used leetcode style problems for like 8 of those years. Leetcode interviewing is lazy interviewing. It's for when you don't want to put an effort in your interviewing process to check if the candidates have the skills you need for the position you are filling. For example. My interview process nowadays is one web API interaction challenge: Https://challenge.bax-dev.com (in Spanish, so you may have to do a Google translate. Use with curl) In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email. They arrive to my email and I check the code quality of submissions with my morning coffee. Then in the ONLY 90 minutes Interview with me, we talk 30 mins about experience in their resume, 30 mins about our company and the position, and we code the "server" side to the web client they created . We do it pair programming style. The questions I achieve to answer are: would I pair program with thus guy? (Like, is she cool to work with?) And does she know what she is doing? I've had very good results with this method. And, from the code exercises I am sure anyone can guess what skills am I looking for. There was a great circlejerk on reddit in one of the outages where people asked whither Google engineers have inverted enough binary trees to bring their systems online. Basically saying that the skills they hire for are for Algirithm competitions, not for building enterprise software. And I say this as a CompSci PhD who did his good share of data structure and algorithms during my time in academia.

htrp 3y ago
stealing your interview method, this is an amazing idea.
mista2nith 3y ago
.... if I use this will you sue me? This should be the standard wtf
- xtracto 3y ago
  Lol not at all. I am actually part of a group of CTOs in my area and I know of a couple of people that have "copied" the method one way or another. For all I care I am happy for people to copy it. That's the type of process I would like to have. So who knows, maybe later I'll be applying for your company, and nothing better than following a process that I enjoy (or at least is not as asinine as the leetcode/whiteboard algorithm crap)
hiq 3y ago
How many people have you interviewed with this technique? After how many applications will you need to change your exercise, such that it becomes expensive to put that much structure into it? How do you deal with applicants knowing each other and giving each other the challenge and tips on how to solve it / what your reactions and probes were? The pair programming part is not that different to how algorithm interviews are conducted at least in some places. You can definitely be silent for 1h and expect the best solution, or you can collaborate with the applicant and see whether their communication is good, their thinking is structured, etc. > In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email. I expect you can't do that in companies which are highly sought after because it's too easy to cheat, and the stakes are high enough that people will do it. Yes the pair programming part lowers the chances, but people already cheat on live coding through various means, it'd be even easier if parts of the challenge are untimed. Overall I think the difference here is that of scale: if you hire a few people in specific positions, then fine. If you hire thousands (and you can rightly question whether that makes sense in the first place but that's the assumption for many of these companies), you can't have a specific interview for each and every position, you can't reuse the same interview question after having used it for 500 times, such that you can't invest that much into it in the first place.
squarepizza 3y ago
Thank you for caring about the craft.
zooq_ai 3y ago
Have you built a $1 Trillion company? No. Has your company pioneered some great open source software (Kubernetes, Go, React, PyTorch, Cassandra? No. How do you even know that your method is correct, scalable? Answer is you don't know. It's mind-boggling that people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people, think they know how to hire for firms that serve 4 Billion+ users.
- ken47 3y ago
  > people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people It seems like you believe that anyone who doesn't work for Google works for a boutique web design firm?
  - zooq_ai 3y ago
    No. Even if they work for BigBank. They usually are building some internal / enterprise app used by 20-100 people. Statistically that's what they are. There are only a handful of Billion+ scale apps. Also, it's ridiculous to shit on Silicon Valley hiring practices when they constantly churn out innovative software stacks and products.
    - ken47 3y ago
      1. I would guess that many of the commenters in this subthread work for Silicon Valley big tech, including some apparent (ex-)Googlers who are openly skeptical of their company’s interview process. 2. By reputation, most big Silicon Valley companies, including those that operate “high scale” apps don’t put as much stock into leetcode-style interviews as Google. 3. Silicon Valley, obviously, does not have the monopoly on high scale applications.
      - zooq_ai 3y ago
        No offense, but most (ex-) Googlers have zero business / customer value sense. So, they have no weight in their opinions about how to build a $1T Business
pakitan 3y ago
Do applicants get bonus points if they mention that your steps are incorrectly numbered? :)
VirusNewbie 3y ago
So, with your interview process, assuming two people could complete the (very simple) task of doing a simple backend web service, how do you determine who is worth 100k and who is worth 300k? How can you tell who is going to come up with the innovative solution to a challenging problem and who is just merely competent?

htrp 3y ago

stealing your interview method, this is an amazing idea.

mista2nith 3y ago

.... if I use this will you sue me? This should be the standard wtf

xtracto 3y ago
Lol not at all. I am actually part of a group of CTOs in my area and I know of a couple of people that have "copied" the method one way or another. For all I care I am happy for people to copy it. That's the type of process I would like to have. So who knows, maybe later I'll be applying for your company, and nothing better than following a process that I enjoy (or at least is not as asinine as the leetcode/whiteboard algorithm crap)

hiq 3y ago

How many people have you interviewed with this technique? After how many applications will you need to change your exercise, such that it becomes expensive to put that much structure into it? How do you deal with applicants knowing each other and giving each other the challenge and tips on how to solve it / what your reactions and probes were? The pair programming part is not that different to how algorithm interviews are conducted at least in some places. You can definitely be silent for 1h and expect the best solution, or you can collaborate with the applicant and see whether their communication is good, their thinking is structured, etc. > In that untimed challenge the candidate submits their code and email. I expect you can't do that in companies which are highly sought after because it's too easy to cheat, and the stakes are high enough that people will do it. Yes the pair programming part lowers the chances, but people already cheat on live coding through various means, it'd be even easier if parts of the challenge are untimed. Overall I think the difference here is that of scale: if you hire a few people in specific positions, then fine. If you hire thousands (and you can rightly question whether that makes sense in the first place but that's the assumption for many of these companies), you can't have a specific interview for each and every position, you can't reuse the same interview question after having used it for 500 times, such that you can't invest that much into it in the first place.

squarepizza 3y ago

Thank you for caring about the craft.

zooq_ai 3y ago

Have you built a $1 Trillion company? No. Has your company pioneered some great open source software (Kubernetes, Go, React, PyTorch, Cassandra? No. How do you even know that your method is correct, scalable? Answer is you don't know. It's mind-boggling that people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people, think they know how to hire for firms that serve 4 Billion+ users.

ken47 3y ago
> people who hire for software engineers who write CRUD apps used by 20 people It seems like you believe that anyone who doesn't work for Google works for a boutique web design firm?
- zooq_ai 3y ago
  No. Even if they work for BigBank. They usually are building some internal / enterprise app used by 20-100 people. Statistically that's what they are. There are only a handful of Billion+ scale apps. Also, it's ridiculous to shit on Silicon Valley hiring practices when they constantly churn out innovative software stacks and products.
  - ken47 3y ago
    1. I would guess that many of the commenters in this subthread work for Silicon Valley big tech, including some apparent (ex-)Googlers who are openly skeptical of their company’s interview process. 2. By reputation, most big Silicon Valley companies, including those that operate “high scale” apps don’t put as much stock into leetcode-style interviews as Google. 3. Silicon Valley, obviously, does not have the monopoly on high scale applications.
    - zooq_ai 3y ago
      No offense, but most (ex-) Googlers have zero business / customer value sense. So, they have no weight in their opinions about how to build a $1T Business

pakitan 3y ago

Do applicants get bonus points if they mention that your steps are incorrectly numbered? :)

VirusNewbie 3y ago

So, with your interview process, assuming two people could complete the (very simple) task of doing a simple backend web service, how do you determine who is worth 100k and who is worth 300k? How can you tell who is going to come up with the innovative solution to a challenging problem and who is just merely competent?