What's the best alternative to coding interviews?
Whiteboarding, Google docs'ing or otherwise LCing random crap is unproductive, inaccurate and doesn't help evaluate for the best candidates as it's often unrelated to the environment and work entailed for the position offered. This is probably an unpopular idea as most of you have probably convinced yourselves that it's "just a part of the experience".
As an applicant, all options take waaaay too much time. When the interviewing company ghosts you, theres too much cost on me. I'd rather do LC.
This is why the recruiting industry has zero disruptors.
Haha. I'd rather have logical and reasonable recruiting process.
None of these are “better” alternatives, I’d rather do a whiteboard coding interview. For those take-home projects or sitting with team for one day, who will have that time? Imagine an industry guy applying for 10 companies, you expect him to spent 10 weeks doing different project then get all rejects? That’s way more time than leetcode preparation. Also I don’t think interviewers are willing to spend more time reviewing those take-home projects than writing feedback for 45 minutes coding interview. Just admit the fact, in this industry, there’s no way to escape leetcode, just embrace it. It’s already the best and most fair way to hire talent people.
So keep supporting the act of making people spend significant conciousness learning how to "game the interview" with LC instead of come up with a productive, win-win alternative? Smells of innovation *sigh*.
I want to lean more towards system design questions than LC. Especially if the candidate can go deep into the details. But that would eliminate strong coders who haven't worked on a complete product architecture (especially at scale).
Not a bad idea. But the whole internalized scenario of "this candidate seems pretty good and has 7yr experience, but this 3yoe guy memorized all of LC so let's hire him" makes ones brain hurt.
You have to read the first 4 chapters of CTCI. All of these concerns are addressed very convincingly.
That's the problem: there's a whole sub-industry focused on helping people get good at stuff they'll likely never need to perform in the fashion at their job. LC, CTCI, other websites books all of it is just fueling a broken idea. It causes companies to optimize hiring people good at memorizing and studying stuff that is a small part of their jobs and at the same time filters out candidates who may perform much better in the real world.
Tech can hire like literally every other job and just do a 1-2 hour interview with the hiring manager and then reference checks.
Yes! Especially if there's already 2-3 FAANGs on the resume with at least 1-2yrs at each, it's ok to assume they've learned to code as THE COMPANIES ALREADY DID THE LAST 15 INTERVIEWS FOR YOU.
All Hail to the Leetcode King! Stop b.s. making excuses and do the due diligence if you want to work at FAANG.
These companies are recruiting the right way. Please try there. 1. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/software-qa-dba-etc/search/sof 2. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/web-html-info-design/search/web 3. https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/sof?postal=98127&search_distance=50 You are welcome!
So what you're saying is... Craigslist does recruiting well?
Saying nothing! Just some pointers for OP or whoever thinks algo/ds coding interview is not the right way.
1. In theory a great idea, but many companies would abuse this to pump out free work. 2. Not feasible because a lot of codebases are proprietary and confidential. 3. Difficult because many companies use internal tools which take more than a day to learn. 4. In theory a good idea, but how would you create a unique codebase for each applicant? Also, applicants could just memorize design patterns and regurgitate them. Leetcode questions are currently the best solution because they act as the closest legal alternative to IQ tests.
The problem is, how do you get a consistent signal at scale. Consistency, Signal, at Scale being important factors for a real large company with offices all around the world. None of these have all three. While whiteboard algos may not be the best signal. It has consistency and scale. For small companies scale isn’t needed so the options you mention may be viable.
Please suggest a scalable one! Would love to hear it, honestly and it might actually make a difference to teams looking to switch from something they do because of no solid alternative.
If I had a way of interviewing that had all 3, I wouldn’t be working at Google. I’d be building a recruiting company 😂