[commonlisp94]

> biased towards people who have time to practice these problems

That sounds like a bias towards people who make time to learn, not to mention interest and academic aptitude.

I don't know how you can frame this as something you wouldn't want to bias for. But I do acknowledge many great engineers will not have that skill.

[Planktonne]

"Make time to learn" and "make time to practice specific problems" are not at all the same thing; the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem.

[commonlisp94]

> the conflation of grinding leetcode with growing understanding is a problem.

It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills. Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?

[nitwit005]

> Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?

I've gotten way better at these problems from practice. Am I suddenly an amazing programmer as a result? I wish that were the case, but sadly I don't believe my job skills are improved at all.

That suggests we're measuring something fairly independent.

[Planktonne]

> It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills

It's no better than any other evidence of effort

> Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?

I don't have to imagine; it tends to lead to hard-to-maintain 'clever' code, with little ability to deal with less-than-clear requirements.

[commonlisp94]

> It's no better than any other evidence of effort

I think one thing that's better is it has a hard IQ floor that can only be compensated with a huge amount of memorization and practice, but that's a worthwhile skill on it's own.