[pharmakom]

The problem is many of these leetcode tests can be practiced - whether it’s spotting repeated problem structures or simply recycling questions. As a result they don’t really test problem solving ability but how much effort went into prep work. This makes it a really poor signal.

[thaumasiotes]

I actually see a worse problem than that. The idea of the leetcode interview is that you give someone an extremely hard problem and hope they solve it in 30 minutes. But the problem is much too difficult for any nontrivial number of candidates to solve it themselves in 30 minutes, so the intent of the process is that the candidate draws the answer out of the interviewer, who has prepared it in advance.

Then they're graded on how much help they appeared to need. But this grading is hopelessly contaminated by candidates' varying levels of charm and ability in cold reading. Cold reading isn't the skill companies want to test for, but it's the skill they actually are testing for. If you want to evaluate the candidates objectively, the goal would be to minimize interaction with the interviewer, not emphasize it.

[biztos]

TIL:[0]

> Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Forer effect[1] and due to confirmation biases within people.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

[bambax]

> many of these leetcode tests can be practiced (...) This makes it a really poor signal

It signals dedication/motivation at the very least.

It seems the people complaining are people who can't leetcode and, for some reason, won't practice. But why?

You either can leetcode, and it's all good, or you can't, and you should simply practice.

People who can't be bothered to practice leetcode for a couple of weeks to get past the tech interview, probably don't want the job enough.

[pharmakom]

I’m actually quite good at leetcode (or so I like to think). The reason people are annoyed is that they must jump through hoops for something that is a poor signal of job performance so it feels like a waste of time.

[62951413]

Two weeks is not enough even to read something like https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Programming-Coding-Interviews... unless you are already unemployed. Also, some of us have practiced actually writing software for the last 20 years. And in my limited spare time I'd rather study something useful.

The world is full of people who have passed leetcode puzzles. But to this day somehow I see more JSON over HTTP than gRPC in the wild. Or developers (or is it their managers?) saying that Scala is too complicated. Comments in the code? Meaningful README files? Even descriptive commit messages are less common than HN would make you believe.

[bjourne]

Can you give an example of a leetcode test that can be "practiced"? I assume you actually mean "memorized" since leetcode tests are meant to be used for practice.