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Leetcode interviews are actually very similar to asian country style college entrance exams. Foreign engineers (> 75% of engineers at FAANG are foreign), will s

Leetcode interviews are actually very similar to asian country style college entrance exams. Foreign engineers (> 75% of engineers at FAANG are foreign), will spend months studying. Turns out people willing to study like that also make reliable employees that proved they can learn computer science. This to the detriment of regular americans that dont want to prove themselves every time they switch jobs.

devoutsalsa 3y ago
As an American, I'd much rather someone else prove myself for me when I switch jobs. I'm willing to be a convenience charge for the huge salary I take home if someone is willing to get it for me.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
  General opinion I see is that its fine when youre young, but when you get experienced with kids, solving leetcode hards/mediums in 30 minutes becomes a nightmare.
jon-wood 3y ago
In my experience though being able to learn computer science isn't actually a very useful indicator of your ability to deliver the sort of software most companies are developing. I'd be willing to bet that even within Google or Microsoft there's far more software which just queries a database and displays some results than that which requires actual computer science to develop. The hard bit of most development jobs is the fuzzy stuff. Working out what it is you're building in the first place. Negotiating on which of those requirements can be dropped to massively reduce complexity. Trying to avoid being talked into building a simple piece of software as eighteen intertangled microservices each with a dedicated team. Once you've dealt with those bits the actual software development is usually easy.
danpalmer 3y ago
Having done many interviews, I can say that studying that much often doesn't help as much as one might think. Yes, I think someone in industry for 10 years will need to brush up with a few days of revision, and I think that's a bit of a pain, but I've had many candidates who have spent months of free time doing leetcode who can't actually think about an abstract problem, or who can't code their way out of a paper bag when it gets to a more real world example. My previous place used to have a 3 hour (capped) take home assignment. Most candidates who progressed claimed to have taken ~90-120 mins and finished comfortably (although they were not judged based on this). Over the years a number of candidates went "above and beyond", without asking, and submitted an "even better" solution after 8+ hours. None of them passed, even based on their final submission. More does not equal better. I think at most FAANG places you need a baseline knowledge, but many people go overboard, and over-fit, possibly because they don't have the baseline ability and are trying to make up for it. There are a bunch of issues with FAANG style hiring, I'm not a huge fan, but I don't think what you've described is the problem.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
  Completely disagree. I actually think people are generally completely unaware of how much studying is done by engineers passing the interviews at high paying companies. I'm not talking about jobs paying 150-200k. I'm talking at the 350k+ level, people are spending 20 hours a week for 3 months or so. The facebook interview basically requires perfect memorization of a certain set of leetcode problems. Luck plays a factor as well
  - francisofascii 3y ago
    And so it sounds like when the article mentions Meta is now offering $50K less, they mean at that top tier level ($300K rather than $350K)
AlotOfReading 3y ago
Any source on that number (75%)? Looking up ethnicity stats at Google/Amazon, neither has more than 50% Asians and only a subset of those will be non-citizens.
- bradlys 3y ago
  I doubt Google is publishing these stats publicly for engineering. I’ve worked at similar public companies and I can safely say the stat they’re quoting is accurate. It really is 75%+ Asian and overwhelmingly foreign born. These stats are internal only, for obvious reasons.

devoutsalsa 3y ago

As an American, I'd much rather someone else prove myself for me when I switch jobs. I'm willing to be a convenience charge for the huge salary I take home if someone is willing to get it for me.

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
General opinion I see is that its fine when youre young, but when you get experienced with kids, solving leetcode hards/mediums in 30 minutes becomes a nightmare.

jon-wood 3y ago

In my experience though being able to learn computer science isn't actually a very useful indicator of your ability to deliver the sort of software most companies are developing. I'd be willing to bet that even within Google or Microsoft there's far more software which just queries a database and displays some results than that which requires actual computer science to develop. The hard bit of most development jobs is the fuzzy stuff. Working out what it is you're building in the first place. Negotiating on which of those requirements can be dropped to massively reduce complexity. Trying to avoid being talked into building a simple piece of software as eighteen intertangled microservices each with a dedicated team. Once you've dealt with those bits the actual software development is usually easy.

danpalmer 3y ago

Having done many interviews, I can say that studying that much often doesn't help as much as one might think. Yes, I think someone in industry for 10 years will need to brush up with a few days of revision, and I think that's a bit of a pain, but I've had many candidates who have spent months of free time doing leetcode who can't actually think about an abstract problem, or who can't code their way out of a paper bag when it gets to a more real world example. My previous place used to have a 3 hour (capped) take home assignment. Most candidates who progressed claimed to have taken ~90-120 mins and finished comfortably (although they were not judged based on this). Over the years a number of candidates went "above and beyond", without asking, and submitted an "even better" solution after 8+ hours. None of them passed, even based on their final submission. More does not equal better. I think at most FAANG places you need a baseline knowledge, but many people go overboard, and over-fit, possibly because they don't have the baseline ability and are trying to make up for it. There are a bunch of issues with FAANG style hiring, I'm not a huge fan, but I don't think what you've described is the problem.

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
Completely disagree. I actually think people are generally completely unaware of how much studying is done by engineers passing the interviews at high paying companies. I'm not talking about jobs paying 150-200k. I'm talking at the 350k+ level, people are spending 20 hours a week for 3 months or so. The facebook interview basically requires perfect memorization of a certain set of leetcode problems. Luck plays a factor as well
- francisofascii 3y ago
  And so it sounds like when the article mentions Meta is now offering $50K less, they mean at that top tier level ($300K rather than $350K)

AlotOfReading 3y ago

Any source on that number (75%)? Looking up ethnicity stats at Google/Amazon, neither has more than 50% Asians and only a subset of those will be non-citizens.

bradlys 3y ago
I doubt Google is publishing these stats publicly for engineering. I’ve worked at similar public companies and I can safely say the stat they’re quoting is accurate. It really is 75%+ Asian and overwhelmingly foreign born. These stats are internal only, for obvious reasons.