Comment by anonym29

Comment by anonym29 3 days ago

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I've interviewed Harvard CS grads for SWE roles at big tech who couldn't write a working program for fizzbuzz, for defanging an IP address, or for reversing words in a sentence, in a language of their choice, with leetcode's provided instructions, in half an hour, with unlimited attempts, gentle coaching from me, and the ability to use the internet to search for anything that isn't a direct solution (e.g. syntax).

Yes, more than one.

Either the bar for getting into Harvard cannot possibly be as high as it's made out to be, someone's figured out how to completely defeat degree-validation service providers, or Harvard is happy to churn out a nonzero number of students wholly unprepared for meeting extremely basic expectations for the prototypical job of their chosen degree.

DiscourseFan 3 days ago

>Harvard is happy to churn out a nonzero number of students wholly unprepared for meeting extremely basic expectations for the prototypical job of their chosen degree

From one of my professors who did their graduate work at an Ivy, apparently there are a lot of rich kids who can't be failed because their parents donate so much money to the school. But I don't think Harvard has ever had the best undergraduate reputation (among the Ivies), its more well known for its grad/professional programs.

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  • hylaride 3 days ago

    From the people I know that studied at places like Harvard and Yale (which since I'm Canadian isn't a huge sample size), I've been told that there are essentially two different streams of undergrads there - those on legacy admissions and those who qualified otherwise (either via brains, affirmative action, or other means). I was left with the impression that the legacy admissions are mostly people who've coasted through life. The rest are a full spectrum of people.

    Most of Harvard's endowment is via alumni, so it doesn't surprise me in the least they continue with it.

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seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

If you don’t cram for leetcode, you won’t pass a leetcode interview. It takes some kids a few interviews to figure that out, even they are from elite school like MIT. You were just their learning experience.

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  • anonym29 3 days ago

    If you can't solve FizzBuzz in half an hour with a language of your choice while being able to look up syntax, your problem isn't that you failed to cram for leetcode, it's that you don't know how to write code.

    There's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to write code, but you probably shouldn't be applying for software engineering roles where the main responsibility of the job is ultimately to write working code.

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    • seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

      Just to be clear I have no problem passing these interviews, I just spent a few weeks cramming leetcode and got a job at Google. Leetcode wasn’t the main reason I was hired, but it was a filter that I had to get through (I’ve never been given fizzbuzz before, but I assume that is just because it’s no longer in style and hasn’t been for more than a decade). You just don’t throw yourself into on the fly coding, you practice them because your competition has and you will look bad if you don’t. Let’s not pretend that any of us are ready to do alien dictionary at the spur of a moment, or thats a useful skill for our role.

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      • anonym29 3 days ago

        I'd agree with you 100% if these were Leetcode mediums and hards. They were not, these were quite literally the easiest LC easies I could find.

        While my career involves writing code, I am not a SWE, I have never done any formal leetcode prep, and I have no formal education in technology beyond a high school CS class. I have no college degree whatsoever, not even an associate's degree.

        I had a rule I stuck to when doing these interviews (which were for a SWE role) that felt very fair to me - I would not give these candidates any problem I couldn't solve in the same circumstances.

        For reference, in the allotted time, one such candidate spent a good chunk of their time reading up on JS if/then syntax on w3schools. As I watched, I reminded them they could use any language they wanted, if they were more comfortable or familiar with others, and this Harvard CS grad declined, stating JS was their "strongest" language.

        My best guess about these cases were rich kids / legacy admissions that weren't allowed to be failed for political reasons.

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        • seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

          I don’t know much about Harvard except like Stanford computer science became the biggest major by far in the last couple of decades. It could be a lot of rich kids are choosing it’s a major without much of a passion for it. It could have also become the default major for people who are planning to got into politics, business, management, or even law (Harvard’s traditional strengths).

          Don’t get me wrong, we don’t have much of a choice in evaluating especially junior hires. Even for senior hires you want to make sure they haven’t drifted through their last jobs without actually coding. But on the spot performances are different even for the simple stuff, they should practice coding questions on the fly regardless, and even the worst possible SWE candidate should be able to pass these with a bit of prep. With a lot of prep they could do leetcode, a still suck at the job when they get it.

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      • anonymars 3 days ago

        This is FizzBuzz:

        1. Output the numbers from 1 to 100

        2. If the number is a multiple of 3, write Fizz instead of the number

        3. If the number is a multiple of 5, write Buzz instead of the number

        4. If the number is a multiple of 3 and 5, write FizzBuzz instead of the number

        Does that really sound like something requiring special practice and preparation? Assuming a decent interviewer would help out with the modulo operator if that was unfamiliar

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  • anonymars 3 days ago

    I get the impression you latched on to the word leetcode and took away something very different

    FizzBuzz, reversing a sentence -- this is programming your way out of a wet paper bag, not elite and esoteric skills that need advanced study and cramming

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    • seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

      Similar concept. You have them do some task like fizzbuzz to see if they can program stuff on the fly that they would never need to do in real life. You practice that since school doesn't prepare you for that unless you do ACM programming contests or something. The interview demands this to see if the candidate is capable of cramming for the interview, which correlates with the effort, ability they could put into the job, not with what the skills they actually apply on the job, which are hard to measure in a one hour interview slot anyways.

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      • integralid 3 days ago

        If someone doesn't know how to reverse words in a sentence they are absolutely not qualified to be a programmer. Yes they probably won't do this exact task often, but this is like a doctor that can't distinguish heart from the liver. It tells you something has gone horribly wrong.

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      • sokoloff 3 days ago

        I agree that some random leetcode-hard problem is not a good indicator, but if you can’t write fizzbuzz or can’t sum an array of integers, you’ve given me important data about your skills as a programmer on that day.

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  • Vishon 3 days ago

    Yeah, LeetCode interviews are their own weird universe. Even smart people get wrecked until they realize you have to treat it like an exam. Most failures aren’t about ability, it’s just pattern recall under pressure. I’ve passed some rounds I had no business passing just because I stayed calm. StealthCoder helped me a bit there since it keeps me from blanking during the actual interview.

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rahimnathwani 20 hours ago

I'm curious about the degree validation thing. Did you or your employer validate the degree before the interview?

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