Comment by gnfargbl

Comment by gnfargbl 11 hours ago

48 replies

View on Hacker News

You're right, but that just shows how fundamentally silly this interview approach is.

In any real engineering situation I can solve 100% of these problems. That's because I can get a cup of coffee, read some papers, look in a textbook, go for a walk somewhere green and think hard about it... and yes, use tooling like a constraint solver. Or an LLM, which knows all these algorithms off by heart!

In an interview, I could solve 0% of these problems, because my brain just doesn't work that way. Or at least, that's my expectation: I've never actually considered working somewhere that does leetcode interviews.

segmondy 11 hours ago

I was told to use ANY language in an interview. I asked them if they were sure, so I solved it with J. They were not too pleased and asked me if I could use another language, so I did prolog and we moved on to the next question. Then the idiot had the audacity to say I should not use "J and Prolog" but any common known language. I asked if assembly was fine, and they said no. Perhaps python or javascript. I did the rest in python, needless to say I didn't get the job. :-)

Reply View 31 replies
  • nice_byte 11 hours ago

    I find it hilarious when people brag about stupid shit like that. Congrats on sabotaging your own interview process I guess??

    Reply View 27 replies
    • yepitwas 11 hours ago

      If the candidate asks if you're sure you want them to use any language and you say "yes", and then get pissy when they do, the candidate isn't the one who sabotaged anything and they're dodging a bullet if they "fail".

      Reply View 9 replies
      • tavavex 9 hours ago

        I feel like I'm entering a whole different universe on HN. Maybe things are this equal and fair on the senior, high-paying part of the spectrum that most people here seem to occupy, but in general there's a huge power imbalance in job interviews. Unless you're special and the company wants you in particular, it costs them nothing to turn you down in favor of the other 10000 perfect applicants, while you must find a job to survive.

        As someone just starting out, the general feeling among my peers is that I must bend to the interviewer's whims, any resistance or pushback will get you rejected. If this is dodging a bullet, then the entire junior field is a WW1 trench, at least where I am. Why would a company hire someone who gets 9/10 on the behavioral portion when they have a dozen other 10/10 candidates? Of course when the interviewer asks me to use "any language", I'll assume they want Python or Java or C++ or Rust, not Bash or ALGOL 68. Stepping out of line would just be performatively asking them to reject me.

        Reply View 8 replies
    • hoten 11 hours ago

      Interviews go both ways ... I don't think they lost out on anything they wanted.

      Reply View 9 replies
      • bluGill 9 hours ago

        That is what people miss about interviews. Often when you interview you don't have reasonable leads on any other job and so you don't feel like there is a choice since you likely need a job (unemployment rarely pays as well as a job). However interviews are not only about the company deciding if they will hire you, they are also about do you want to work there and convincing you to take the job if one is offered.

        So make sure you use those "do you have any questions" time to ask questions! What is it really like to work there. How much notice do you need to give before taking vacation? Do they really give pay raises? How often do they lay people off? What is the dress code? Do they let you take time for your kids school activities? And so on - these questions should be things that are important to you - find out.

        In the best cases the interview is only about convincing you to take the offer - generally because someone who you worked with at a previous job said "hire this person" and they trust that person enough to not need any other interview. So keep your network open.

        Reply View 8 replies
    • aDyslecticCrow 10 hours ago

      Use the right tool for the job. Thats engineering.

      Instead you insist we should solve a nieche problem with a ill suited tool, while inventing a costume solution when a standard solution exist.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • HumblyTossed 10 hours ago

      They dodged a bullet. It would have been hell working there.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • _se 11 hours ago

      Why would you ever want to work somewhere that clearly employs such unqualified individuals? And not only that, but allows those individuals to be the face of their company to prospective hires?

      A company's interview process tells you a lot about how the company thinks and operates. This was was surely a dumpster fire.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • olddustytrail 8 hours ago

        > Why would you ever want to work somewhere that clearly employs such unqualified individuals

        Because you're unemployed and need to work to get some money.

        Do you think you're a super intelligent person when you couldn't even figure that out?

        Reply View 1 reply
        • _se 2 hours ago

          It goes without saying that someone needing money that badly wouldn't do what the OP here did. Stop trying to be right and start trying to see the world for what it is. It'll help you do better.

          Reply View 0 replies
    • dietr1ch 9 hours ago

      What's the point of doing well if you already determined you wouldn't even look at their offer?

      Reply View 0 replies
    • Freedom2 10 hours ago

      Sabotaging? The candidate learned that their interviewers, and probably the company as a whole, isn't curious about languages or stuff that is outside of their wheelhouse.

      What if the interviewers decided to ask the candidate about their language choice and trade-offs between different languages? Wouldn't that actually give them more signals into the skill of the engineer, rather than just blindly following their script?

      Reply View 0 replies
ec109685 24 minutes ago

Depends on your experience and what you’re interviewing for. At a high enough level, the questions are pulled from the easier side, and the interviewer doesn’t want you to fail.

Reply View 0 replies
koakuma-chan 11 hours ago

I haven't been asked leetcode questions in a while and when I was asked, it was an easy level problem. I don't know where they ask hard leetcode problems, I also never solved a hard leetcode problem on my own.

Reply View 11 replies
  • bluGill 9 hours ago

    The purpose of coding questions should be a problem that you can solve in about 20 minutes, then they ask another, and then you get 20 minutes to either finish or talk about other things. If you ask questions where either someone knows the trick and they pass, or they don't and fail you don't learn much. You need to watch the person write code to see if they are reasonable about it.

    Reply View 0 replies
  • IshKebab 7 hours ago

    I interviewed at an investment bank in London and they asked me pretty hard questions. One was to implement some multithreaded producer consumer thing in C++. I can't remember the details but it was... well you know how writing multithreaded C++ is. I was allowed to look up references at least. Took me maybe 20 minutes and the whole time the interviewer was just sitting on his phone while I wrote it.

    Weird experience. Didn't get that job (probably for the best tbf).

    Reply View 2 replies
    • renewiltord 7 hours ago

      If you wrote an MPSC queue (standard question) with multithreaded demo in 20 minutes in C++ you’re pretty hot shit, mate. Their loss. It’s not that it’s hard. But that speed without error is just really good. C++ is particularly unforgiving too.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • IshKebab 6 hours ago

        I can't remember the exact problem or how long it took but it was definitely some awkward multithreading. I'd rate my C++ as pretty good but probably not hot shit!

        Reply View 0 replies
  • chipsrafferty 8 hours ago

    I was once asked fizz buzz in an interview and it made me sad that some people don't pass it.

    Reply View 2 replies
    • koakuma-chan 7 hours ago

      I guess when you're brand new you don't know about the mod operator?

      Reply View 1 reply
  • bradlys 11 hours ago

    I'm routinely asked LC Hard questions in interviews. Sometimes more than one in one 45 minute interview.

    That said, I interview in silicon valley and I'm a mixed race American. (extremely rare here) I think a lot of people just don't want me to pass the interview and will put up the highest bar they can. Mind you, I often still give optimal solutions to everything within good time constraints. But I've practiced 1000+ problems and done several hundred interviews.

    Reply View 3 replies
    • ninja3925 an hour ago

      This is not how it works. The interviewer knows 1-2 problems and there is no time for profiling since they are rushing through their day, probably focused on their day to day work. You are the least of their concern, believe me.

      Source: we am a hiring manager.

      Reply View 0 replies
shmerl 8 hours ago

More exactly, you can't invent algorithms on a spot which took who knows how many years for others to invent. I.e. the question ends up being more if you know about a specific algorithm, which results in "invent it if you don't know about it". It's absolutely silly to test for ability to invent one on the spot, so it's a pretty pointless interview question really.

Reply View 2 replies
  • IshKebab 7 hours ago

    You can for simple algorithms. It's just really easy for interviewers to overestimate how simple an algorithm is when they have been told the answer.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • shmerl 7 hours ago

      Yeah, that's exactly the point. These kind of algorithms are far from easy to invent even if they look simple once they are known.

      Reply View 0 replies