Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikymoothrowa | Hacker News Reader

I don’t care that Google is doing this.

It’s a problem that everybody else is using the same process. (I blame it on CtCi)

I've started ignoring companies that hire using leetcode or whiteboard algorithm questions.

Even if you make it through the interview process, you're going to be working for people who cargo cult their business practices and surrounded by coworkers who are willing to spend vast amounts of energy on stupid things to accomplish their goals.

It's a massively negative indicator for company culture imo.

I can't remember the last time I actually enjoyed using Google's software or their libraries, I don't know why I'd work for a mini-Google.

100% Leetcode is now a great metric for me on company culture.

Is your company able to back the trend when it’s obviously wrong?

I agree, but in general I've found if you want FAANG cash, it's better to just be good at leetcode and deal with it.

I prefer money over perfect culture though.

Right, all the most valuable tech companies in the world have hiring practices that are "obviously wrong." I'm not saying they got so valuable because they're using this style of interview, but if it were so incredibly ineffective, how would they have become so successful?

Because this hiring process came _after_ they were already successful?

Yeah they didn't start this way, with the exception of Google, its a recent invention... and now a cargo cult sped on by comments like this

one thing tons of people don't understand is that interviews are two way streets. companies are getting to know you, but you are also getting to know the company.

as you said, i would never work at a company with bad interviewing practices because it means that either the employees were hired by these bad practices OR the practices changed and no one cares.

what does "cargo cult their business" mean?

Copying the whole 5-7 interviews thing with leetcode stuff because FAANMG does it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

No that's not true, the vast majority of companies/positions do not do this.

Most companies that pay very well and are competitive do it, and the reason is because we get so many crappy applicants that it remains to this day the least risky, cost effective way to filter out bad developers.

Sorry but there’s a lot of ways to filter devs, you would need to back this up with data.

Here’s another avenue, show me your OSS work if you have it. That give me a far better picture of how you develop than LC ever could. Don’t have OSS, then a take home test also works perfectly fine or a programming exercise that’s realistic

There are not many that are as cost effective and scalable for the number of applicants that a tech company can get.

> Here’s another avenue, show me your OSS work if you have it.

For the complaining elsewhere in this thread about how leetcode filters for people who have free time to work on it and thus selects for upper middle class... this is even worse in that regard. Furthermore, the contributions of a new grad are... often "poor".

The take-home test is similarly derided in many circles that refuse to do leetcode and the "write this program" is even less transferable to doing interviews at other companies.

With OSS you're at least coming out with a product that is useful to the ecosystem and you can show off for the rest of your career. It'll take you about as long as the LC nonsense does.

You think you have more data than all these companies who are worth Trillions of $$$ because they actually hired smart engineers?

I've also worked for companies worth billions of dollars that had tons of really smart engineers and didn't do LC. Its a cargo cult at this point, plain and simple. Google made it cool, now other people have jumped on, not because they have data but because they want to be like Google

Blaming it on CTCI is like blaming it on needle manufacturers for people shooting up with heroin. The issue is more fundamental. CTCI is just giving a methodology for people to get through the interview process.

The issue is that SV cargo cults extremely hard. A lot of startups copy the big companies (and often the founders of small companies are from big companies - so they take what they know with them). Then everyone is like, "SV is so cool and full of money! Let's copy everything they do to emulate their success."

That's all it is. I'm not a fan of the author (for personal reasons) of CTCI but I don't think she or the existence of the book is the issue.

Microsoft was one of the first big tech companies to popularize these styles of white board coding interviews. Back when I was in college, Google had just lowered their hiring bar from "must have PhD" to "well BS from an Ivy League may be good enough", CTCI was seen as a way into Amazon and Microsoft.

I’m not seeing everyone else doing it. I wish they were because I prefer those interviews over something that pretends to emulate real work. I want every company I interview with to do leetcode and most of them don’t.

Just went through a round of interviews in the past 6 months (~20 phone screens, 6 in person loops, 3 offers). Not all of the companies do it. If you don't like the process, then politely decline the interview. (you probably don't want to work there anyways).

The worse to me are the interviews that ask you technology specific commands (for ops positions, especially k8s) and/or specific language constructs.

Come on, there's enough, far more than enough, out there which is not like this.. just change your expectations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com