4 ms·

I don't know, I kind of feel like leetcode interviews are a situation where the employer is cheating. I mean, you're admittedly filtering out a great number of

I don't know, I kind of feel like leetcode interviews are a situation where the employer is cheating. I mean, you're admittedly filtering out a great number of acceptable candidates knowing that if you just find 1 in a 1000, that'll be good enough. It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating. In my opinion, if a prospective employee is able to successfully use AI to trick me into hiring them, then that is a hell of a lot closer to the actual work they'll be hired to do (compared to leetcode). I say, if you can cheat at an interview with AI, do it.

kortilla 2y ago
The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you’re suggesting here isn’t any different than submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  On principle, what you’re saying has merit. In practice, the market is currently rife with employers submitting job postings with inflated qualifications, for positions that may or may not exist. So there’s bad actors all around and it’s difficult to tell who actually is behaving with integrity.
- twoparachute45 2y ago
  Yea, exactly. If a candidate were up front with me and asked if they could use AI, or said they learned an answer from AI and then wanted to discuss it with me, I'd be happy with that. But attempting to hide it and pretend they aren't using it when our interview rules specifically ask you not to do it is just being dishonest, which isn't a characteristic of someone I want to hire.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I would like to be paid though. What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me? What is being suggested here is not participating in the mind numbing process that is called ‘applying for a job’.
  - H8crilA 2y ago
    Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.
    - hsuduebc2 2y ago
      Being paid for even excellent performance is a fraud.
    - nsxwolf 2y ago
      That doesn’t make any sense. The best engineers I know can’t pass these interviews because they started working long before they became standard.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        That doesn’t matter. If the current qualification bar is “must do X” and you fake it, you’re committing fraud.
    - davely 2y ago
      > Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud. What? No, it isn't. Regardless, if the job requirements state "X years of XYZ experience" and you have to have >X years of experience, then using AI to look up how to do a leetcode problem for some algorithm you haven't used since your university days is absolutely not "false pretenses" nor fraud.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        If the interview process says, “you must do X without using AI” and you use AI and hide it, you’re committing fraud.
        confidantlake 2y ago
        Nope.
  - 2y ago
- hsuduebc2 2y ago
  Or he can simply choose to ignore the arbitrary and often pointless requirements, do the interview on his own terms, and still perform excellently. Many job requirements are nothing more than a pointless power trip from employers who think they have more leverage than they actually do.
- ADeerAppeared 2y ago
  > The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you're missing here is that this is an individual's answer to a systemic problem. You don't apply when it's _one_ obnoxious employer. When it's standard practice across the entire industry, we have a problem. > submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications. This is already worryingly common practice because employers lie about the required qualifications. Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it. And employers refusing to address that situation is just making everything worse and worse.
  - terrabiped 2y ago
    You make a valid point that while the rules of the game are known ahead of time, it’s strange that the entire industry is stuck in this local maximum of LeetCode interviews. Big companies are comfortable with the status quo, and small companies just don’t have the budget to experiment with anything else (maybe with some one-offs). Sadly, it’s not just the interview loops—the way candidates are screened for roles also sucks. I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed. I don't want to be too crass, but I'm not surprised people who can startup a business are precisely the ones who hyper-fixate on efficiency when hiring and try to find the best coders. Instead of the best engineers. When you need to put your money where you mouth is, many will squirm back to "what works".
  - strken 2y ago
    > Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it Does it? Mine is honest, fairly normal, and gets me through to interviews fine. What are common lies and why are they necessary?
- steelframe 2y ago
  > If you don’t like them, don’t apply. Due to the prevalence of the practice this is tantamount to suggesting constructive unemployability. People were up in arms about widespread doping during the Lance Armstrong era. But the only viable alternative to doping at the time was literally to not compete at all.
twoparachute45 2y ago
I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used. My company has never used leetcode-style questions, and likely never will. I work in security, and our questions are pretty basic stuff. "What is cross-site scripting, and how would you protect against it?", "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?" Stuff like that. And then a follow-up or two customized to the candidate's response. I really don't know how we could possibly make it easier for candidates to pass these interviews. We aren't trying to trick people, or weed people out. We're trying to find people that have the foundational experience required to do the job they're being hired for. Even when people do answer them incorrectly, we try to help them out and give them guidance, because it's really about trying to evaluate how a person thinks rather than making sure they get the right answer. I mean hell, it's not like I'm spending hours interviewing people because I get my rocks off by asking people lame questions or rejecting people; I want to hire people! I will go out of my way to advocate for hiring someone that's honest and upfront about being incorrect or not knowing an answer, but wants to think through it with me. But cheating? That's a show stopper. If you've been asked to not use ChatGPT, but you use it anyway, you're not getting the benefit of the doubt. You're getting rejected and blacklisted.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used because it matches my experience. I work in games and interviews are more varied (math, engine/language questions, game design questions, software design patterns). I'd still say maybe 30% of them do leetcode interviews, and another 40% bring in leetcode questions at some point. I hate it because I need to study too many other types of questions to begin with, and leetcode is the least applicable.
- bikezen 2y ago
  > "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?" Out of curiosity, did anyone just reply with `awk ... | sort | count ... | awk`? Its certainly what I would do rather than writing out an actual script.
hsuduebc2 2y ago
I wouldn't call it cheating but most of the time it's just stupid. For majority of software developer jobs would be more suitable to discuss the solution of the more complex problem tham randomly stress out people just because you think you should.
nkrisc 2y ago
> It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating. On the other hand, if you have 1,000 candidates, and you only need 1, why not do it if the top candidate selected by this method can do well on the test and your work?
ninetyninenine 2y ago
It’s unfair but it meets their objective of finding a high in candidate. Google admits they do this. The companies that do this only do it because they can. They have to have hundreds of people applying. The companies that don’t do this basically don’t have many people applying.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

kortilla 2y ago

The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you’re suggesting here isn’t any different than submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications.

Apocryphon 2y ago
On principle, what you’re saying has merit. In practice, the market is currently rife with employers submitting job postings with inflated qualifications, for positions that may or may not exist. So there’s bad actors all around and it’s difficult to tell who actually is behaving with integrity.
twoparachute45 2y ago
Yea, exactly. If a candidate were up front with me and asked if they could use AI, or said they learned an answer from AI and then wanted to discuss it with me, I'd be happy with that. But attempting to hide it and pretend they aren't using it when our interview rules specifically ask you not to do it is just being dishonest, which isn't a characteristic of someone I want to hire.
Aeolun 2y ago
I would like to be paid though. What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me? What is being suggested here is not participating in the mind numbing process that is called ‘applying for a job’.
- H8crilA 2y ago
  Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.
  - hsuduebc2 2y ago
    Being paid for even excellent performance is a fraud.
  - nsxwolf 2y ago
    That doesn’t make any sense. The best engineers I know can’t pass these interviews because they started working long before they became standard.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      That doesn’t matter. If the current qualification bar is “must do X” and you fake it, you’re committing fraud.
  - davely 2y ago
    > Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud. What? No, it isn't. Regardless, if the job requirements state "X years of XYZ experience" and you have to have >X years of experience, then using AI to look up how to do a leetcode problem for some algorithm you haven't used since your university days is absolutely not "false pretenses" nor fraud.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      If the interview process says, “you must do X without using AI” and you use AI and hide it, you’re committing fraud.
      - confidantlake 2y ago
        Nope.
- 2y ago
hsuduebc2 2y ago
Or he can simply choose to ignore the arbitrary and often pointless requirements, do the interview on his own terms, and still perform excellently. Many job requirements are nothing more than a pointless power trip from employers who think they have more leverage than they actually do.
ADeerAppeared 2y ago
> The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you're missing here is that this is an individual's answer to a systemic problem. You don't apply when it's _one_ obnoxious employer. When it's standard practice across the entire industry, we have a problem. > submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications. This is already worryingly common practice because employers lie about the required qualifications. Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it. And employers refusing to address that situation is just making everything worse and worse.
- terrabiped 2y ago
  You make a valid point that while the rules of the game are known ahead of time, it’s strange that the entire industry is stuck in this local maximum of LeetCode interviews. Big companies are comfortable with the status quo, and small companies just don’t have the budget to experiment with anything else (maybe with some one-offs). Sadly, it’s not just the interview loops—the way candidates are screened for roles also sucks. I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed. I don't want to be too crass, but I'm not surprised people who can startup a business are precisely the ones who hyper-fixate on efficiency when hiring and try to find the best coders. Instead of the best engineers. When you need to put your money where you mouth is, many will squirm back to "what works".
- strken 2y ago
  > Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it Does it? Mine is honest, fairly normal, and gets me through to interviews fine. What are common lies and why are they necessary?
steelframe 2y ago
> If you don’t like them, don’t apply. Due to the prevalence of the practice this is tantamount to suggesting constructive unemployability. People were up in arms about widespread doping during the Lance Armstrong era. But the only viable alternative to doping at the time was literally to not compete at all.

twoparachute45 2y ago

I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used. My company has never used leetcode-style questions, and likely never will. I work in security, and our questions are pretty basic stuff. "What is cross-site scripting, and how would you protect against it?", "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?" Stuff like that. And then a follow-up or two customized to the candidate's response. I really don't know how we could possibly make it easier for candidates to pass these interviews. We aren't trying to trick people, or weed people out. We're trying to find people that have the foundational experience required to do the job they're being hired for. Even when people do answer them incorrectly, we try to help them out and give them guidance, because it's really about trying to evaluate how a person thinks rather than making sure they get the right answer. I mean hell, it's not like I'm spending hours interviewing people because I get my rocks off by asking people lame questions or rejecting people; I want to hire people! I will go out of my way to advocate for hiring someone that's honest and upfront about being incorrect or not knowing an answer, but wants to think through it with me. But cheating? That's a show stopper. If you've been asked to not use ChatGPT, but you use it anyway, you're not getting the benefit of the doubt. You're getting rejected and blacklisted.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
>I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used because it matches my experience. I work in games and interviews are more varied (math, engine/language questions, game design questions, software design patterns). I'd still say maybe 30% of them do leetcode interviews, and another 40% bring in leetcode questions at some point. I hate it because I need to study too many other types of questions to begin with, and leetcode is the least applicable.
bikezen 2y ago
> "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?" Out of curiosity, did anyone just reply with `awk ... | sort | count ... | awk`? Its certainly what I would do rather than writing out an actual script.

hsuduebc2 2y ago

I wouldn't call it cheating but most of the time it's just stupid. For majority of software developer jobs would be more suitable to discuss the solution of the more complex problem tham randomly stress out people just because you think you should.

nkrisc 2y ago

> It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating. On the other hand, if you have 1,000 candidates, and you only need 1, why not do it if the top candidate selected by this method can do well on the test and your work?

ninetyninenine 2y ago

It’s unfair but it meets their objective of finding a high in candidate. Google admits they do this. The companies that do this only do it because they can. They have to have hundreds of people applying. The companies that don’t do this basically don’t have many people applying.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]