I won't deny it's a great filter for getting the exact type of people that will tolerate, enable, and expand this culture.
Hm. I hope this comes of gently - I don't know you, your skills, your background, your experience or your goals for that matter - but this feels overdramatic and even a little condescending.
If you have your CS fundamentals together it really shouldn't be that much effort? I know some whiteboard interviewers will ask unreasonably obscure algorithms, but LC hasn't ever been that unreasonable. I really don't get the absolute vitro people have. Sure it's not an ideal measure - but hey: eat your vegetables. It's not some unfathomable distant unrelated set of hoops to jump through.
LC questions can be a little bit of a chore but I've never spent more than an hour or two brushing up before interview cycles if I reviewed them at all and have done pretty well in my interviews. I've tanked my share of interviews but it's never been so dramatically unreasonable. It's not like they're asking you to write paragraph upon paragraphs on why you'll be the perfect fit and this opportunity is unlike any other for you. Cover letters are at least 70% more bullshit.
For context: I joined the industry in 2012 where whiteboard interviews were the normal but before leetcode, hacker rank, etc. were common, but I've interviewed plenty since then.
Agreed. And yes, on LC problems they are a chore. I've been thinking about this a lot and here is my take on all of this from a different direction that re-inforces my opinion that it is a toxic culture.
The fact that developers are required to do a dance and memorize LC problems to regurgitate them in a timed setting is because there is a fundamental lack of trust on the hiring side. This is actually offensive.
Now, we might say, okay well LC problem regurgitations provide actionable signal. Definitely more than a cover letter! But is it a significant signal for software production ability? I don't think it is except in cases where the domain is well-trod.
I get why we need some kind of signal with the current way employment and hiring is structured. We need something actionable, something to build trust. But I think that's the problem. Trust should come first, otherwise we enter this current world where hiring is slow, fraught with problems, no one can fill their positions (and I don't think it's for lack of a talent pool).
I haven't through all of the implications of this part yet, but here is where I'm at. VC backed companies and VC backed company copycats will say they are doing all of this to avoid false positives. All so they don't waste their time on the Wrong hires. How long does it really take to know, when actually working with someone, that they are the wrong hire? Not long in my experience. Let's say 1 month. Just hire people on a temporary basis, pay them, it's a more ethical take home project in a way. And what is the current state? Well the current state is filtering so harsh on a low significance signal that it takes a company many months to fill a position. Are our assumptions about the false negative rate so wrong that it's actually very high? I think so.
I've had some pushback on the hire fast, fire fast methodology before as being bad for candidates. However, I don't think it's any worse than the current experience they receive.
> Now, we might say, okay well LC problem regurgitations provide actionable signal.
Oof. You keep calling it "regurgitation" and "memorization" as if there's no way that one could possibly be capable of thinking through those problems with a bit of experience. Maybe it's just me but I don't think a brief test of your fundamentals is that out of line. You're not supposed to memorize your times tables to 100, you're supposed to know how to multiply.
I think there's plenty of reasonable criticisms to be made, but if you're equating LC problems to StarTrek trivia I'm not sure you're making them.
> But I think that's the problem. Trust should come first, ... How long does it really take to know, when actually working with someone, that they are the wrong hire? Not long in my experience. Let's say 1 month. Just hire people on a temporary basis, pay them, it's a more ethical take home project in a way. And what is the current state?
> I've had some pushback on the hire fast, fire fast methodology before as being bad for candidates. However, I don't think it's any worse than the current experience they receive.
That is in no way more ethical and it's so, so much worse. It shoves tremendously more cost and risk onto individuals vs companies. I don't know your situation or experience or what's driving these conclusions but your concerns just don't connect to your conclusions for me here.
The following is a chunk of my reply very similar comment recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30889389
> I can't even fathom in what ways you think "time to hire more, and fire fast?" is more "effective and equitable"? You just shove even more risk onto individuals who might be getting their footing still.
> You're just turning a 8-9 hours commitment to an interview into a 6 month commitment. Sure, you get paid but you also have to deal with churn and burn.
> I mean, did you think stack ranking was a good idea?
The reality is that when most people sit down and think about the math behind the finances, avoiding LC on principle comes with a massive opportunity cost that can exceed millions of dollars over the span of a career. Which again, totally fine if that's not your thing, but we should still let people know what's at stake.
If we constantly have people buying into a damaging system just for the money, it compounds issues and they get worse down the road
I'm going to get ahead of the idea of the risk of stability and the implication I'm saying a software developer would be banking on risk/reward of a technology startup. I'd like to say that they can also use all the skills and knowledge of a software developer in a non-tech company with great success and similar or higher compensation with similar risk profiles.
Please write a post about this then. I'd love to know roles that are regularly paying $500k+/yr.
Leetcode isn’t a good measure and will be phased out in coming years as this is realized.
Given how long it's been around and the lack of credible alternatives for hiring at scale, I'm having doubts.