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by stayfrosty420 1633 days ago
> Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles

I agree to some extent but moreso, I think it heavily favours those with a theoretical CS background, which means effectively you are favouring candidates from top colleges in a round about way.

1 comments

I honestly don't believe it has anything to do with the college level.

No offense, but you study python, learn its basic syntax + "algorithm design" book + 1 practical book about algorithms and data structures and you're good enough for performing good/optimal leetcodes.

Some things you might miss, for example some exercises you can optimize better if you know some algebra/maths, but 90% of that stuff is more or less repetitive. Once you learn the tricks etc, it really becomes repetitive because finally it's just if/else and for loops. (I don't mean to minimize in any way the effort it takes to make such exercises, it's just the feeling I had while doing some and failing a lot of them).

It's always about specializing one or two specific algorithms you have found in the book[s]. Sometimes it requires coming up with very creative ideas - better for loops. :)

For me Leetcodes are not per se bad. I still learnt something from "being forced" to do them which I probably wouldn't have done if i hadn't been forced. What I despise is the fact that companies have lost accountability in hiring. It's hard to interview, so it's better to rely on an "industry standard" - after all Amazon and Google do the same, so why shouldn't we?

right, but it's way easier to get into if you did multiple semesters of it in college. You probably won't even need the textbook, just glance at a few articles on wikipedia/google and it'll all come back.