[your_friend]

That's the thing I was struggling with, I can solve many of problems for the avg company – but I don't know how to solve a leetcode problem. I bet there aren't as many companies solving the complex problems on a scale.

But if we look from the perspective of the company – maybe it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated and nerdy about programming. Less churn, less questions.

[sph]

I have a controversial, philosophical explanation why that is:

Leet code is useless in the real world, everybody knows it. But one would find that people that are able to sit down and learn something useless and stupid only because their boss asked it makes for better employees.

The modern corporate world does not like free thinkers, if not within easily controllable parameters.

The solution for the ones that have better to do that to memorize dumb quizzes for weeks, only to get paid to write basic React components all day, is to go work for yourself, become a consultant, or move to another career.

[sevagh]

I half agree. I know people who have a natural curiosity of algos & DS - most predictably, people who did algo/ds competitions/competitive programming. To them, leetcode is easy shit, and just naturally so. E.g. I had a group of friends who would ace Advent of Code every year while I muddled through (and always get stuck on day 7 or 10).

So I think leetcode interviews get both those groups - the ones you mentioned, who work hard and study (and thus demonstrate good qualities of being employees), _or_ those who are so good at this stuff that leetcode won't even make them sweat.

[gambiting]

I don't think that's controversial at all - maybe only in the sense that people generally don't like hearing it, but I'm sure that anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment knows this.

[MichaelZuo]

Well the vast majority of casual HN readers aren't actual bonafide geniuses nor are they super hard working. So of course they don't want to consider it and so these posts keep getting voted up.

[begueradj]

I believe it is simply an efficient way to discriminate applicants based on their age: a fresh school graduate in his/her twenties is the one who is more likely to solve LeetCode like algorithms than a senior developer in his 40s who has a respectable knowledge and insight on how software should be done, deployed and run.

[zwnow]

Usually the issues companies throw at their applicants aren't that difficult to solve. Every dev should know how to split data into structures you can work with.

[guappa]

Google asked me a question… I could solve it in O(n²) but not in O(n).

After, with calm, talking about it with a friend who is a professor at university and has a phd in mathematics, he reflected that since my problem only used positive numbers, I could have exploited a certain property and simplify my algorithm.

So in the end, if you're lucky and have faced that particular completely artificial problem before, you can do it.

Otherwise you need some calm to think, and you can't do that while there are two people harassing you because you named your variables with a name they don't like, and a clock is ticking.

In the end you're selecting for "has this person heard of this problem or a similar one before" and not "can this person think".

[zwnow]

These kind of tests are rarely about seeing if an applicant can actually successfully solve the issue. It is about seeing how the applicant approaches a difficult problem.

Maybe google, amazon and whatnot see that differently but I would not personally wanna work there anyway.

[guappa]

That's what they tell you… They also tell you it's pseudocode, and then proceed to interrupt you if you forgot a ";".

[xxs]

I think this "senior developer in his 40s" vs " fresh school graduate in his/her twenties" is more like your personal rendition of the story.

[Kelteseth]

Thank god I never had these interview questions at the companies I interviewed for, here in Germany. Most talks were simply a 30min chat with the actual developer there. Mostly about the job, what they do, and some of their current issues. Then they would ask me how I would tackle them.

[zwnow]

Yup, can sign that. Never had a coding interview so far... It is all about sympathy and being knowledgable. Had the most success by being brutaly honest about not knowing certain technologies. But I also show a lot of interest once I do not know something.

[sgu999]

It's roughly the same in France, aside from some startup bros who have been told leetcode and brainteasers are the way of unicorns. I think it's in part due to the higher trust we put on credentials like Eng degrees.

[guappa]

I studied with people from many countries and I think the french people were very qualified students in general.

There were students from Greece and Iran who, after a bachelor degree in computer science, could not find the highest value in an array.

[alephnan]

> it's just an filter to get someone very dedicated

Dedicated is a nice way of putting it.

The school system was funded by industrialists who needed well behaved and obedient workers. Academic and Leetcode problems which exist in a vacuum select for those who follows the rules. Tech companies don't actualy want people with a mind of their own.

[andruby]

I've asked non-leet code questions that aren't directly related to the work the candidate would be doing. It's usually a smallish self-contained problem, solvable in less than a dozen lines, in about 5 to 20 minutes. What I like about it, is that it's novel enough, that I get to see the candidate think through the problem. I get a glimpse into their problem solving capability.

It's not a perfect proxy for how well they'd solve real user facing problems, but so far it has given me a decent indicator of their motivation/passion and apetite for problem solving. There's a dozen other, mostly non-coding questions in the interview, but this one has been the best predicator for me.

(The problem is closer to a more elaborate fizzbuzz with some math parts, than it is to a memorizable b-tree or other leet-code algorithm question)

[yitchelle]

The thing is that for problems that are mildly complex, it is rarely that it is solved by a single person. So getting a person to solve complex problem under interview conditions is totally unrealistic. If they are really using this as a filter, they are really doing themselves a disservice.

[soco]

The reason I've been told is, they already have a bunch of dedicated nerdy candidates, and use leetcode to pick one of them. For the future tasks it's just as good as picking names from a hat, but that's what gets used. Of course if you're not Google and not have that bunch of candidates to start with, the leetcode will be a bullet heading for your leg, but reality tells not everybody sees it.