Let's start a movement - Interview process changes
Ever since the WeWork fiasco, I have had to begin interviewing again. I was appalled to see how ridiculous the process has become since even 1 year ago. It can be as bad as a series of a 30 minute recruiter call, manager screen, technical phone screen with an engineer, take home coding challenge, and then an onsite. Over the years I've read about how the interview process for software engineers is broken. We ask pointless LC questions that often have nothing to do with the daily job, all because Google thought this is the best way to determine a potentially good engineer. Triplebyte sought out to solve this problem, but all they really did was become another Hired platform and never addressed the root issue of BS interview questions. We might not be able to change FAANG or any huge corporation for that matter, but I'd like for us to start making an effort to have a conversation with every interviewer that asks a pointless algo question which ultimately ends with us rejecting their process on the spot. With time, they will be forced to change how they interview. Obviously, I understand not everyone has the luxury to do this, however, I can see companies eventually being like "Wow, we've had an alarming amount of candidates who have rejected us for our process." Only way to win this game is to stop playing it. Thoughts in the comments section.
enjoy the low TC for your unwillingness to put in the effort lmao
It's ridiculous that companies expect people to be consistently great in a variety of domains (programming, design, product, stats etc), provide them with take home challenges, and have the freedom to reject without reason. There are other things in life that many people prioritize (correctly) like kids, health, side gigs, volunteering, parents health, hobbies etc. It's just unrealistic of companies to seek people who are good at work, stay up to date on skills, have good communication skills, work on side projects, and do take home challenges while they look for that perfect fit unicorn instead of evaluating people on their willingness to learn and providing them a platform to grow. Unwillingness to fall for this does not equate to unwillingness to put in effort. It's just unwillingness to put in all the effort in life's one aspect - career.
You're only part of the problem, assfreeze.
How do you reverse a linked list.
I do agree that asking leetcode questions is not a good way to discover and hire a good engineer. But I’m also sure that this process does filter out many unqualified people. And the interview is not only about the question, it’s also a way to measure your logical thinking process and communication skills and how well you perform under stress. I would love to see how you can come up with a new way for the interviews such that it can help companies to select the best engineers from the pool. If you do have a solution, please share.
Exactly. You can recite a LC solution from memory but you better be able to reason your way through edge cases that LC didn’t think of
Personally I like the Leetcode question style part of interviews because I can prepare for them. But system design questions are tough - answering them well takes experience and is harder to fake.
Exactly, combine the two and you have one of the best styles of interviews you can provide
Just within the last 2 weeks, I actually had to use DP 3 times in the production code. Thanks to LC that helped me learn how to think about writing efficient code.
Nice. What for, exactly?
Exactly?! We signed NDA, so can't be more explicit, but just wanted to let you know that LC actually changes your mindset (aside from the exact usage of the questions) to force your mind think more optimally and efficiently. I can see the difference between the candidates who solve those questions (and deeply understand the idea behind them, not just memorizing them) and the ones who don't. It does filter out a very good portion of bad candidates. It shouldn't be the only indicator but it's one of the strongest ones. The interviewer should be competent enough to not have the exact same question (but a similar idea) with lots of follow up questions and tweaks to weed out the ones who don't comprehend.
LC is not a good way to select candidates but is the only scalable interview pattern as per my experience.
@OP - this is an interesting post, thanks for sharing. Have you interviewed at any companies that had a great interview process? If so, how did they interview and what was their solution to creating a mutually valuable interview process for both candidate & employer?
1 or 2 dacades ago M$ was asking brain teaser and GRE questions.
I just want to see people being more straight up. Sick of hearing people saying they'll "get back to you" or say they'll have their recruiter get in touch when that's never the plan. If it's a bad fit, just say so. Had the weirdest screening call with a director who was hiring for a role on their team. He explicitly said the point of the call was to understand my background, talk about the role and have me ask questions. After I gave him rundown of my background he started, weirdly and obviously, reading from a generic description of the overall org, then gave a 1 sentence description of the role which applies to any job out there (It was to "increase revenue").. and that was it. Then he was like, okay you can learn more from the recruiter THANKS BYE. I'm pretty sure he won't be doing that.
Let me ask you something. Where do you see interviews being in the next 2-4 years? How will it change beyond LC and Grokking?
I'm not a visionary. I don't know. I'm just saying we need to boycott the brain-killing LCs.
Why? Wouldn’t you want a roadmap of what to study?