System design questions are much more practical and relevant for software engineering roles than Leetcode questions. More than 90% of the time, you won’t use leetcode type algorithms in your actual work but you will probably use something similar to system design questions. It’s complete bullshit that someone who studied 300 Leetcode but has never actually built/designed software can get a job at Facebook/google but someone who has actual software engineering skills but maybe only gets 2/4 of the Leetcode interview questions right gets rejected. Why doesn’t the industry do anything about this? Do they really think Leetcode skills == good software engineering skills? I’ve seen people spit out Leetcode solutions they practices and get internships at top tech companies but fail to get return offers because they actually can’t design software. Also scenarios where the person sucks at Leetcode so they just copy the solution on phone screens but then they get a return offer by completing a successful internship which proves that the interview questions proved nothing about their skills. Not saying to completely get rid of leetcode questions, but don’t use it for every damn interview. Deciding whether or not if someone would be a good software engineer by asking them 8-10 leetcode questions over the course of 4-5+ hours is ridiculous. Instead of leetcode questions being used for every damn round, just use it a pre screening in the form of a coding challenge just to see if that person can write a for loop or whatever. After you establish that, see if they can actually design software by asking system design questions in the interview rounds. This is much better way than allowing some guy who’s never worked on a side project in his life get a job just because he grinder Leetcode for a month. Seriously, why, in an industry of geniuses, is the interviewing process so stupid?
System design is mostly BS. No better way to filter candidates than algo style questions
So you’d rather have someone who can solve 150 leetcode questions but has no idea about how to design and implement actual software since they spent all their time writing single functions to solve meaningless problems
There is no way you will know if you did well in system design. There could be another candidate who did slightly better or has experience more aligned to requirements. With system design style interviews, you are adding uncertainty in the process. Incase of algo/leetcode style interviews if you solve question in optimal way, come up with good thought process and consider corner cases, you are certainly getting offer
Here we go again..
wtf are you talking about?? almost all top tech companies *do* have system design rounds FB certainly does. you can’t pass the onsite without doing well on it
If you are smart(subjectively), you will be able to crack leetcode questions too..
“Crack” as in I saw the solution to this question few days ago and I’m just writing out what I memorized? And that’s a bold assumption that all good software engineers would be great at any leetcode question.
You two, I’m dying!!!! Lol.
No joke. The amount of people I work with at Google who can't design their way out of a paper bag is ridiculous. This is why we end up with such shitty APIs and are constantly deprecating everything: people think they're so smart because they can solve some undergrad graph problem in an interview but can't even figure out how to make a simple REST API or architect a system with proper separation of concerns.
I was just reading some code from my team the other day. Crazy machine learning stuff that was way over my head. But they couldn't program a damn ring buffer properly. Unnecessary thread blocking for no reason. Good old "just throw synchronized around everything until it works." It was hilarious and sad at the same time.
I literally know someone who knows 300 leetcode problem solutions but can’t make a simple REST API to save his life. It’s ridiculous.
Because most entry lvl lack practical skills.
Then don’t hire them. They can pick up practical skills through side projects, internships, etc
I bet, OP is a principal level dev at Microsoft. Now looking outside like e6/l7 but not being able to crack because years of no coding and bulshitting your way up caught him up.
I know Googler that underperformed in his previous jobs, did 600 LCs, passed Google, 3 years still at L3, but everytime he interviews a candidate he asks the hardest LC question among interviewers.
Lol what a dick. It’s probably easy to just coast at big companies once you’ve leetcode your way in especially if you’re on an irrelevant team
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System design is too subjective, and frankly most people aren't good enough to be system design interviews themselves.
Sure it’s subjective, but the fact that there’s no one right answer allows you see one’s thinking skills a lot better. You’re solving it your own way, not how someone else did it. Just like how you would be solving problems in your actual job. And the problem that interviewers aren’t good at system design themselves is the problem. They shouldn’t be SWEs if they’re not great in that category
Also, even leetcode question interviews can be subjective. I’ve seen people, and also happened to myself, pass interviews where they didn’t completely solve the coding question but were on the right track and showed and background was strong.