I think the ideal goal of an interview is to make a prediction of how happy and productive the candidate will be in the role they are being considered for. In a perfect world, that would be a collaborative effort between the company and the candidate, because they both should care deeply about the accuracy of those predictions. Unfortunately interviews often take on an adversarial/guarded dynamic that reduces the quality of those predictions. I believe that LeetCode style interviews make the predictions worse, and not only because they encourage that negative dynamic.
Even if you think that LeetCode evaluates how smart someone is, that's not what companies should be trying to measure. It doesn't matter how smart someone is if those smarts won't be put to good use. One of the smartest people I ever worked with was an amazing fit and launched the team to new heights. Another of the smartest people I ever worked with was a net negative for team productivity because he was such a jerk to people that those people would spend tons of their time and energy to find ways to avoid working with him. Despite all his smarts, he was a terrible match for the role and therefore was not productive. Being a jerk in some environments might even be a positive, but that's part of evaluating fit.
> the ideal goal of an interview is to make a prediction of how happy and productive the candidate will be in the role they are being considered for.
I'd add two things that should be an obviously component of that way of thinking, but frequently get missed:
1. You need that good candidate as much as they need you. Anecdote: I have found it much harder to hire good people, than to get hired. By "good" I don't just mean smart, I also mean amicable and driven.
2. You do not have to agree with them on everything during the interview. Anecdote: some of my best work has been against the grain. But I am persuasive and passionate when I'm convinced that I see a "better path forward", and if I can convince my peers and leaders to let me shoot my shot, it usually works out. Part of the success may be due to the fact that I have to succeed in order not to look a fool or let people down. (If someone else's venture fails its much easier to shrug).
The point being: your candidate may disagree with you. But may be also be right. Or wrong, but letting them invest their whole self into the enterprise may be better value.
But this resonates the most with me:
> because he was such a jerk to people that those people would spend tons of their time and energy to find ways to avoid working with him
I've seen this so, so much. And it wrecks teams. When I say "let people disagree", again, this is when the best and worst of people emerges.
> You do not have to agree with them on everything during the interview.
Absolutely! When I'm the interviewer, I look for a genuine opportunity to amicably express disagreement with the candidate in order to see what it's like to navigate that with them. It's a great sign when we both end up enjoying learning from each other as a result of the exchange.
I recently started getting back into interviewing after 8 years of working at one company.
And Leetcode is not the worst part of it.
Modifying CV, applying, hostile forms, receiving rejection after rejection.
Not getting what I am missing.
Leetcode in this scenario is puzzle solving game with clear rules, progress and success definition.
Some of the problems are genuinely fun, like dynamic programming.
Some of them are just, "you have to know the trick".
In my case, i would never be able to even get an actual interview if not for these technical screens where you solve a problem and not try to persuade another human to give you a chance.
The biggest issue is that they put the AI/HR filtering before the technical screening. I suspect it'd be a lot less painful if candidates were at least given the chance to show their tech skills before instantly filtered out by AI.
The vast majority of listings I scrolled through were jobs that wouldn't normally have a leetcode interview, given that, you know, they weren't jobs involving coding at all. Even when filtered to software development, the vast majority were not coding positions.
Leetcode does not test your ability to code in the sense of anything related to real world engineering applications.
Leetcode merely tests your ability to memorize and regurgitate algorithms from a textbook -- a skill that LLMs can now do a thousand times faster and more accurately than any human.
It never had much to do with real world software engineering, and now it's even less relevant than ever.
How is it related?
What I would look in person is something LLM can't solve, otherwise why not using LLM.
The fact that LLM know how to solve leeth code is just another proof it's useless metric
How about jobs without KPIs? Jobs without performance reviews? Can we get a list of jobs where I don’t have to do any work?
Jobs are full of things we don’t like or don’t want to do. I don’t understand this fixation on leetcode as unacceptable because some people feel it’s not related to the work? So is being likeable!
KPIs, performance reviews, work and being likeable (easy to work with) are part of a job.
Getting rejected for a job maintaining a CRUD application because you didn't use a trie to solve a pointless brain teaser that makes some junior 25 year old feel super smart isn’t.
Spending a week practicing leetcode puzzles is what's actually being tested, and that's actually not a bad metric for judging employability. It's a relatively trivial exercise to sit down and study. If you can't do that you might not be right for the job.
It sounds inflammatory but nowadays the ability to that is quite a valuable skill.
I think the ideal goal of an interview is to make a prediction of how happy and productive the candidate will be in the role they are being considered for. In a perfect world, that would be a collaborative effort between the company and the candidate, because they both should care deeply about the accuracy of those predictions. Unfortunately interviews often take on an adversarial/guarded dynamic that reduces the quality of those predictions. I believe that LeetCode style interviews make the predictions worse, and not only because they encourage that negative dynamic.
Even if you think that LeetCode evaluates how smart someone is, that's not what companies should be trying to measure. It doesn't matter how smart someone is if those smarts won't be put to good use. One of the smartest people I ever worked with was an amazing fit and launched the team to new heights. Another of the smartest people I ever worked with was a net negative for team productivity because he was such a jerk to people that those people would spend tons of their time and energy to find ways to avoid working with him. Despite all his smarts, he was a terrible match for the role and therefore was not productive. Being a jerk in some environments might even be a positive, but that's part of evaluating fit.
I strongly agree with this:
> the ideal goal of an interview is to make a prediction of how happy and productive the candidate will be in the role they are being considered for.
I'd add two things that should be an obviously component of that way of thinking, but frequently get missed:
1. You need that good candidate as much as they need you. Anecdote: I have found it much harder to hire good people, than to get hired. By "good" I don't just mean smart, I also mean amicable and driven.
2. You do not have to agree with them on everything during the interview. Anecdote: some of my best work has been against the grain. But I am persuasive and passionate when I'm convinced that I see a "better path forward", and if I can convince my peers and leaders to let me shoot my shot, it usually works out. Part of the success may be due to the fact that I have to succeed in order not to look a fool or let people down. (If someone else's venture fails its much easier to shrug).
The point being: your candidate may disagree with you. But may be also be right. Or wrong, but letting them invest their whole self into the enterprise may be better value.
But this resonates the most with me:
> because he was such a jerk to people that those people would spend tons of their time and energy to find ways to avoid working with him
I've seen this so, so much. And it wrecks teams. When I say "let people disagree", again, this is when the best and worst of people emerges.
> You do not have to agree with them on everything during the interview.
Absolutely! When I'm the interviewer, I look for a genuine opportunity to amicably express disagreement with the candidate in order to see what it's like to navigate that with them. It's a great sign when we both end up enjoying learning from each other as a result of the exchange.
> Despite all his smarts, he was a terrible match for the role and therefore was not productive.
That's basically why companies have multiple interview stages and not only leetcode / pure technical interviews.
Needless to say, it's far from perfect. Very far.
I recently started getting back into interviewing after 8 years of working at one company.
And Leetcode is not the worst part of it.
Modifying CV, applying, hostile forms, receiving rejection after rejection. Not getting what I am missing.
Leetcode in this scenario is puzzle solving game with clear rules, progress and success definition.
Some of the problems are genuinely fun, like dynamic programming. Some of them are just, "you have to know the trick".
In my case, i would never be able to even get an actual interview if not for these technical screens where you solve a problem and not try to persuade another human to give you a chance.
The biggest issue is that they put the AI/HR filtering before the technical screening. I suspect it'd be a lot less painful if candidates were at least given the chance to show their tech skills before instantly filtered out by AI.
The vast majority of jobs on there says they do take home (ignoring the fact that it's not all dev jobs).
Take homes are somehow worse. It self selects for people who have ample time and no family obligations. I'd rather do leetcode
The vast majority of listings I scrolled through were jobs that wouldn't normally have a leetcode interview, given that, you know, they weren't jobs involving coding at all. Even when filtered to software development, the vast majority were not coding positions.
Any way to filter to that?
Thanks for the feedback. I added a classifier that’s currently running, along with a filter so you can look at engineering roles only.
> Senior Revenue Operations Manager - GTM Systems and Automation
Not an engineering position? What is your classifier based on? This doesn't seem super useful categorization
Are there really jobs that still have leetcode style interviews, in the age of LLMs?
Why not? It seems more important than ever that people know how to actually code, now that everyone can produce endless code of untested quality.
Leetcode does not test your ability to code in the sense of anything related to real world engineering applications.
Leetcode merely tests your ability to memorize and regurgitate algorithms from a textbook -- a skill that LLMs can now do a thousand times faster and more accurately than any human.
It never had much to do with real world software engineering, and now it's even less relevant than ever.
If LLMs can oneshot leetcode puzzles, then surely leetcode isn't a good measure of whatever the remaining skills that matter are.
Unless the interviews are brought back onsite I guess
How is it related? What I would look in person is something LLM can't solve, otherwise why not using LLM. The fact that LLM know how to solve leeth code is just another proof it's useless metric
Knowing leetcode is not “knowing bow to actually code”. They are pointless puzzles for children.
Majority of big tech. Leetcode was 100% irrelevant to the job before LLM and its 100% irrelevant to the job today. So nothing has changed really
Soon this will be jobs that will use Leetcode in person.
How about jobs without KPIs? Jobs without performance reviews? Can we get a list of jobs where I don’t have to do any work?
Jobs are full of things we don’t like or don’t want to do. I don’t understand this fixation on leetcode as unacceptable because some people feel it’s not related to the work? So is being likeable!
KPIs, performance reviews, work and being likeable (easy to work with) are part of a job.
Getting rejected for a job maintaining a CRUD application because you didn't use a trie to solve a pointless brain teaser that makes some junior 25 year old feel super smart isn’t.
Spending a week practicing leetcode puzzles is what's actually being tested, and that's actually not a bad metric for judging employability. It's a relatively trivial exercise to sit down and study. If you can't do that you might not be right for the job.
It sounds inflammatory but nowadays the ability to that is quite a valuable skill.
If most jobs use it as a test then it's just something to game and you are not testing "someone studying for a week". You are not testing anything.
If you want something like that give them something novel to your industry for both of you to study.