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by monoideism 2306 days ago
The problem is twofold:

1. False positives: you get folks who do really well at DS&A yet who are really bad developers. I mean really bad. I wouldn't have believed it if I had not seen their interviews and then subsequent performance. I'd wildly guess that it's about 20-30%.

2. False negatives: you get folks who are really good developers, and yet for whatever reason, perform badly on DS&A algorithms despite practicing. I think this number is higher than false positives, probably around 50% or more.

If you're a FAANG company, you can afford to play these odds. If you're not FAANG, then you're killing yourself by requiring DS&A interviews, almost inevitably.

Both are contributing to destroying the profession for huge numbers of people, IMHO. I mean, that's good for me, because I'm almost certainly sticking around and generally do OK on DS&A interviews with adequate practice (which is a waste of time, since anything beyond a broad knowledge of the performance characteristics of various DS&As is totally unneeded for 99% of us). But it's not right, and I really don't like it.

2 comments

Where did you get all of your numbers? My experience dictate otherwise. Plenty of people who don’t know DS&A and are bad coders, and call themselves senior.
Is it really true though? FAANG seem to be doing just fine and innovating new products year after year. Obviously the developers are performing amazingly.
"If you're a FAANG company, you can afford to play these odds"