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I think there’s another group: people who can come up with solid code by using search tools. I code, sure, but I will never come up with a custom solution for

by dakiol 2y ago

I think there’s another group: people who can come up with solid code by using search tools. I code, sure, but I will never come up with a custom solution for any non trivial problem. I know where to find appropriate solutions (the best ones) because I’m aware of what I don’t know (I read a lot of tech books). You cannot test this in the classic tech interview (because I would googling 75% of the time). The final result is: you want good code or not? How I come up with it should be secondary.

ajkjk 2y ago
yeah, that's wrong. I don't only want good code. I want a smart person who can write code and also do a bunch of other things, like make good decisions about code and mentor other people to write good code and fix problems before they happen and keep everything maintainable and clean. How you come up with your code per se is secondary, yes, but I'm testing for a bunch of other things that are not secondary as well.
- realsed 2y ago
  Curious. What skills from the "return all elements from a matrix in a spiral order" make you a good mentor? Or say something about your skills keeping code clean?
  - auggierose 2y ago
    I don't know what "elements from a matrix in spiral order" is supposed to mean. If it is that for the matrix A B C D E F you are supposed to return A B D C E F, then if you cannot do this, I don't care about how clean your code is.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ikiris 2y ago
      https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix/description/ If you ask me a question like this, I'm going to judge your company pretty harshly.
      - ajkjk 2y ago
        Isn't the answer "sure, seems trivial, let me do that in ten minutes for you"?
      - auggierose 2y ago
        Thanks for the link, but I don't see a problem with that question. If you find it difficult, I wouldn't want you anywhere near the code base of my (hypothetical) company. So I guess the question would be doing its job just fine, for both of us.
        ikiris 2y ago
        I didn't say it was difficult, but man you sound it with that additude/arrogance.
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    None, but a) if you can't write that trivial code I don't want to be on a team with you anyway because I'm going to be teaching you how to basically think, and b) the part where you talk about the code, not the part where you write it, is the part where I try to detect if you're any good at communication or abstract thought. (disclaimer: all of this is notwithstanding the fact that some people's brains shut down specifically during interviews/places where they feel under pressure, which I have nothing but sympathy for. Afaik that's an unsolved problem with coding interviews. I would always try to lower their stress but it is not a sure thing.)
  - dario_od 2y ago
    I'm really against leet code interviews in general as a concept. Having said this, I'd never hire a person that's not able to reason about this. Actually writing the implementation is really secondary
tylerhou 2y ago
As the problems become harder, you can’t just Google for solutions. Really great engineers often build things that nobody has ever built before — or at least not documented how they built it publicly. If you don’t have fluency in the fundamentals, you won’t be able to piece together the parts that you need to build novel systems. Second, part of hiring junior engineers is evaluating their growth prospects — e.g. new grads are often completely unproductive for up to a year, and firms make large investments when hiring them (maybe up to $200,000 in mentorship and wages). People with the attitude “I don’t need to learn/understand things, I can just Google them” are unlikely (IMO) to reach that level of seniority.
- l2silver 2y ago
  In my experience, it's very rare that you're in a job that requires you to come up with a solution to a problem no one has ever dealt with before. Custom solutions are often a sign the engineers in question didn't do the appropriate research to find the standard solution for the problem. I've been a software developer for 10 years, and I've never worked on a problem that someone else hadn't come up with a solution for somewhere. And if they haven't, alarm bells go off as to why I'm the first to do this, and where down the pipeline did I deviate so horrifically from the norm.
  - mylons 2y ago
    I strongly agree with this. I worked on low level algorithms in bioinformatics circa 2010. Writing mapping algorithms and variant detection in C/C++. Most/all of what we did was adapt known compression and database algorithms. The "best" aligner is still BWA (Burrows-Wheeler Aligner), which uses the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, popular in a lot of compression utilities.
- ramraj07 2y ago
  I’ve come up with some of the core solutions in my org to solve massive big data problems and had to depend on intuition and theory instead of the web. I still failed a merge sort whiteboard challenge in an interview. Some people just can’t deal with these inane questions in an artificial environment.

by dakiol 2y ago

ajkjk 2y ago

yeah, that's wrong. I don't only want good code. I want a smart person who can write code and also do a bunch of other things, like make good decisions about code and mentor other people to write good code and fix problems before they happen and keep everything maintainable and clean. How you come up with your code per se is secondary, yes, but I'm testing for a bunch of other things that are not secondary as well.

realsed 2y ago
Curious. What skills from the "return all elements from a matrix in a spiral order" make you a good mentor? Or say something about your skills keeping code clean?
- auggierose 2y ago
  I don't know what "elements from a matrix in spiral order" is supposed to mean. If it is that for the matrix A B C D E F you are supposed to return A B D C E F, then if you cannot do this, I don't care about how clean your code is.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ikiris 2y ago
    https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix/description/ If you ask me a question like this, I'm going to judge your company pretty harshly.
    - ajkjk 2y ago
      Isn't the answer "sure, seems trivial, let me do that in ten minutes for you"?
    - auggierose 2y ago
      Thanks for the link, but I don't see a problem with that question. If you find it difficult, I wouldn't want you anywhere near the code base of my (hypothetical) company. So I guess the question would be doing its job just fine, for both of us.
      - ikiris 2y ago
        I didn't say it was difficult, but man you sound it with that additude/arrogance.
- ajkjk 2y ago
  None, but a) if you can't write that trivial code I don't want to be on a team with you anyway because I'm going to be teaching you how to basically think, and b) the part where you talk about the code, not the part where you write it, is the part where I try to detect if you're any good at communication or abstract thought. (disclaimer: all of this is notwithstanding the fact that some people's brains shut down specifically during interviews/places where they feel under pressure, which I have nothing but sympathy for. Afaik that's an unsolved problem with coding interviews. I would always try to lower their stress but it is not a sure thing.)
- dario_od 2y ago
  I'm really against leet code interviews in general as a concept. Having said this, I'd never hire a person that's not able to reason about this. Actually writing the implementation is really secondary

tylerhou 2y ago

As the problems become harder, you can’t just Google for solutions. Really great engineers often build things that nobody has ever built before — or at least not documented how they built it publicly. If you don’t have fluency in the fundamentals, you won’t be able to piece together the parts that you need to build novel systems. Second, part of hiring junior engineers is evaluating their growth prospects — e.g. new grads are often completely unproductive for up to a year, and firms make large investments when hiring them (maybe up to $200,000 in mentorship and wages). People with the attitude “I don’t need to learn/understand things, I can just Google them” are unlikely (IMO) to reach that level of seniority.

l2silver 2y ago
In my experience, it's very rare that you're in a job that requires you to come up with a solution to a problem no one has ever dealt with before. Custom solutions are often a sign the engineers in question didn't do the appropriate research to find the standard solution for the problem. I've been a software developer for 10 years, and I've never worked on a problem that someone else hadn't come up with a solution for somewhere. And if they haven't, alarm bells go off as to why I'm the first to do this, and where down the pipeline did I deviate so horrifically from the norm.
- mylons 2y ago
  I strongly agree with this. I worked on low level algorithms in bioinformatics circa 2010. Writing mapping algorithms and variant detection in C/C++. Most/all of what we did was adapt known compression and database algorithms. The "best" aligner is still BWA (Burrows-Wheeler Aligner), which uses the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, popular in a lot of compression utilities.
ramraj07 2y ago
I’ve come up with some of the core solutions in my org to solve massive big data problems and had to depend on intuition and theory instead of the web. I still failed a merge sort whiteboard challenge in an interview. Some people just can’t deal with these inane questions in an artificial environment.