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Comment by seestraw | Hacker News Reader

For all the hate these interviews get, they do make you a better programmer. Before doing these problems I had no framework for thinking about how to program optimally. Doing these problems helps a lot.

Don't fall for the hate people give. Every selective interview process gets hate. It's extremely useful for your development as a programmer.

Edit: I do think it's not good when there are bad interviewers. For example, interviewers who don't give you a chance to think, or expect you to know the perfect solution rightaway. Or just arrogant interviewers :(

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I don't hate selective interview process.

I hate it when interviewer is an asshole. Somehow in my experience companies that have 'Leetcode' or that kind of thing in process have interviewer that is an asshole.

If someone thinks he is better than me just because he is in a position to ask questions, well that leaves me frustrated for the rest of the day after interview.

It is specially frustrating when you already have the experience, I am now almost 10 years and a senior dev and I cannot really put up with it.

When I was a junior trying to find any job I was not offended at all, but I still remember all bad interviews.

For quick comparison, Wwat's your opinion on fizzbuzz?

I don't mind solving fizzbuzz, I don't mind take home assignments.

They don't know me and besides my CV they have to see that I can write code or see that I can use a computer. I can invest up to 2h into some task if I am switching jobs and offer/company is interesting for me.

For some specialistic roles I don't mind questions about specific technologies, just keep in mind that for example "Web Development" spans so many topics that we might have vastly different experience and questions that you ask or the way you ask them might not connect to my experience.

That is why it should be more of a discussion to try to find out common understanding than grill:quizz, shooting question and 0.5s answer.

Fizzbuzz is laughable, I don't like Leetcode and now that I'm in charge of hiring, I don't do Leetcode.

But fizzbuzz is truly the lowest of the low bars you can pass. You could even do it in a language you have never ever written before.

Yes, completely agree with this. There's so many bad interviewers out there, and sadly many are really arrogant too.

However, in my experience, most interviewers are not like that. But even one bad interviewer leaves a really foul taste.

Everybody hates to be in front of an asshole no matter the context. Care to elaborate specific things you wish interviewers didn't do?

Context: I do conduct a fair amount of technical interviews and it can be quite awkward to be in front of an engineer with arguably more experience but that struggles to write a correct solution to a relatively simple problem.

Worst was being actively aggressive in their tone shooting questions and approach "well you have an engineering degree, we will see about that". Then there were quite some dismissive with sighing when not getting answers they like to hear.

They could keep it to themselves and go back to their colleagues and nag about "what a waste of time, that guy was".

I am also interviewing people from time to time, but I see it as part of my job not some kind of punishment. So maybe don't push technical colleagues, who are not happy about it, to do it.

> "well you have an engineering degree, we will see about that".

Well this means you dodged a bullet early :) It's better they wasted your time for the interview (couple hours or days of preparing?) than months or years of your time working there.

Yes, bullet possibly dodged but that still makes it frustrating and a time waster. And these types of interviews don’t expose or test on knowledge needed on the actual codebase. I see it as a cockyness contest which I don’t want to be part of.

I am quite happy with that dodged bullet, after that I found job I am working now couple years with satisfaction.

I agree to an extent, but at my company we have hired a few very intelligent people who ace these leet code algorithmic interviews, but they're at the same time the most incompetent engineers in the company.

On top of prematurely optimising code that executes once in a blue moon and creating an unnecessary maintenance burden, they also lacked any skill in designing codebases whatsoever, and generally pick the worst solution for a problem (which is sometimes detrimental to performance overall, even if the "local implemenation" is great) Most of my refactoring nightmare situations were caused by leetcoders.

Maybw it's just anecdotal, but in my experience there's been a strong correlation.

Also an aside: they tend to be quite a bit snobby/circlejerky and vastly overestimate their skills. IMO, leetcoding is a skill but not the most important one. And also, once you start approaching software as design/engineering, the leetcode will start coming gradually and naturally to you.

Sounds like typical junior engineers.

You might be right, but in some cases they've been "stuck" as junior for longer than they should, then.

> Before doing these problems I had no framework for thinking about how to program optimally.

You didn't study CS in school?

> It's extremely useful for your development as a programmer.

Can you give some concrete example?

"You didn't study CS in school?"

Quite an entitled comment. Studying CS in school doesn't mean you've learned everything there is while practicing programming. Yes, you learn these skills on the job, but doing programming interview questions helped me learn skills too.

It's not an entitled comment, it's a genuine question. If you claim you "had no framework" you need to explain why.

The point of any CS curriculum is just that, providing you with a framework (which should ideally be a balance of theoretical and practical knowledge). It doesn't teach you the job. Neither do leetcode questions.

Sorry if I misunderstood. I don't think most CS curriculums teach you analyzing programs and writing them efficiently. My data structures and algorithms classes were great but still not enough practical knowledge to implement programs day to day. On top of that, there was practically no code review. I don't think there's enough time for professors and TAs to analyze your code and tell you if this is a good way of doing things or is it clean or will it waste a lot of memory.

Still, leetcode might teach you to write code that passes time and memory constraints, but it certainly won't teach you how to write clean code that passes a code review.

I agree. I don't think Leetcode is a good reflection of programming interviews. In programming interviews, you're supposed to have a sound thought process, write clean code, and don't need to pass hundreds of test cases. Leetcode is just a programming environment that, imo, is not the same as a programming interview.

I'd rather learn interview algorithms from books. And by getting feedback from trusted peers.

Frankly, as a return student, most students I've encountered at my crappy state school are incredibly entitled. On top of that, don't know how to code. That's because my shitty state school lumped in programming with general IT support as if they're the same field. I don't understand why a network analyst or database admin needs to know about OOP or Algorithms when the most complicated thing they're gonna do is work with AD or maybe manage a server.

You didn't study CS in school?

Anecdotally, many programmers I know didn't.

Also 'CS' has grown into a huge and varied field that can include everything from highly abstract mathematics to cognitive behavior and human psychology. If you want to it is absolutely possible to get through an entire CS curriculum without doing much actual practical programming.

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