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My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. My mind just doesn't work like most do, and leetcode to some extent
by tracker1 1y ago
My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. My mind just doesn't work like most do, and leetcode to some extent seems to rely on people memorizing leetcode type answers. On a few, there's enough context that I can relate real understanding of the problem to, such as the coin example in the article... for others I've seen there's not enough there for me to "get" the question/assignment.
Because of this, I've just started rejecting outright leetcode/ai interview steps... I'll do homework, shared screen, 1:1, etc, but won't do the above. I tend to fail them about half the time. It only feels worse in instances, where I wouldn't even mind the studying on leetcode types sites if they actually had decent explainers for the questions and working answers when going through them. I know this kind of defeats the challenge aspect, but learning is about 10x harder without it.
It's not a matter of skill, it's just my ability to take in certain types of problems doesn't work well. Without any chance of additional info/questions it's literally a setup to fail.
edit: I'm mostly referring to the use of AI/Automated leetcode type questions as a pre-interview screening. If you haven't seen this type of thing, good for you. I've seen too much of it. I'm fine with relatively hard questions in an actual interview with a real, live person you can talk to and ask clarifying questions.
- lawlessone 1y agoThe one's i've gotten have all seemed more like tests of my puzzle solving skills than coding. The worst ones i've had though had extra problems though: one i was only told about when i joined the interview and that they would be watching live. One where they wanted me streaming my face the whole time (maybe some people people are fine with that) And one that would count it against me if i tabbed to another page. So no documentation because they assume i'm just googling it. Still it's mostly on me to prepare and expect this stuff now.
- another_twist 1y agoYou can make up API calls which you can say you'd implement later. As long as these are not tricky blocks, you'll be fine.
- SJC_Hacker 1y agoFor Google, Facebook and Amazon, yes. At least last I interviewed there a few years ago. They're more interested in the data structure/algorithm But I have also been to places that demand actual working code which is compiled and is tested against cases Usually there the problem is simpler, so there's that
- strangattractor 1y agoIMO leetcode has multiple problems. 1. People can be hired to take the test for you - surprise surprise 2. It is akin to deciding if someone can write a novel from reading a single sentence.
- another_twist 1y agoHiring people for the test is only valid for online assessment. For an onsite, its very obvious if the candidates have cheated on the OA. I've been on the other side and its transparent. > It is akin to deciding if someone can write a novel from reading a single sentence. For most decent companies, the hiring process involves multiple rounds of these challenges along with system designs. So its like judging writing ability by having candidates actually write and come up with sample plots. Not a bad test.
- strangattractor 1y agoIf they are on site why not interview them? If the purpose of these online assessments is to be the mouth of the funnel that process is starting to fail. https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1mu3qjt/breaking_google_goes_back_to_inperson_interviews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1mu3qjt/breaking_... There are funded companies set up just to help you get past this stuff. https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1iz6xcy/cheating_in_interviews_has_gotten_out_of_hand/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1iz6xcy/cheating_... Personally I feel software development has become more or less like assembly line work. If I was starting out today I would seriously consider other options.
- another_twist 1y agoIts not really memorizing solutions. Yes you can get quite far by doing so but follow ups will trip people up. However if you have memorized it and can answer follow ups, I dont see a problem with Leetcode style problems. Problem solving is about pattern matching and the more patterns you know and can match against, the better your ability to solve problems. Its a learnable skill and better to pick it up now. Personally I've solved Leetcode style problems in interviews which I hadnt seen before and some of them were dynamic programming problems. These days its a highly learnable skill since GPT can solve many of the problems, while also coming up with very good explanations of the solution. Better to pick it up than not.
- silisili 1y agoIt is and isn't. I'd argue it's not memorizing exact solutions(think copy paste) but memorizing fastest algos to accomplish X. And some people might say well, you should know that anyways. The problem for me is, and I'm not speaking for every company of course, you never really use a lot of this stuff in most run of the mill jobs. So of course you forget it, then have to study again pre interview. Problem solving is the best way to think of it, but it's awkward for me(and probably others) to spend minutes thinking, feeling pressured as someone just stares at you. And that's where memorizing the hows of typical problems helps. That said, I just stopped doing them altogether. I'd passed a few doing the 'memorizing' described above, only to start and realize it wasn't at all irrelevant to the work we were actually doing. In that way I guess it's a bit of a two way filter now.
- Freedom2 1y ago"Fastest algos" very rarely solve actual business problems, which is what most of us are here to do. There's some specialized fields and industries where extreme optimization is required. Most of software engineer work is not that.
- bluGill 1y agoThe only part of memorizing fastest algorithm the vast majority needs is whatever name that goes by in your library. Generic reusable code works very well in almost any language for algorithms. Even if you are an exception either you are writing the library meaning you write that algorithm once for the hundreds of other users, or the algorithm was written once (long ago) and you are just spending months with a profiler trying to squeeze out a few more CPU cycles of optimization. There are more algorithms than anyone can memorize that are not in your library, but either it is good enough to use a similar one that already is your library, or you will build it once and once again it works so you never go back to it. Which is to say memorizing how to implement an algorithm is a negative: it means you don't know how to write/use generic reusable code. This lack is costing your company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- garrettgarcia 1y ago> My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. Huh? Of course you can. If you're practicing on leetcode, there's a discussion thread for every question where you can ask questions till the cows come home. If you're in a job interview, ask the interviewer. It's supposed to be a conversation. > I wouldn't even mind the studying on leetcode types sites if they actually had decent explainers If you don't find the hundreds of free explanations for each question to be good enough, you can pay for Leetcode Pro and get access to editorial answers which explain everything. Or use ChatGPT for free. > It's not a matter of skill, it's just my ability to take in certain types of problems doesn't work well. I don't mean to be rude, but it is 100% a matter of skill. That's good news! It means if you put in the effort, you'll learn and improve, just like I did and just like thousands and thousands of other humans have. > Without any chance of additional info/questions it's literally a setup to fail. Well with that attitude you're guaranteed to fail! Put in the work and don't give up, and you'll succeed.
- another_twist 1y ago> My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. Yeah this one confused me. Not asking clarifying questions is one of the sureshot ways of failing an interview. Kudos if the candidates ask something that the interviewers havent thought of, although its rare as most problems go through a vetting process (along with leak detection).
- smohare 1y ago[dead]
- ok123456 1y agoHow does asking clarifying questions work when a non-programmer is tasked with performing the assessment, because their programmers are busy doing other things, or find it degrading and pointless?
- tracker1 1y agoLast year, I saw a lot of places do effectively AI/Automated pre-inverview screenings with a leetcode web editor, and a video capture... This is what I'm talking about. I'm fine with hard questions in an actual interview.
- samiv 1y agoThe LC interviews are like testing people how fast they can run 100m after practice, while the real job is a slow arduous never ending jog with multiple detours and stops along the way. But yeah that's the game you have to play now if you want the top $$$ at one of the SMEGMA companies. I wrote (for example) my 2D game engine from scratch (3rd party libs excluded) https://github.com/ensisoft/detonator https://github.com/ensisoft/detonator but would not be able to pass a LC type interview that requires multiple LC hard solutions and a couple of backflips on top. But that's fine, I've accepted that.
- MarcelOlsz 1y ago5 years ago you'd have a project like that, talk to someone at a company for like 30m-1hr about it, and then get an offer.
- sailingparrot 1y agoDid you mean to type 25? 5 years ago LC challenge were as, if not more, prevalent than they are today. And a single interview for a job is not something I have seen ever after 15 years in the space (and a bunch of successful OSS projects I can showcase). I actually have the feeling it’s not as hardcore as it used to be on average. E.g. OpenAI doesn’t have a straight up LC interview even though they probably are the most sought after company. Google and MS and others still do it, but it feel like it has less weight in the final feedback than it did before. Most en-vogue startup have also ditched it for real world coding excercices. Probably due to the fact that LC has been thoroughly gamed and is even less a useful signal than it was before. Of course some still do, like Anthropic were you have to have a perfect score to 4 leetcode questions, automatically judged with no human contact, the worst kind of interview.
- MarcelOlsz 1y agoThere's an entire planet of jobs that have nothing to do with leetcode. I was talking about those, not FAANG stuff. Unfortunately I am not FAANG royalty. >Of course some still do, like Anthropic were you have to have a perfect score to 4 leetcode questions, automatically judged with no human contact, the worst kind of interview. Should be illegal honestly.
- MarcelOlsz 1y ago100%. I just went through an interview process where I absolutely killed the assignment (had the best one they'd seen), had positive signal/feedback from multiple engineers, CEO liked me a lot etc, only to get sunk by a CTO who thought it would be cool to give me a surprise live test because of "vibe coding paranoia". 11 weeks in the process, didn't get the role. Beyond fucking stupid. This was the demo/take-home (for https://monumental.co https://monumental.co): https://github.com/rublev/monumental https://github.com/rublev/monumental
- samiv 1y agoWait, what.. you did this as a take home for a position? Damn that looks excessive.
- MarcelOlsz 1y agoYes. I put a ton of work into it. I had about 60 pages worth of notes. On inverse kinematics, FABRIK, cyclic algorithms used in robotics, A*/RRT for real-world scenarios etc. I was super prepared. Talked to the CEO for about two hours. Took notes on all videos I can find of team members on youtube and their company. Luckily the hiring manager called me back and levelled with me, nobody kept him in the loop and he felt terrible about it. Some stupid contrived dumbed down version of this crane demo was used for the live test where I had to build some telemetry crap. Nerves took over, mind blanked. Here's the take-home assignment requirements btw: https://i.imgur.com/HGL5g8t.png https://i.imgur.com/HGL5g8t.png. Here's the live assignment requirements: [1] https://i.imgur.com/aaiy7QR.png https://i.imgur.com/aaiy7QR.png & [2] https://i.imgur.com/aaiy7QR.png https://i.imgur.com/aaiy7QR.png. At this rate I'm probably going to starve to death before I get a job. Should I write a blog post about my last 2 years of experiences? They are comically bad. This was for monumental.co - found them in the HN who's hiring threads.
- samiv 1y agoI feel bad for you, and I support you in naming and shaming this company. It's just horseshit to jerk people around like that. I hope you can at least leverage this demo. Maybe remove the identifications of it and shove it into your CV as a "hobby project"? It looks pretty good for that. Best!
- GuB-42 1y ago> My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. What is there to clarify? Leetcode-type questions are usually clear, much clearer than in real life projects. You know the exact format of the input, the output, the range for each value, and there are often examples in addition to the question. What is expected is clear: given the provided example inputs, give the provided example outputs, but generalized to cover all cases of the problem statement. The boilerplate is usually provided. One may argue that it is one of the reasons why leetcode-style questions are unrealistic, they too well specified compared to real life problems that are often incomplete or even wrong and require you to fill-in the gaps. Also, in real life, you may not always get to ask for clarification: "here, implement this", "but what about this part?", "I don't know, and the guy who knows won't be back before the deadline, do your best" The "coin" example is a simplification, the actual problem statement is likely more complete, but the author of the article probably felt these these details were not relevant to the article, though it would be for someone taking the test.
- gopher_space 1y ago> My biggest problem with leetcode type questions is that you can't ask clarifying questions. My mind just doesn't work like most do, and leetcode to some extent seems to rely on people memorizing leetcode type answers. On a few, there's enough context that I can relate real understanding of the problem to, such as the coin example in the article... for others I've seen there's not enough there for me to "get" the question/assignment. The issue is that leetcode is something you end up with after discovery + scientific method + time, but there's no space in the interview process for any of that. Your mind slides off leetcode problems because it reverses the actual on-the-job process and loses any context that'd give you a handle on the issue.
- godelski 1y ago> you can't ask clarifying questions Which isn't that the main skill actually being tested? How the candidate goes about solving problems? I mean if all we did was measure peoples' skills at making sweeping assumptions we'd likely end up with people who oversimplify problems and all of software would go to shit and get insanely complex... Is the hard part writing the lines of code or solving the problem?
- Exoristos 1y agoThese interviews seem designed to filter out applicants with active jobs. In fact, I'd say that they seem specifically for selecting new CS graduates and H1B hires.
- giveita 1y agoWhere I interviewed you had effectively 1 or 2 LC question but the interviewer offered clarifying questions making for a real time discussion and coding exercise. This solves one problem but it does add performance anxiety to the mix having to live code.
- eek2121 1y agoleetcode just shows why interviews are broken. As a former senior dev (retired now, thanks to almost dying) I can tell you that the ability to write code is like 5% of the job. Every interview I've ever attended has wasted gazillions of dollars and has robbed the company of 10X that amount. Until companies can focus on things like problem solving, brainstorming, working as a team, etc. the situation won't improve. If I am wrong, why is it that the vast majority of my senior dev and dev management career involved the things I just mentioned? (I had to leave the field, sadly, due to disability) Oh and HR needs to stop using software to filter. Maybe ask for ID or something, however, the filters are flagging everyone and the software is sinking the ship, with you all with it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]