[noleetcode]

I'd love nothing more than to go out and get a new job, but I swore years ago to never again participate in leetcode hazing interviews, and every recruiter I've spoken to (15+ in the past few months) has described exactly that as the interview process.

I expect I'll die at my current job.

[q845712]

I did a job search this year and I think while everyone made me do some amount of coding challenge, some were much more "leetcode-y" than others.

In my limited sampling, Stripe and VMWare stand out as big companies you've probably heard of where the coding challenge felt closer to "help us verify you've been writing software professionally for a while" and further from "prove you could still pass an advanced undergraduate exam on data structures and algorithms". I'm sure both those co.s are large enough that your experience may vary, but it made me hopeful that our long dark winter of perpetually drilling intermediate to advanced algorithms coursework is ending.

[the_only_law]

I knew leetcode style interviews were popular, but I had no idea quite how prevalent they were. Almost any job I wanted to apply to seemed to use them in some capacity.

I tried to search the sites that aggregate roles that specifically do not use them, but your options become really thin when you filter for remote. I’ve already been ATS screened out of some of the better looking companies in that category.

[alienthrowaway]

> I swore years ago to never again participate in leetcode hazing interviews

Thank you for your service! I'm not the smartest person I know (though I'm fairly smart) but grinding leetcode is not beneath me. It was really hard with the burnout, and the many years since taking the DS&A class in university, but solving that class of problems is satisfying; the way solving puzzles, or a Rubik's cube is - once you get the hang of it.

Smart people not bending the knee to Leetcode meant less competition for me when I was doing my interviewing rounds a few months ago. I managed to double my compensation. Hell, I'd do it all over again in exchange for the cheapest Tesla, or $40k once-off, but I now get to earn ridiculous amounts of money for years to come.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[adi4213]

What kind of compensation packages are being thrown around currently? Do you have any recommendations how long to prep for a leetcode style interview?

[alienthrowaway]

https://levels.fyi has a good baseline data on compensation data, as it generally varies by seniority of the role.

> Do you have any recommendations how long to prep for a leetcode style interview?

This entirely depends on your starting level on Data Structures & Algorithms, and how much time you can set aside per week, but be warned though: it is a grind - I had to give up other hobbies for 6 close to 2 months (I'm not very smart, and I wasn't aiming for the most challenging tier of interviewers, YMMV). Once you've done enough questions (dozens or low hundreds), you start to recognize patterns and get a hunches for avenues to explore when solving.

I'd recommend "Cracking the Coding Interview" book, leetcode and/or hackerrank for practice as well as searching for YouTube for specific algorithms/structures that you find challenging - I struggled a bit with dynamic programming at first (speaking of which, know the class of questions your target companies ask so you don't waste effort). You can monitor your progress by timing yourself on how long it will take you to complete "easy" or "medium" (depending on competitiveness of company you're shooting for, you can time 1 easy + 1 medium, or 2 mediums, or 1 hard + 1 medium within about 50 minutes).

[dan-robertson]

I agree leetcode interviews are pretty stupid, and there are plenty of skilled professionals who suck at that sort of interview (even if they are quite good at finding good hires it can be silly for most companies to use them as candidates who do well will likely have many competing offers from other leetcode interviewers.)

When I was at university a lot of people studied hard for somewhat bullshit exams that had little relevance to the work they we’re expecting to be doing for the rest of their lives. And people paid the university for the privilege of getting to take those exams. The purpose of this studying was achieving good grades and the value of these grades was an increased expected value for lifetime earnings. But this value is probably lower than naively looking at statistics would suggest: ambitious, hardworking, or clever students were more likely to do well in exams and those people would likely do well later in life too even if they had food poisoning and failed their exams.

In comparison, it seems to me that job interviewing costs a lot less than getting a degree and the payoff is potentially larger, more direct, and more immediate. It seems that the pain of studying and practicing bullshit leetcode questions is outweighed by the benefit of, say, a 50% pay rise or equivalent quality of life improvement, and I don’t think a moral stance against leetcode is strong enough to justify turning down such opportunities.

But maybe you feel more strongly about this moral position than me. Or maybe you are one of those competent people who can’t do well at this sort of interview even with studying and practice. Certainly such people exist.

[noleetcode]

For myself it's a combination of morals as well as the fact that I've simply become so depressed due to my current place of work that I don't think I have the capability to engage in the prep work, never mind that particular type of interview itself.

To lend some credence to the former (the morals) - I have succeeded at leetcode hazefests in the past. I've worked at two mega-cap tech companies, and the last time I seriously interviewed (half a decade ago...) I was successful at multiple companies (all of which took each and every interview session from a page of leetcode, or if I was really "lucky", CtCI)

So I expect if I could get over the depression (not likely) I could probably prepare and maybe even succeed. But even then I don't think it's something I'm willing to give on, even though the rewards for myself would likely be substantial.

(Similarly, I also refuse to interview candidates at my current employer, as they insist on the same thing)

[wildrhythms]

During an interview process with Goldman Sachs, I was told I would be given a Leetcode interview to 'assess my abilities.' I asked them if this was the usual process for experienced engineers, they said yes. I declined the rest of the interview process. At the time I worked at a major well-known tech company with 5-year tenure.

My thought is: If this is how these companies treat people they actually want to hire, I wonder how they treat people after they're hired?

[jrockway]

There seems to be plenty of VC money around if you want to start your own company. Might be better than dying at your current job.

[noleetcode]

It's funny, where everyone else seems to have the problem of "ideas are a dime a dozen, but time to execute is scarce", I just have zero ideas. My only true passion in the world of software development is gaming (the one area where I, like everyone else, have lots of ideas), and, well, being an independent game developer is an even worse crap-shoot than lining up for leetcode interviews! (I won't argue that it's not a self-defeating attitude to have in regards to considering indie game development, but the numbers certainly don't lie here)

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

No, it's a very realistic attitude to have about being an indie game developer. The market is flooded and unless you have a really good idea, can make a really good game, and can promote the living fuck out of it you're going to have a hard time.

Still, at this point I'm almost willing to just try it and off myself when it doesn't work out and I'm broke. Looking at job ads right now is incredibly depressing.

[Trasmatta]

I'm in the same place as you, and I've been trying to figure out if there's some intersection between games and my current web dev specific skills that's both a safer route than traditional indie dev, and somewhat less tapped out. I have a couple ideas, not really sure if they're good though.

[the_only_law]

Yeah same, I won’t say I have no ideas, but I have none that are commercializable.

[antisthenes]

Heh, I have some that I think are commercializable, then I go online and look for companies that are doing similar things, and lo and behold, there are already several competitors who are doing a pretty good job.

At least a good enough job that there's no way I can easily cut into their market share or take some of their clients without significant outside funding.

[Trasmatta]

There's nothing new under the sun. Almost all ideas will have already been done by somebody else. And if nobody has even tried it, then it's possible it's not a good idea.

[tpxl]

2/2 places I interviewed at in the past month asked me for a take home assignment, one of which would skip it if I had any open source code to show them. I have 3 more in the pipeline and I doubt more than one will require leetcoding.

As the sibling said, you can post in the HN who's hiring and who's looking to get hired threads.

[fzzzy]

You hated it so much you made it your hacker news handle! I, too, hate leetcode.

[agustif]

Are you OK with code challenges? Workatastartup (from YC) is a nice option if you haven't tried, also who's hiring/wants to be hired monthly threads here are pure gold on ROI/leads ratio. Post there

[lordnacho]

Take-homes there were a few of, nothing leetcode in the places I looked. Still gotta know your DS&A though, people will ask.

Remote also allows you to interview a lot, so if there's some hiring process that's not for you, no big deal.

[noleetcode]

I suppose I probably should at least just start some interviews and then decline at the point that they start leetcoding-proper (even if that's during the actual interview itself).

DS& (common) A isn't a problem at its core (as least as far as I am concerned - I'm comfortable that I am able to pick the right one given the scenario, describe why, etc.), but where it becomes a problem for me is when I'm inevitably asked to reproduce some esoteric (for example) binary tree or graph algorithm on the spot, in 30 minutes, with no errors.

[specialist]

I was once asked to write a (bayesian) spam filter, when neither my cv nor the job posting had any mention of spam or anything adjacent. Then the "bar raiser" mocked me.