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Leetcode is just a proxy for an IQ test. That's it. If you can study up and do well on leetcode, then you're smart. People getting hung up on how realistic the questions are, or whether you ever need to implement X data structure are confused.

Fact is that no job can give a reasonable test for how it is to work there short of working there. There's team dynamics, developer / project fit, etc etc. All you can ever do is measure some proxies. Leetcode is just a much better proxy than the old "how many ping-pong balls fit in a school bus" questions.

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I don’t know that people generally have a problem with testing their knowledge, I think most people that hate on Leetcode (including myself) just don’t like to code in front of strangers in a timed setting like that.

I’ve never been good at tests in school. I probably averaged Cs on tests through college. Projects though? Aced them every time and sometimes got pulled aside and told I was highly exceeding the projects of others in the class. I just do well when I can think alone, or when I can actually work toward a solution with a coworker.

I’ve made the companies I work for millions of dollars. But put me in front of a white board and ask me an algorithm question? You’d think I was fresh out of CS101.

Yeah. Call it stage fright or performance anxiety or whatever you want. It doesn't matter if you want me to write code for you, being around other people makes me anxious and I can't think properly. I'm less anxious now compared to when I started my career, but coding interviews are the worst.

So, you're in one of two situations if you're getting leetcoded vs. let in through the side door at a company (i.e. through your network: the red carpet)

1. You're a newgrad. You have no work history, but you do have a lot of time on your hands and a desire to prove yourself. Go study leetcode and prove how awesome you are.

2. You're a senior engineer who has a small network (not a dig, lots of great developers are introverted and have small networks, myself included). In this case, it sucks but... just practice leetcode. Don't worry, the fact that you're a good engineer means you'll pick it up quickly. It's not the same skill as professional software development, but there's a ton of skill transfer, and it might even be a little fun.

Time crunch, test anxiety etc, those can be overcome by practicing. A lot of times really smart people are averse to practicing since they never had to do it in school. But, I'm telling you, any smart dev can learn to leetcode well while being timed. It'll be fine

IQ test questions are explicitly designed to be things you haven't seen before, solved within minutes per problem. If you've seen them before then the validity of the test is usually invalidated.

Leetcode is effectively the opposite, because each one is usually a CS paper by itself, which by definition took a very hard problem a long time for a very smart person to create and test the solution.

You cannot practically invent the a leetcode solution from whole cloth if you treat it like an IQ test question should be done. It's a sport and you get good at sports via drills until it become muscle memory.

Again, the IQ being measured isn't "Are you able to invent A* search during the interview?" but rather "Can you memorize and apply these algorithms?".

Believe it or not, most humans on earth can study as long as they want for leetcode and still won't do well on them. If you can drill and study for them and your scores improve... bam: that's the IQ test.

You're still missing the point: "IQ test questions are explicitly designed to be things you haven't seen before."

LeetCode is the _opposite_ of an IQ test. LeetCode tests one's ability to memorize, recognize, & regurgitate information in a timed test.

It doesn't matter. It's a heuristic. _vocabulary_ test performance correlates with IQ and vocabulary is _only_ a test of something you know.

Actually - “how many golf balls fit into a VW Beatle” is a better proxy.

Those are called Fermi questions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

I agree. One could say that just administering proper iq test would be better but that would be seen as insulting or whatever and also potentially illegal so people resort to elaborate challenges like lc

you can only administer most iq tests once, maybe twice if its been quite a while and you can rely on them not remembering the questions properly to get a practice effect

I wish they'd just give IQ tests then.. I do just fine in those (~140) but not a leet coder at all.

IQ tests are known to encode cultural biases. DEI troubles and possible lawsuits down that path!

No more than leet code, these are spatial and logic tests with no cultural or social questioning, unlike the leet code questions.

They're illegal, unless you're the government or... NFL, surprisingly.. "wonderlic"

> Leetcode is just a proxy for an IQ test.

What? No. You need to practice to be truly effective at Leetcode.

That's a good point. You need high conscientiousness in addition to high IQ.

yeah but what if you are smart but don't want to spend time on pointless bullshit?

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