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by latkin 750 days ago
I usually find this author's posts pretty insightful, but this one was a miss for me. Just a rambling mishmash of ranting and humblebragging.

The main point (I think? Hard to extract a thesis from this one besides "algo interviews bad") doesn't even hold up: "People say algo interviews reduce costly algo issues in production, but these issues still happen in production, therefore algo interviews don't work/those people are wrong." This conclusion doesn't follow. Who's to say that there wouldn't be twice as many, or twice as severe, algo problems if companies didn't interview this way? I'm not asserting that's the case, but it's consistent with the data points provided.

Outside of official HR statements, perhaps, I don't think anybody pretends leetcode-style interviews are actually ideal for evaluating corporate software engineer candidates. Everyone knows they are deeply flawed and provided limited value. They persist because they seem to be the least worst option, all things considered.