SDE interview major requirement - LC expert?
If interviews are just focused on leetcode and system designs, and doesn’t focus on impact in current role. One can have weak profile and still get the job. Looks like nowadays one has to be only LC expert to get SDE job. May be the interviewee is not even sde in his current role. How companies catch such cases?
Yes it does.. welcome to job hopping . I am struggling with QUALCOMM experience. Such a huge baggage.
In Seattle this is definitely true. No matter what your experience level they all ask same dumb questions. Terrible process.
LC "expert" should be able to solve hard problems in 5 minutes. The industry as a whole is nowhere near that level yet. You might want to check those assumptions regarding the actual requirement.
These days interviewers don’t even ask about my experience. Maybe a single high level question on what I do at work and then straight into leetcode style questions.
I disagree. I rejected one SDE candidate today who was strong technically but did not do well on leadership principles.
I have 10+ years of experience and I have always gotten very good performance ratings every year. It’s been so hard for me get another offer. It sucks
What's a better way to interview at scale? I agree that algorithms and data structures do not test all that much in terms of how effective they will be on the job at the time. System design is great, but is generally a better signal for experienced candidates. The fundamental premise that problem solvers (e.g. algorithms and system design) can learn the technology needed on the job has worked well for Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc. who employ this kind of interviewing. I'm not defending that this is the best that we can ever get to, but something more constructive instead of complaining will lead to a more fruitful discussion.
10+ years of experience is not relevant to this conversation. Generally if you did well on system design and did ok on coding you'd get some offer--even if it was a down level. Did you bomb your coding?
I don’t think I did that bad in coding. I am puzzled 😕
Actually you don’t need to be a Leetcode expert. I don’t even understand where people got this idea from. 8 years ago I had cleared Amazon and Microsoft interviews without doing leetcode. Last year I cleared Uber, Facebook and Google without doing leetcode. Leetcode is good if you want to ‘game’ the process. And if you’re being asked questions on dynamic programming. But I can easily tell you that you can have very strong fundamentals and clear Google without doing leetcode. Whatever your case might be, leetcoding 250 questions shouldn’t take monumental effort if you spread it across enough time. Interviews are also slightly luck based so give as many as you can and you’ll end up with more offers than you’ll need :)
The current interview system sucks 😞