[ideal0227]

Thanks for educating me about BFS.

I am major in computer science, and published paper in top conference. Tree traversal is trivial for me. So I guess I have decent CS background and knowledge?

Writing bug free and perfect code is not equal to simply solve the problem. If you have prepared coding interviews (especially for new grad and internship), you should understand it is less about knowledge but more about practicing and memorization for that specific purpose. The time spent on it is almost a waste in the future.

If the interview is knowledge based or problem solving oriented, I am all for it. Sadly, it is not today in many places. And that is exactly why website like Leetcode exists.

[crimsonalucard]

A published paper in a top conference only happens through political connections in undergrad it is not a marker for your IQ which is what a company like google tests for.

The interview is not just about writing bug free code it is 100% about solving a problem you haven't seen before. Google specifically tells their interviewers to avoid "canned" problems that are already all over the internet.

>If the interview is knowledge based or problem solving oriented, I am all for it. Sadly, it is not today in many places. And that is exactly why website like Leetcode exists.

The interview is about both. You are given a problem that they expect you have not seen before and you are expected to solve that problem using raw knowledge and problem solving skills.

Leetcode isn't about memorization. Leetcode is training data used to optimize your neural net to solve problems it hasn't seen before.

[ideal0227]

> Google specifically tells their interviewers to avoid "canned" problems that are already all over the internet.

They did a pretty poor job on this already. And it adds one more requirements, the ability to pretend that you have never practiced a similar question before :P.

> Leetcode isn't about memorization. Leetcode is training data used to optimize your neural net to solve problems it hasn't seen before.

Oh. Thanks. Glad that Human brain does not need that much data like today's neural net.

And there are millions of ways to improve problem solving than repeating BSF/DFS/DP templates on Leetcode questions.

[crimsonalucard]

>They did a pretty poor job on this already. And it adds one more requirements, the ability to pretend that you have never practiced a similar question before :P.

This is solved by throwing multiple interview questions at the person that are all novel and not derived from the internet. The probability of ALL questions being seened before is very low.

>And there are millions of ways to improve problem solving than repeating BSF/DFS/DP templates on Leetcode questions.

So? Doesn't change the effectiveness of leetcode in passing an interview and displaying your ability to learn and solve novel problems. If you have other ways of passing those interviews outside of leetcode, that's great. Use it.

[ideal0227]

> This is solved by throwing multiple interview questions at the person that are all novel and not derived from the internet. The probability of ALL questions being seened before is very low.

This is solved by adding more questions into Leetcode. 1000+ and counting.

> So? Doesn't change the effectiveness of leetcode in passing an interview and displaying your ability to learn and solve novel problems. If you have other ways of passing those interviews outside of leetcode, that's great. Use it.

You missed the point entirely. My argument is that many interviews are not designed for problem solving but practicing and memorization. And this is exactly why Leetcode ensures you to repeat these template 100 times effectively.

I do not plan to pass this kinds of interview, before, now or the future. So why do I bother?

Good luck on your job search anyway. I have no intention on discouraging you to do the practice. I cannot fix anything here.

[crimsonalucard]

>This is solved by adding more questions into Leetcode. 1000+ and counting.

I know people who did 500 LC problems and couldn't get in google and people who did 20 and got in. The problem set on LC is too large for memorization to work. Google will be giving you problems that aren't on LC and they are actively testing for raw intelligence.

>You missed the point entirely. My argument is that many interviews are not designed for problem solving but practicing and memorization. And this is exactly why Leetcode ensures you to repeat these template 100 times effectively.

No you missed my point. I've talked to those google interviewers, they are not testing your memorization skills that is not their intent. The amount of algorithm problems available in the universe far exceeds that which is available on Leetcode. When you interview at google the questions are designed so that you've never seen any of them before. Get it?

[kortilla]

> Google will be giving you problems that aren't on LC and they are actively testing for raw intelligence.

Where did this silly notion come from? If they were testing for “raw intelligence”, you wouldn’t have to have any CS knowledge to pass.

[anticensorship]

> 'A published paper in a top conference only happens through political connections in undergrad'

Which fact in and of itself ought to show just how rigged the whole system is--when people can get papers published in prestigious journals merely on the strength of "whom they know."

[crimsonalucard]

It also shows how unrigged the whole google interview process is.

A whiteboard interview is a "Political connection agnostic" interview.

[amznthrowaway5]

When interviewing for places like Google and Amazon, your political connections and things like publications/degrees still matter a lot. Good performance on the interviews can be impactful but it's not the only factor. The incredibly biased committees review a lot more than that at google.

[crimsonalucard]

Maybe a better way to put it is, the whiteboard problem itself is a pass or fail question and therefore that aspect of the interview by itself is unbiased.

[csa]

So I guess you’ve never seen someone being fed an answer during an interview.

Trust me, it happens for certain applicants.