[ThrowawayR2]

> "We're (mostly) hackers for bleep's sake."

Ironically, the old-school hackers who made the word "hacker" famous, like the ones who built the UNIX ecosystem before Linux was even a thing, knew their CS fundamentals like the back of their hand. They'd have zero trouble with the coding aspect of these interviews.

Very few people on HN are hackers.

> "If you look at Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, BOTH are investing heavily in tuning their recruitment process to identify and hire neuro-atypical people"

That's just a publicity stunt. I'd bet money that few of the neuro-atypical they hire last long in those places.

[AlexC04]

I don't know that I'm terribly interested in gatekeeping who can call themselves a hacker.

Like I'll agree that there definition of hacker in 1983 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames is different from the one we generally buse today, but the world has changed a lot in that time.

Did white-hat exist in '83?

The definition of hacker has evolved from "one who uses computer tools to gain illicit access to protected computer systems" to "one who makes shit work and does cool stuff"

If you're going to imply that only the 1983 definition is the one anyone can use, I feel like you're going to be off on that island mostly alone.

[joelbluminator]

> knew their CS fundamentals like the back of their hand.

Even if they did, that doesn't necessarily mean they can shuffle an array or flip a BST under pressure on a whiteboard

[foobiekr]

Honest to God, I think current interview practices suck and single out leetcode as particularly corrosive and demonstrating nothing about competence.

But I honestly can’t believe people are acting like reversing a binary tree is hard. This is like something you’d expect high school students with the most basic you data structures knowledge to be able to do.

[joelbluminator]

Once you've seen the solution it looks easy, yes.

[foobiekr]

No. Seriously no.