The problem isn't standardized tests, it's that leetcode questions are about having the time to have learnt the answer beforehand, rather than raw ability for problem solving.
LC tests typically copy problems from the university the interviewer graduated from. College programs differ, so this is really a case of what you were introduced to.
There's a fairly popular online LC test company in my corner of the world which was formed by graduates and lecturers from a certain university and they started out by just giving the problems from the curriculum. Result was heavy bias in favour of students and alumni of that university.
If that were the case then a normal, well accomplished software engineer shouldn't need to "grind" leetcode to pass an interview.
its just a cargo cult. Getting someone to do a code review is a much much better test of skill:
Do they ask questions?
are they kind in their assertions?
At what point do they go "I don't know"?
Do they concentrate on style or substance?
do they raise an issue with a lack of comments?
do they ask why the description of the PR is so vague?
When they get a push back, are they aggressive?
All of those are much better tests than "rewrite a thing that a library would do for you already"
No, what this shows is that the skill range for accomplished professional software devs is absolutely massive. What these companies want is to find the tail end of this very wide distribution. Leetcode interviews do a decent job at this. If you have been coding for a decade and can't do leetcode mediums with almost no prep, and hards with a moderate refresher on data structures, then you're simply not the in the right tail of the skill distribution and they don't want you. This is what so many in our industry can't accept: you're just not talented enough to earn a FAANG job.
Background:
I'm in a FAANG type company now, a YC company, 3000+ engineers. I'm a Staff SWE with 20+ years of experience (ECE degree) and make $600k+ per year. I've went through the promo cycle here (it sucks).
I can't do any leet hards and can do leet mediums after studying. Some easy's take me a couple of tries. I usually do very poorly in interview coding exercises.
** throwaway , main account is 10+ years old.
If you are lucky and join/lead/get a new project off the ground, then you'll also grow.
If you're just trying to move the dial on a normal project, then its very difficult to make any kind of headway. You are surrounded by overly enthusiastic hall monitor types who will put in more hours than you, or post more than you.
> [describes self, story completely contradicts parent post]
I'd say you're a perfect example of why "Leetcode problems are a good filter for getting the top 0.X% of talent" is false.
I mean it doesn't, because I'm at a FAANG, At a FAANG you are infantalised from the very start, sure you passed a very difficult interview where you have to balance a binary tree efficiently as possible. But you're going to use none of those skills here.
what you actually end up doing is copy/pasting some random code you found using internal code search, because the sensible way of doing it can't happen as that would involve porting a thirdparty library, and doing all the procedural work that follows.
so you hack some shit together, ship out out and hope that it doesn't break. You then decommission the nasty hack you shipped last year and claim credit for innovating. Is your product not hitting the right metrics? loosing users? doesn't matter, so long as the super boss is happy that you've hammered in the REST API for the stupid AI interface, you're not going to get fired.
In a startup/small company, if you fuck up, the whole place is going under. Need metrics? you'll need to find a small, cheap and effective system.
Here, we just record then entire world and then throw hundreds of thousands of machines at it to make a vaguly SQL interface. Don't worry about normalising your data, or packing it efficiently just make a 72 column table, and fill it full of random JSON shit. Need to alter a metrics? just add a new column.
In short, don't praise or assume that FAANGs are any good at anything other than making money. They are effectively a high budget marvel movie, Sure they have a big set, but most of it is held together with tape and labour. Look round the side and you'll see its all wood, glue and gaffer tape.
FAANGs want the top .1% of developers, they don't necessarily need them for most roles. But the point is to hire developers that you could put into any role in the company within reason and have them be successful. 99% of development work at a FAANG is pretty unexceptional and doesn't require exceptional developers. They hire for that exceptional 1%.
FAANGS want a load of loyal, naive people who are willing to work loads of overtime and not ask too many questions. Who better than posh kids from great universities who haven't quite figured out that life isn't a meritocracy yet!?
Sure they also want the top 0.1%, but they have a different interview track. Do you think all those OpenAI engineers that were going to follow Altman were asked to do leetcode?
I don't know about OpenAI specifically, but I have heard of interviews at other top ML research positions were partly based on leetcode problems.
Sure I can. By the time you get to Leetcode hard, these aren't just "can you derive the answer". The questions by design take 45+ minutes and have some weird quirk in it that is nominally related to the core concept being tested. These aren't necessarily meant to be done on the fly during an interview period.
>Not being able to see up the mountain doesn’t imply there are no climbers above you.
a better analogy is that youre on a road and you see a freeway above you. The people above you aren't "better", they are simply on another road, to another destination. But they aren't necessarily worse either. They could be on their way to a dead end job or could be a billionaire CEO.
That is to say, it's useless comparing yourself to other people you don't know. Everyone has their story.
So I'm not sure we're interpreting the same conclusion here unless you think trick questions are a mark of a "good engineer".
>You cannot argue against general rule by pointing out specialized exceptions.
Lertcode hards in interviews have been getting more common for a decade now. At what point do we stop pretending that more cats aren't losing their 4th leg and announce an epidemic?
It shouldn't be common, but it's becoming more common. I haven't seen any claims in any conversion even disagree with the notion, let alone provide hard evidence.
This is how I learned mathematics for example.
After you have learnt enough of the special cases (trees) you start to be able to connect them and see their relation (the forest).
I highly doubt you are sight-reading atomic bomb LC hards.
This sounds like you want to penalize students who studied for the exams. Or at least not reward them.
Like all interview formats, it’s a proxy for understanding if the prospect would be able to get the work done and be a good fit with the rest of the team. I’d say it’s a pretty good proxy for work ethic at crunch time as well.
If your complaint is that a normal person wouldn’t have the time to study these things in detail, why would a company want to hire someone who has external obligations?
s/exams/interview/g
External obligations like full time employment and a family?
Interviews are like exams but you don't have any clue what topics are on the test. If Leetcode was some licensed, standardized approach to getting some license to verify my ability to code myself out of a paper bag: I'd hate it, but I'd grit my teeth and study it. exams can be studied for.
But it isn't, so I can be studying leetcode questions and be hit by a dozen other topics. I don't have time to study everything, and the market right now isn't worth pinpointing specific companies unless you have a stellar reference.
>I’d say it’s a pretty good proxy for work ethic at crunch time as well.
I couldn't disagree more. Someone so prepared for interviews have the least skin in the game. Layoffs come and they didn't work > 40 hours but were otherwise excellent? oh well, get another job in a month because interviews are a breeze for them because they breathe DS&A.
>why would a company want to hire someone who has external obligations?
I'd love to know the answer here as well. Why do companies internally penalize workers who were laid off, but then try to "steal" currently happy employees but make them jump through these hoops? The logic seems backwards; interviews should be hard and depress wages for the laid off, desperate workers so you can get a desperate unicorn. But you want someone who lacks the time to study because of current job obligations to get to an offer faster. Their proof of work ethic is being employed to begin with.
Most companies are building products anyway.
We had one person who worked on [censored] 20 years ago, then was manager of [non-programmers, rest censored] - now wants to get back into coding - can this person still code? If so I want them, but if they have forgotten everything... I of course censored details for privacy reasons.