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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

> I spent 90% of my time preparing for CS questions

As always, to me this sounds like a real waste of time. I'd rather be working on a real project (working for people who value work on real projects), not practicing for an interview.

But that's me.

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Unpopular opinion, but the skills learned in these exercises really can translate to improvements in real world projects. We can get very far with most modern programming projects through brute force alone or by using standard library containers and algorithms, but past a certain scale it really does pay off to have an intuitive understanding of how data structures and algorithms work from first-hand implementation experience.

Of course, if a company is just building the stereotypical basic CRUD app to serve a maximum of 10K users total and maybe 10 per minute at peak, this probably doesn’t matter much.

However, companies that pay top dollar expect candidates with top knowledge, and that’s fair IMO.

> pay top dollar expect candidates with top knowledge

Knowing how to solve the ten or twenty most common CS interview questions is not an indicator of possessing "top knowledge". It's an indicator that someone studied the cheat sheet to big tech interviews, and that's all.

Fortunately, FAANG interviews are more than just a couple of CS interview questions.

The coding problems are part of the interview, but they're not the entirety of the interview. You can't pass a FAANG interview by cramming CS questions, unless you're maybe applying for a new grad position where previous work experience isn't factored in very much.

I'll second this opinion. I drilled on Leetcode medium problems to address some deficiencies in a recent job search (whilst in my late 40s age-wise). It made a huge difference in the interview outcomes, and I've found that I'm actually using this stuff designing solutions in my new job.

Having a bunch of basic, generally useful algorithms in recent memory does save a lot of time on the "general solution" side when you're working in a new milieu. (That saved time then gets consumed trying to find, configure, and tune anything in an unfamiliar cloud environment, but that's another kettle of fish).

So knowing a professionally comprehensive set of tricks and approaches for commonly used algorithms has just straight up made me a better coder.I know when its wise to wield bfs, dfs, sliding window, et al, and have the capability to knock out and efficient function, when needed. Its rare, but its helpful to master some of these tools. There is a certain power in being able to reason a correct algorithmic approach, modularize it in your head, and then use it to tackle a real life problem, without having to resort to hashing it out in an ide.

The hard part is distilling the most commonly used and most helpful of these tools. But after doing so, I can now approach side projects where I got stuck on not having an efficient way to store and access data.

Knowing the start and limits of those algorithms gives me that confidence that what I build is close to as efficient as possible, and allows me then focus on pulling those efficient modules together.

As a self taught dev, its given me confidence in my expertise, and that pays off in job opportunity, self respect, confidence to mentor others, and actually completing hard projects that I could not complete before.

I too, would like to be working on a real project. But most if not all companies that I'd be thrilled to work for are gatekeeped by these leetcode style interviews.

I don't like that that's how it is, but that's what the game is, and most people are in no position to change the rules of the game.

I also acknowledge that despite all its flaws, the SWE interview landscape is still better than say, that for lawyers, where if you didn't graduate from a top law school some doors are immediately and permanently shut for you.

You can still get into a top tech company without an outstanding pedigree. The closest analogue to the lawyer situation is that if you have a top tech company on your resume, I'd say many doors are opened (or opened much more easily) to you than someone without such name brand companies on their resume.

> I'd be thrilled to work for

There's the key. Their marketing has convinced millions of current and future devs that they are the best places to work for; that they are worth doing silly things for just to work there.

The problem is that many of their "wins" are from decades ago (or more). Today, for Google at least, you can't even choose what you'll be working on. You'll be tossed wherever they think they need you. Even the best new hires won't make it to the largest salaries (dominated by veterans) and won't get to spend their 20% time (if they even get it) on the next gmail.

The best advice I can offer, about two decades into my career, is to stop chasing the shiny marketing material. They'll burn you out and replace you without blinking.

Almost every non-family owned business now hires developers (and data scientists), some for very good salaries in places where you're not paying thousands of dollars monthly to be someone's roommate.

I admit grass is greener on the other side. However every company (even Google) has it's downsides.

But it's all relative. At least from this side of the fence, I see FAANG (and other top tech companies) have less downsides and more upsides, relatively speaking, compared to your typical non-tech companies.

The point is emphasized by friends and ex-coworkers who've jumped ship to FAANG and other top tech companies after working at non-tech companies like where I am. All of them seem to love it.

> Today, for Google at least, you can't even choose what you'll be working on. You'll be tossed wherever they think they need you.

I am not sure what you mean by this, but at least a couple of years ago you did have the opportunity to talk to several different teams and decide which one you're joining before signing the offer. Is that not the case anymore?

Has this ever been the case? I've read stories of new doctorate hires being assigned to maintain Orkut a decade ago.

>The best advice I can offer, about two decades into my career, is to stop chasing the shiny marketing material. They'll burn you out and replace you without blinking.

That hit hard! Thanks for putting that in words!

If somebody told me to complete five pages of trivial arithmetic problems, I'd probably regard it as a waste of time. If they said I'd get a million dollars for doing it (and I believed them) then it would cease to be a waste of time and become, in fact, an extraordinarily efficient use of my time.

The FAANMG+ life probably isn't for everyone, but it has definite upsides, and I imagine that's why most people jump through the interview hoops. It's not because they generally value toy programs over real projects.

So needlessly passive aggressive. FAANG jobs, right or wrong, are super competitive and extremely well compensated at senior levels. You just won't make the same amount of money writing BI software or CRUD line-of-business apps for an insurance company, it's not possible. When you've got that many resumes to go through you need to add whatever filtering mechanisms you can. Nobody does any BST stuff at work. But it's a filter. Reasonable people can disagree about how effective of one but it's at least no worse than just arbitrarily throwing half the resumes out, because the people who know it have some CS background, or they want the job bad enough they were willing to spend a couple hours to learn it. It's not like it's a high bar to meet.

FAANG jobs are one thing: they are so big they have to have filters, even if those filters lose good people.

Small companies cargo-culting FAANG interview processes on the other hand...

>just arbitrarily throwing half the resumes out

how else to you filter out the unlucky candidates :)

Every startup that raised money can choose from dozens of candidates. I'm not really buying the "Software developer shortage" theory. If there was a real shortage we all wouldn't be jumping hoops learning bachelor degree material or doing home assignments for some startup interview when we have 15 years experience. But this isn't what shortage looks like, to me this feels saturated.

I have a dilemma related to this. I know what I like to work on (domain / industry, etc.). There are companies hiring for this sort of thing. I don’t have any professional experience there though. So do I spend my time working on cool projects to build up the necessary domain problems so I can even get my resume looked at or do I spend my time leetcoding so I can pass the interviews.

I can do both, perhaps even concurrently, but clocks are ticking and I’m worried I only have so many years before I’m pigeonholed where I am now.

It is totally a waste of time. But one with extremely good ROI.

> But one with extremely good ROI.

If, and only if, you're hired. Putting all of that time into studying for the interview is no guarantee of being hired.

Fair enough, but I think it is good ROI even risk adjusted.

Soft skills aren't a waste of time... and being good at interviews is a soft skill that lead to job offers - so far from useless if you can pull a six figure job.

This seems like a "why go to college" type of response where there is some truth to the fact that so much of college is a waste (I've never used statistics or economics in jobs)... yet it's more than just college or CS questions.

Spending time working on "how to reverse a binary tree" and "how to find the shortest path in a multi-dimensional array" are not soft skills. It's learning how to handle highly specific theoretical CS questions.

and those skills lead to job offers. As proven by the thousands of CS devs that "jump through the useless hoops" and end up with jobs.

I agree that a lot of story around interviewing is broken and that many of the questions don't relate to day to day jobs... like creating a binary tree or "how do you move a mountain" (IE: https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/03167784...) - but they do show that you know CS basics, know how to learn them or have basic problem solving skills.

As much as people bemoan CS interviews... currently? They are a necessary evil to certain segments of the job market. Can you get jobs without them? Sure... just like you can get jobs without degrees - but your resume will get round-filed for a large number of jobs without a degree and you'll not make it past initial filters without knowing "basic" CS trivia like binary trees.

Whether you're okay with a limited job pool or not is on you... I don't have a 4 year... but I have a 2 year with many years of experience and I'm okay with some of the limits until I eventually get a BA. I still make six figures and know I can find a new job if it comes to it - as I've done repeatedly with limits. I've never balanced a binary tree for a job interview but I have "failed" online tests because I wasn't "fast enough" on code tests. I'm still employable and successful.

> but they do show that you know CS basics

Ok. So not soft skills then.

Instead, it is very specific skills. It is not soft skills.

Slight review shows I may be off on my terminology... Interviewing isn't a soft skill per-se but it is still an important one for those who wish to interview as it stands currently.

https://www.wikijob.co.uk/content/interview-advice/competenc...

> Soft skills are the more intangible and non-technical abilities that are sought from candidates. For example:

* Communication * Teamwork * Problem-solving * Leadership * Responsibility

So "interviewing" isn't a soft skill as I've always though it to be but I didn't call CS basics a soft skill - I called interviewing one. I was thinking more "a skill not work related per-se" - ie interviewing - while the expected definition is more... personality and interpersonal skills.

I'd consider interviewing "personality and interpersonal" but I can adjust my terminology.

Interviewing is an important skill for most people and interviewing in the programming realm, unfortunately, relies on CS basics. Generally you don't get one without the other.

"Theoretical computer science" has a fairly well-accepted meaning, and these basic puzzles don't fall under that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_computer_science

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