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Comment by gedy | Hacker News Reader

Maybe for the devs, but "solves fun puzzles" is not a measure of quality either.

The number of people who "aced the interview" but are borderline worthless for real product development is not trivial in my experience.

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I still haven’t met the guy who is an algorithms genius who can’t program, but I can guarantee a license isn’t going to solve that problem.

But being able to program is table stakes to be an effective developer. There better be a lot more to the interview if you are hoping to find rounded developers with proven experience at the level you are hiring for.

For engineers at the mid to low level where leet code dominates the trait to select for is ability to program and be reasonable to work with.

At entry level fore sure, but not everyone is going to be equal after 5-10 years of experience. They'll all be able to code of course, but some will have gained valuable experience and moved on in capability and some won't, which of course is why you interview to be selective - to find those who can do more than just regurgitate LeetCode solutions.

> They'll all be able to code of course...

I promise you that's not the case, lol.

"Programming" is only half the battle. E.g. doesn't overcomplicate the codebase with weird one-off solutions, can actually work on features, some of which (God forbid) involve a UI or existing code.

In 20 years, most leetcode style genius types I've worked with really aren't great at this type of SaaS work.

What you want is someone who can break down a problem to the point where they can use the scientific method to come up with an algorithm on their own.

What you get is someone with canned responses in their head. And resultant mass layoffs. We're trying to automate picking just the right puppy instead of going out and playing with a few of them.

Programming is a very small part of the battle of being an effective software engineer.

It leaves out:

- communicating

- teaching

- dealing with ambiguity

- navigating politics

- working cross-functionally

Most high level individual contributors at large tech companies don't even code.

As an addendum to "communicating" is documentation. That said, plenty of those who do document/communicate well can still suck at teaching/training at a higher level.

What makes you say they don't even code? In my experience coding is indeed drastically reduced, but high level ICs still regularly code.

Looking at their commit history.

i have experienced a lot of people who have convinced themselves they are adding value despite not coding, yes

System design isn't coding and reviewing all designs across 40+ people and leading cross team tech initiatives is a full time job.

It's not about being able to program. It's much more about product sense and system design.

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