Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

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I thankfully still have a job, but even I'm a bit nervous. I've got a baby on the way and if something were to happen to my job, I'd be in a tight spot financially. I'm doing a few things to help prepare:

1. I'm actively working on this side project of mine, and I'm considering giving a talk about it at an upcoming conference.

2. I'm trying to practice leetcode and system design. I say "trying" because I find it's an incredible waste of time, and I hate it. But I don't want to be caught by surprise in a leetcode-style interview.

3. I'm trying to stay in touch with people I know in the industry. I hate networking, but as long as I stay friendly with past colleagues then I'm good.

4. I've been refining my resume over and over again, trying to make it as polished as possible.

These things generally make me feel a bit more likely to land on my feet. I still suck at leetcode though :p

> I find it's an incredible waste of time, and I hate it.

Then maybe it is a waste of time?

I’ve been a dev for 10 years, mentored juniors, led massive projects, interviewed hundreds of candidates and don’t even remember ever going to leetcode.com until reading this comment.

I think hacker news is the only place I’ve ever seen the word “leetcode”.

But maybe I just live under a rock or something. Just making the point that maybe it is just a waste of time.

The majority of companies that ask leetcode style questions aren’t using the word leetcode anywhere.

Leetcode is just a popular repository of the type of interview questions that are designed to prove you understand a subset of the material from an Algorithms or Data Structures class.

Same, I've conducted lots of interviews over the years and I've never used them. But there are plenty of companies, especially larger ones, that still rely on that style of interview question. And if your day-to-day job doesn't involve intensive work with algorithms, then it's easy to let those skills slip.

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