Comment by mattpallissard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattpallissard | Hacker News Reader

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I can't speak to anxiety or other disorders but I have a hard time swallowing that leetcode discriminates against the older crowd.

I'm not older, but I was in the industry prior to the leetcode style interview. I've never sat down and "grinded" leetcode but I've also never had a problem with those styles of interview once they became common. Neither have my former co-workers. I have a few friends that are still working, past retirement age, that would crush any problem you threw at them.

In my experience, it's not much different than the whiteboard interview. Sure the presentation of a problem can stump you for a moment, but with a few good follow up questions a solution, however naive, becomes apparent.

I had a mentor early in my career that repeatedly said "There is no such thing as an unsolved problem in computer science". I think that mostly holds true, you either recognize the pattern and implement, or you learn and implement next time.

That all said, leetcode style interviews are the interview version of a "bad code smell" and I'd strongly prefer a bug-squash style, even if it was in a completely unfamiliar programming language. Actually, an unfamiliar programming language might make it fun.

One reason they can discriminate against the older crowd is that they are hard for people with established jobs and familial responsibilities to study for. Working for a longer period of time leads to more experience bug squashing. Younger developers are much more likely to not have kids and more likely to have time to dedicate to grinding questions while having less experience with "real work" i.e day to day LOB software development that the bug hunt interviews optimize for.

I think the point is that competent developers can solve the problem on the go. You don't have to study for it.

I don't know, maybe some places do have ridiculously hard problems that you just have to memorize the algorithm for, but personally I haven't seen that. It's more like advent of code style stuff that you kind of just figure out by yourself.

Last time I did the gauntlet at Google I was able to solve all the problems.

However I wasn't as fast as others as I didn't recognize any of the questions and had to work through them. Interviewers expect you to be fast, or at least compare you to people who seem faster. Doesn't matter who studied or not, or who will actually perform better on non-leetcode tasks.

Also having kids is a real issue, it absolutely crushes the amount of time you have to anything besides working.

You don't need to memorize the algorithm for, but if you haven't been exposed to those types of problems you will solve them much more slowly. Younger developers are more likely to have experience with more CS style problems than an older LOB developer who focuses more on writing clean testable code. I don't have an axe to grind in this as I am the younger developer in this situation.

leetcode style interviews discriminate against older workers: older workers don't have time to grind leetcode. they have other obligations outside work. job descriptions require "x years of experience" but then the interviewer dismisses your experience and you get purely evaluated on whether you pass the interview, just like younger people who don't have the experience.

I don't know where you've been doing coding interviews. I'm pretty confident there are leetcode type problems you will have a hard time with and won't be able to complete in the allotted time. I'll share one of my experiences with a FAANG.

My interviewer first spent a lot of time "getting to know me" and asking trick questions, and stressing he also previously founded a startup, then handed me a problem and demanded I find the optimal solution in ~10 minutes and also wanted me to talk while working on the problem. I could not remember the arguments to a function and couldn't concentrate. It bombed.

A few days later I was sent prep material for an interview at a different FAANG. One of the videos was the author of cracking the coding interview solving this exact problem on a whiteboard. It took her more than an hour to arrive at the optimal solution.

So in short: 1) interviewer had unrealistic expectations

2) interviewer wasted time with introductions given his expectations

3) interviewer asked trick questions to determine whether I am a liar even though it was pretty clear from the introductory conversations that was highly unlikely

4) interviewer created an awkward interviewing environment and triggered my anxiety

5) interviewer thought I should be able to code while talking

6) interviewer probably forgot how long it took him to solve the problem originally and probably never timed that

> leetcode style interviews discriminate against older workers: older workers don't have time to grind leetcode. they have other obligations outside work.

This isn't discrimination on age this is discrimination on dedication to craft. Young people can have obligations outside of work just as easily as older people.

-- signed an old man

you can't call 20 years of experience a lack of dedication to craft...

I have more than 20 years of experience and I manage to find time to do leet code exercises before I interview.

I'm saying that testing people for their skill, in any way, will have imperfections and will wind up excluding people. If it excludes people based on something they can control that's probably not the worst thing. Not everybody can get time to practice, but do I really want to be working alongside people who don't practice? Maybe in some jobs I do maybe in some jobs I don't.

If someone really does have 20 years of experience then a single evening of practicing will do a lot more for them than it will a fresh faced kid from college even if that kid from college does it for two or three hours every day for a week.

I just simply don't accept the notion that leet code interviews favor people based on age.

i want to work with people who already know how to solve problems and don’t need to practice every night to be able to do that

I have played magic the gathering for 30 years. You better believe that if I am going to a tournament I am practicing in advance. Even if I don't learn a new specific skill it might hasten decisions I already know or show me subtle nuances that mught be clutch.

Why would I take my career less seriously than a game?

> I'm pretty confident there are leetcode type problems you will have a hard time with and won't be able to complete in the allotted time

I don't doubt that at all. But I've also had that on a whiteboard.

Also, it sounds like your interviewer was a jerk. Which seems orthogonal to the style of interview.

one of his colleagues was similar, so all I can conclude is that this particular FAANG has a higher than average number of jerks

That is your personal anecdote, n=1. Not that your opinion doesn't matter or carry weight, but it doesn't say much more than the comment you replied to.

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