[rebeccaskinner]

> We know LeetCode style tests aren’t perfect, but they’re repeatable and the study material is free and widely available.

One of the things that gets me here on the hiring side is that the ease of “grinding leetcode” as a strategy seems to defeat the entire purpose of it as an interview question. I don’t want to dismiss the value of someone being able to study a skill and learn it, but I see a lot of people fixated on rehearsing leetcode answers like they were magical incantations you recite to get jobs, there’s not always a lot of real learning happening. That’s not reflective of the kind of candidates I’d want to hire or the peers I’d want to work with.

> A lot of companies give the option of LeetCode style interviews or take-homes and almost everybody chooses the take-home.

If true I’d like to see more of this. No hiring process is good for everyone and I think flexibility can be a better way to make a process fair, but I haven’t seen much of it personally. I don’t think I’ve personally gotten a leetcode problem at an interview in years- takehome problems have been the more common screening tool, but I don’t think I’ve ever been offered a choice in the matter.

> The idea that someone can allocate several hours during their busy day for a live interview but somehow can’t find several hours during the week for a take-home doesn’t even make logical sense.

I’m not sure this is entirely on the mark. On problem with takehome a is asymmetry. Most take home assignments I’ve gotten have come toward the end of an interview process, and there fine, but when I talk to more Junior folks it seems like they are often given hours long takehome problems before they ever talk to a human. That seems disrespectful of peoples time- it’s a lot to ask from someone who doesn’t even know if they are a fit or want your job yet.

In any case the hours long takehome is usually in addition to an bourse long set of interviews- not in lieu of them. Another common problem pre-Covid was that a lot of people just weren’t set up to work from home so it was harder to get the space and time to work on a project at home. I expect that’s probably changed a lot these days though.

[brimble]

> One of the things that gets me here on the hiring side is that the ease of “grinding leetcode” as a strategy seems to defeat the entire purpose of it as an interview question.

I think that's irrelevant for FAANG and friends. They pay so high that they can afford to make their interviews so miserable and time-intensive to prepare for that tons of people never even try, purely as a first-pass filter. They don't care that you can prep for it, they just want it to be (exactly the right amount of) scary and unpleasant. The resulting, self-selected group probably is, in fact, far better on average than the set of all software developers, including those who never apply to those sorts of jobs (but might if the interviews were less awful). Furthermore I think that's why some results show that they could randomly select candidates and do about as well as the interview process does—sure, maybe, but they could not do that if the set of people applying wasn't already heavily biased to have a fairly high average skill level (& IQ, that's absolutely part of what they're filtering for).

Now, companies paying half or less what FAANG does and trying to do anything remotely similar, are simply making a mistake. People with a tolerance for and ability to pass those kinds of interviews are going to apply to the much-higher-paying options, not to your company.

[rebeccaskinner]

> They pay so high that they can afford to make their interviews so miserable and time-intensive to prepare for that tons of people never even try, purely as a first-pass filter. They don't care that you can prep for it, they just want it to be (exactly the right amount of) scary and unpleasant.

This is something I completely agree with. I'm not so sure about the motivation though.

> The resulting, self-selected group probably is, in fact, far better on average than the set of all software developers, including those who never apply to those sorts of jobs (but might if the interviews were less awful). Furthermore I think that's why some results show that they could randomly select candidates and do about as well as the interview process does—sure, maybe, but they could not do that if the set of people applying wasn't already heavily biased to have a fairly high average skill level (& IQ, that's absolutely part of what they're filtering for).

This is where I disagree, and my disagreement comes in two parts. First, is programming skill what this is actually measuring, and second, is programming skill what this is intended to measure? I don't have hard data, but I'd guess no in both cases. I've certainly known plenty of early career people who get obsessed with leetcode grinding, and I've never known them to be any better on average than the people who don't fall into that trap. What they are better at is letting themselves be convinced they need to work long hours and burn themselves out for an opportunity. The cynic in me says that's what these companies are actually selecting for, although it's likely at least some people involved in the decision making aren't doing it consciously.

[brimble]

> First, is programming skill what this is actually measuring, and second, is programming skill what this is intended to measure?

Yeah, no, and, no. I agree.

I don't think it's measuring programming skill. I think there's a strong enough correlation between that skill and being willing and able to study for & attempt their interviews that simply conducting them the way they do yields a set of candidates who would practically all be acceptable hires—but they can't drop the unpleasant and/or useless parts and make them easier, or that would stop being true. There are definitely lots of people who'd be good, or even great, that it excludes, but I don't think they care, probably regarding the cost of finding those folks as too high to be worth it. As it is, it barely even matters how good a job they do of weeding out candidates who show up. Most of them are probably good hires (for what FAANG is looking for, which is some combination of IQ and "how bad you want it", as far as I can tell).

> The cynic in me says that's what these companies are actually selecting for, although it's likely at least some people involved in the decision making aren't doing it consciously.

Heh, yeah, I agree that's likely part of it.

I think there's also a hazing component. Hazing is effective at creating strong in-group sentiment and bonding, in a hurry.

Overall, I think measuring programming ability has almost nothing to do with why they do what they do. I also don't think that necessarily means it's ineffective at achieving their goals. I think complaints about FAANG-type hiring, when directed at companies that pay in the top-tier, are misguided for that reason. I also hate them, and don't think they're good at measuring actual programming ability, but I think there's likely a non-crazy (though a smidge sociopathic or cruel, maybe) point of view from which they are the right thing for those companies to do.

[rebeccaskinner]

It sounds like we’re mostly in agreement. I’m not sure they are actually the right choice, because I tend to think that companies that are trying to operate at such a large scale would be better off having a broader set of type of people working in engineering, and they necessarily limit themselves too much by insisting on their interviewing approach, but I’ll admit that I’m bringing a lot of my own bias about what a good company looks like into that view of the world.