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Comment by itronitron | Hacker News Reader

That sounds normal given your career trajectory and it's good to hear that you enjoy your work.

In order to keep your edge and facilitate the use of your architectural designs I would recommend implementing skeleton, or proof-of-concept, implementations of your designs that your colleagues can use as examples or templates.

I wouldn't worry about being fucked on the LeetCode stuff as your 10 years of employment should move you past that bar.

Furthermore, I've coded for over 15 years, worked with people that have over 30 years experience, and all of us would have a rough time of it since we've been busy doing other stuff.

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Strong disagree on the leetcode bar.

Any FAANG will still give you algorithm questions in interviews, even at a Staff level.

This is my experience -- your foot gets in the door to get an interview easier though.

There are many type of Staff eng , some of them are solver who solve toughest problem in the team. They need very high standard of coding knowledge.

Two things:

1. Why do you assume people want to work for FAANG? Those are the last places I want to work. I know many people like me.

2. Algorithm questions - you can't forget your algorithms. At this point that would be like forgetting how to ride a bike. There's stuff I learned decades ago in unrelated fields that I work in that I still remember. Even so, it's not lost on anyone that extensive knowledge of algorithms is rarely important in actual day-to-day development work, and the things that are important interviewers rarely dig into.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Knowing algorithms and being able to do LC aren’t the same. It’s one thing to be knowledgeable about how a car works. It’s another to be a trained mechanic who regularly works on a specific brand of car. LC indexes heavily on the latter. You need to be very much up to speed. Solving 2x mediums in <40 minutes is the basic standard (1 hard in 35). You’re unlikely to be that proficient without a ton of practice and studying. They’re looking for someone who can swap the engine in a few hours - not the guy who can figure it out over a couple weekends.

I remember plenty of algorithms and the general ways they work but coding them up on the fly without any errors is another thing when out of practice.

Like I said, like riding a bike. If you actually know it then you won't forget it. Sure, you're going to need to practice to get your speed up - but so does everybody.

It’s not really like riding a bike though. There’s so much more effort involved.

It’s more like training for a race. Yes, you can pedal and get there eventually but compared to your competition - you’re coming in last.

Yes - and if you've raced before and were successful then with training you can get back to top shape and be competitive. It's going to be a much easier time for you than for someone who's never raced at all.

I think you’re making it sound easier than it is. I’ve done this many times and to be successful - people have to spend nights & weekends for 6+ months. I don’t think it’s like training for two weeks and you’re good to go.

Again - done this a lot and have worked with a lot of others. Spending half a year is very very common. Those who never stop practicing tend to only need a couple months - but they like that shit so that’s why they do it to begin with.

The article is about doing it again after not having done it for a while. If you've successfully done it before then you can do it again, especially if you don't let those skills atrophy. You don't need to be developing on a day-to-day basis to keep your skills sharp. A couple months practice sounds about right.

> I wouldn't worry about being fucked on the LeetCode stuff as your 10 years of employment should move you past that bar.

As someone in that position, it unfortunately has not.

That being said, I refuse to spend any of my time on preparing on LC. I recently lost out on an opportunity at Facebook over this.

Someone from a specific team had reached out to me, was extremely excited about my background, assured me LC would not be a large signal due to my experience and that other rounds would matter more and referred me.

Because of their strong interest I was given a do-over after a sub-par first LC.

After the second LC I was told they wouldn't move forward (so much for other rounds mattering more?)

To me it's a sad comedy. I'm sure a fresh grad who couldn't code a "Hello World" without autocomplete would have outperformed me on LC by virtue of remembering algos I have long forgotten and having the time to "chew and pour" as we say in my country of origin.

Now a team loses out on someone who was (by their estimation, not mine) a great match because of some shibboleth that would have never come up in day to day work?

Obviously I went in willing to potentially accept an offer, but to be honest... had I continued after the second LC interview my plan was to turn them down and cite LC as the reason.

Someone who didn't make it complaining is just sour grapes, but maybe having someone they deemed "worthy" turn down their money to point out how ass-backward the practice is would have meant something.

Yeah, it's definitely a sad comedy, especially when the LC questions they are testing on are usually the exact things that developers should be using an established library for instead of implementing themselves.

I also think that all hiring depends on internal politics, to which the candidate usually has no insight.

Luckily my wife and I have learned to laugh about it.

Don't worry, worse interviewing practices definitely exist :) I've been asked to dictate code over the phone "as you would type it out" for a very well respected place. I've grumbled pretty hard about leetcode dependence in interviewing, but it does seem to form a common language for interviewers to gauge problem solving skills against (similar to how people rail against design patterns -- they're going to exist whether or not we have a vocabulary for them).

As an established professional applying to Big tech, I kind of enjoyed LC prep.

It’s a rare opportunity to see other people solve the same problem as you, and I found I discovered quite a few interesting tricks, and was generally in awe of some people’s grasp of DP (I’m quite sure any DP whiteboard problem would stop me in my tracks).

The big learning for me was exactly the kinds of problems I knew I could solve versus those I knew I could not. I got two of the latter in my interviews, and immediately refocused on getting as much help as I could, which worked, and which I now would see as a positive signal as an interviewer. I’m always happy to hear “this is a problem of type X. I know I need to do Y and honestly I’ll probably need some help but let’s see what we can do”.

I enjoy it as well, but it does feel a bit like I'm being "nerd sniped"! Trying to justify grinding leetcode after an otherwise full day is hard.

I just had the same experience, I basically sailed through to the final interview: four 45min sessions, the first of which was algorithms and data structures.

I actually completed the task fine, but it definitely took me fumbling around a little to get there. I made a point of explaining my thought process and the questions I was asking as I went, but the problem just wasn’t one you come across much in real-world work. (And you know, algos as the first session in the morning before your brain is fully warmed up is brutal)

Importantly, the other sessions (two covering tech they actually use day to day, and a cultural fit one) went great. In the end they passed on me, and when they asked “do you know why?” I correctly guessed it was the lacklustre algo performance. They invited me to “do some study and try again in 12 months”.

Interestingly, the fact that they weighed it so heavily turned me off working there anyway. I was also surprised they didn’t ask me for any feedback on the interview process.

It was a very interesting experience, but I’ve learned that if I want to apply to anything similar in the future I’ll definitely need to grind more leetcode in preparation.

But I’m enjoying taking a break and working on side projects now anyway, and am thinking I won’t be back in an office for awhile :)

All fair, faang is not really interested in developers like you.

They want newcomers who can chew everything.

Their interview process perfectly fits.

This is reassuring.

I have a buddy that is a pure coder -- individual contributor type of guy. He will often share his latest clever idea in some code snippet, and while I understand it abstractly, I feel lost when I focus on the finer details. I definitely couldn't sit alone in a room and come up with it myself at this point.

At the same time, _he_ is a bit lost when I talk the more broad architectural stuff I work on.

Thus, I often go back-and-forth on what I should be focused on, especially as it relates to future opportunities. It's helpful to hear I'm not necessarily abnormal or falling off (as it sometimes can feel).

This is bad information, leetcode matters more than anything, at all levels.

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