Sounds like the system worked exactly as intended then. A seemingly smart person got a good job. What's the problem with this story exactly?
No, the hiring managers that are into cargoogle culting are not actually that interested in how to do interviewing properly. Not unless, say, google does it and they can copy it.
For them the important thing is that leetcode is a safe, defensible choice because "everyone else does it that way".
I think this is exactly what a lot of companies try to do when interviewing. Depending on how much time they want candidates and interviewers to spend on the task, this ranges from leetcode-style problems to bigger coding challenges (possibly with some debugging or collaboration involved).
What would you suggest concretely?
If you think leetcode is representative of real life programming you're probably a college student.
This is based on a real system I designed and have been maintaining for ~5 years, and is also very similar to other systems I've run at previous jobs.
About half the candidates complain that it's not a realistic question.
What would be a "proper" interview in your opinion?
Are you suggesting that any coding interviews and challenges are simply removed from the existing processes? That just means you end up with more candidates to choose from, which doesn't sound helpful at all if your goal is to end up with better hires as the comment above was suggesting.
(Note I am saying people who "believe" they cannot get a good job. This would be people who worry a lot, people with unusual experiences that other companies avoid, and under-performers who got fired. I am sure there will be some great hires in those groups, but likely less than during regular hiring)
We all part from the same place (understand me: from the standpoint of the hirer, I know we have different vital stories). They open the position to all of us and want to be impressed. The one that makes it, gets the job.
It is the best way? Absolutely not. Is it unfair? No.
Is reading a book on software engineering to become a better programmer also not allowed?
I feel like people want these jobs to be distributed "fairly" based on "natural" ability/talent.
But it has never and will never work that way.
Fair question.. the problem today is the emphasis on studying and practicing irrelevant things like memorizing algorithms. That's become the paved short-cut to well paying jobs so naturally people do it. To the point that even the people doing the hiring have forgotten what it meant to be actually qualified, not just a leetcode memorizer.
If you need to hire a musician for your band, do you pick the person who has spent six months practicing a handful of chords to perfection, but possibly doesn't know anything about composing songs or jamming with the band? Or do you pick someone who has been composing and playing live shows for 10+ years?
The first one is just academic memorization that has some value, but very little. The second one is real-life experience that's worth a lot.
I have zero musical skills but even I have managed to learn to play a couple songs on the piano by sheer memorization of which buttons to press in what sequence. If you ask me to play one of those songs it might seem like I know what I'm doing even though I'm completely incompetent in music. That's the equivalent of hiring for software roles based on leetcode memorization.
Most interview loops at places that do algorithm interviews are 2-3 rounds and each round will have up to 2 questions. Its very very unlikely the interviewee will only encountered questions they have memorized.
More likely, the interviewee encounters questions similar to ones they have solved and they know the pattern around solving, then are able to apply their learned skill to the new problem.
Similar to your music analogy: you can absolutely be a strong guitar player in a band if you just memorize a few different chord shapes and can apply them up and down the fretboard to different keys (lookup the "CAGED system").
All crucial skills in the modern technology or legal workplace.
The leetcodes feel completely unrelated.
This is what people say whenever one criticizes the methodology of any test. They say that the real test was actually the friends we made along the way. The real test was the degree to which you are willing to humiliate yourself, or to accomplish things you don't understand the purpose of, or to accomplish things that you do understand the purpose of but disagree with logically or morally.
We filter for the worst, most damaged, and most desperate people.
These are probably the best candidates, from the perspective of a manager who is concerned with stability and not rocking the boat, at the cost of results and workplace quality.
At least lawyers don't have to take the bar every other year for the rest of their careers.
The bummer is that you're right, it actually is worth even this much investment, because these companies do pay extremely well. But it's still horrendously inefficient, because the companies are getting a very small improvement to their signal to noise ratio, at this great cost (which, notably, they don't bear).
Someone working at billion dollar VC funded outfit should understand the cause of making smart but speculative bets.
BTW, I have personally made this bet in the past (though I didn't put 3 to 4 months into it...) and it was indeed an excellent bet to make. But benefitting from a system does not preclude identifying problems with it.
The problem with this story is that people need to work with and rely on this person for responsibilities they're not yet qualified to meet. In some cases, a "smart person" will be able to grow into the role, but the road there is long and messy, which becomes a frustration for colleagues, supervisors, clients, users etc.
Because of the prolonged boom we just went through, the industry -- especially at FAANG's -- is now saturated with smart, naive people trying to fake it until they make it, leading to a gross decline in quality and consistency compared to where we have been and might otherwise be.
In my mind that's a rather nasty practice.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm happy to pick up people that are good at computers but wouldn't be able to pass that hurdle, and probably wouldn't hire anyone that has.
You're looking for people who feel like they can't be bothered to learn some of the science and fundamentals of their craft? And you'd actively oppose hiring people who have the determination to go the extra mile? You'd actually discriminate against people who know how to use basic data structures and algorithms, and have that enriched landscape of knowledge to apply to problems that might come up?
Fortunately for you, there are lots of these people available to hire who felt like they are too good to put in the work.
I'm not saying that the data structures and algorithms knowledge is needed to do most software engineering jobs on a daily basis. But for lots of jobs, hiring people with a demonstrated willingness to dive in deep and learn things that aren't necessarily easy or fun actually can be a very good thing, because a lot of engineering problems require a similarly difficult dive into some aspect of specialized domain knowledge.
Whether someone demonstrates a willingness to dive in deep and learn things I catch with an entirely different technique, like putting them into contact with a new programming language.
Filtering out people with experience from "FAANG" will likely get rid of some people that think they are "too good to put in the work", because they have that line on their resumes. And those I've met were absolutely insufferable and incompetent.
> And those I've met were absolutely insufferable and incompetent.
I understand this last part, and annoying and insufferable people absolutely do exist. But consider that you may be generalizing and discriminating against a pretty big pool of people using a small sample size, and give some of those people a chance-- as long as they're not being insufferable and are treating you the way you want to be treated. Those people exist in FAANGs too.
If they have the sense to try and hide their "FAANG" background I might consider them.
if you provide utility to the market, you shouldn’t need credentials or a corporate ladder to climb to prove it, it should be immediate compensation no matter how disparate
so despite how coveted tech compensation packages are at this tier of company, a seemingly smart person getting a good job after doing a contrived aptitude test does meet that criteria. other people outside the field (and within) have difficulty passing it and don't have the cognitive ability to study for it, or the financial stability to prioritize studying for it
I also agree that a less contrived aptitude test would be better