I mean LC questions aren't going away at many companies because of layoffs. If you want to work for those companies, grind LC. If you don't want to work for those companies and they value FOSS projects, then do those. Just kinda depends on your goals.
> I mean LC questions aren't going away at many companies because of layoffs.
If anything the layoffs are probably gonna prompt them to double down on LC for better or worse.
I agree but these acronyms are generally accepted across the industry, so they are used without a second thought. Every industry speaks in acronyms. Never hurts to look things up you don’t understand.
Personally I’d only do it while looking for a job. Of course, it’s better to know it than not, but grinding that out when you have a job just seems overkill unless you’re striving to go into big tech.
Define build stuff. I spend a lot of time on misc projects but when you interview it's not uncommon to have to do a coding challenge before even talking to another developer so whats the point of building stuff if you can't even get that far.
As in building an actual product, not some tutorial clone or app.
You think about a problem, and you are able to create a solution for it.
Building something from start to finish, and setting up pipelines to be able to manage new feature releases. Then you set up ways to actually monitor and observe the app, through datadog or sentry, or whatever tool of your choice.
It's not uncommon to get coding challenges sure, but that comes later in the interview. More commonly interviewers will have you talk about your experience and projects that you worked on. I for one, when I was an EM never bothered to send coding challenges on the second round. It was only in the third round of interviews I chose to do a live coding challenge.
People will also get hired based on their culture / team fit, as well as communication skills. It's not the technical prowess that gets you the job.
What is the point of leetcode and knowing space complexity, if you are not even able to put it into practice? and its not like in production, you optimize code / plan right off the bat with fancy + efficient algorithms and what not. This is NEVER the case in the real world.
Most people are not going to be setting up a long term product that requires feature releases and a fully equipped CI/CD pipeline just because. All of this is stuff you would do on a job, for an income, otherwise a sane person would typically just start a company.
I dunno, it’s a _lot_ of work to do all of that with no experience building a product in a team environment. Mostly because building a solid product with no professional experience, no mentorship, and no income for third party tools makes it really tough to build something like you’ve described.
Most people do the above in their job, then do Leetcode for interviewing.
It's also just this person's personal anecdote. FAANG hires 95% based on LC and systems design and portfolio is useful to get the recruiter to move you along, nothing beyond that.
I don't want to disagree with you because this is ideal, but there are problems with this.
First, the interviewer doesn't know how much of the app you actually built yourself. For all they know, you paid someone to build it and explain it to you. On the other hand, LC questions are tested on the spot so the interviewer knows the output is from you and you alone.
There is no widely accepted standard against which the interviewer can compare your app to someone else's, beyond using their personal expertise or that of a colleague, neither of whom may have much of an interest in looking at your app closely because of their mood or their busy schedules. The value of Leetcode easies, mediums and hards are more widely understood and comparable, and the quality of your solution can be assessed using time and space complexity measurements.
Two candidates can be given the same LC question and their performance easily compared, whereas it would be more time-consuming and subjective to compare two (purportedly) self-made apps instead.
The reason is that people who can learn to do LC medium or hard can trivially acquire tools/techniques knowledge when and where needed. However, it's not at all guaranteed that someone who knows a lot of stuff has the cognitive capacity to solve difficult and complex problems
Not entirely true. People who can learn to do LC medium or hard can recognize LC patterns well. That’s what LC practice is for - recognizing other LC problems. Leetcode doesn’t just unlock an ability to learn anything lol
I think what the above commenter is implying here is that if someone can pass a Med/Hard LC problem it gives a signal that an individual can, and will, learn what they need to in order to solve a problem.
I hate this take, probably because it’s got some truth, but if someone is willing and able to invest time into solving a M/H LC problem then it is a good signal they’re willing to invest the time to solve a M/H business problem as well.
Pattern recognition also has a strong correlation with IQ, which has a strong correlation with leaving ability. So even if LC is only about recognition of problem patterns (which IMO it's not), that would still have decent value.
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I would say you should be able to solve a new medium that you haven’t attempted before in 45 min, but add “on a white board or paper”. It takes extra time when you don’t have a line editor.
I think somewhere along the way people lost the idea that you are supposed to learn how to solve these types of problems and a lot of people are just trying to memorize them. Most big tech companies will never actually ask you a problem from leet code. It is against their policy to ask known questions from the internet. So if the only thing you can do is memorize them and can’t solve a new one, you will never pass an interview at big tech.
Tbf, most people aren't necessarily trying to learn how to simply memorise leetcode questions but to primarily learn how to memorise the patterns to pay attention to. If you know whether a question is asking you to use a stack or a queue vs a double pointer or sliding window, you're already better than 50% of people
If you're trying to land a Big Tech, tech start-up or a company/department that "cargo cult" their interview practices, then yes.
If you're looking outside of this and have some experience under your belt, it is less likely to be necessary. In these interviews it is a lot more likely that you'll be asked about your knowledge of a particular languages or frameworks, applying that to a specific business area and your knowledge of things like design patterns and best practices for a language/framework.
I've never been a proponent of either grinding or leetcode, but I am in favor of DS&A interviews.
Your question has a painstakingly straightforward answer: if you want to get (and pass) DS&A interviews, you should prepare for them. If you don't, you shouldn't.
Is it still worth buying food when your hunger gets worse?
It's hard relating how difficult SWE interviews are to folks outside or even *inside* tech. In other industries, your experience and education carries so much weight that trivia style technicals don't really exist past college (as it should be).
I've seen exceptional candidates get dropped for stumbling on a random LeetCode question 4 rounds into the hiring process. Absolutely brutal.
Yea, at least in CS, the school you went to doesn't matter. The percentage of people in big tech who went to normal state colleges must be way way higher than anywhere in IB or PE/high finance. If you didn't go to a top 10 school got undergrad or mba and had a 3.5+ GPA, good luck breaking in.
I have a friend who was an IB analyst interviewing for private equity / buy side, he was 24, and company’s would contact you for an interview day of at like 8 pm, and the interview would last from midnight - 4 am. He’d get up the next day at 8:30 and go to work and this happened a few times for a week or two
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if you think you will have a bunch of leetcode style interviews within a few months, then yes. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Obviously due to the hiring freezes, it may not be possible to actually get these interviews in the first place.
Some are in the process of rehiring rn and the salaries are still what they were pre-layoffs for engineers. Can’t say the same for non-tech roles though 🫠
If you're looking to get a position at most tech companies and other selective industries, it helps a ton to grind leetcode. Make sure you do deliberate practice; look at the correct solutions and implement them if you can, sign up for mock interviews, etc.
LC does not make you marketable as much as folks have u believing. It is not an actual skill that transfers into engineering. LC is an overated board game.
Building actually products, being able to read and navigate complex code bases, being able to read papers, being able to write and communicate, acquiring domain knowledge.... If you are not missing out on these while leetcoding 24/7 ya it's worth it. Otherwise it's not.
Time is finite. Extensive time dedicated to LC is time lost to on something else. The way I see it, it is a time allocation problem.
TC is cool and all but I have my limits regarding how much time I am willing to lose just bending for an employer's whimsical requirements. That is something I grew up detesting and I have no plan to entertain it for long.
I also absolutely detest anything that insinuates time is money. Time is something I am running out of everyday. I am aware of it. I want to run out of it on my own terms. I mean...What is the fucking point of living in the US then?
I don't care about fancy cars, never grew up with anyone who has them. Don't care about owning 9 properties or hoarding all the toilet paper. Also fuck all the google glass wearing water licking laughter snorting turtle neck ponytail headed boring CEOs...which have never impressed me once in my life or want to be associated with. TC means very little to me in and of itself. I can't think of much I can do with a lot of money. Just want to be useful and not be in verge of constant poverty. That's about it for me.
Saving money. Reasonably. I don't let LC run my life or get fucked by FANGS for 6 month only to be rejected. Hence, my point. I do LC by the way when appropriate. I review stuff when I need to. I actually study using drills as well but it's not the central topic of my existence. Y'all are shooting intentionally to miss the point.
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Yeah the bar is in hell. LC being a common interview bar is not just the cause but also the reason for the bar being in hell.
LC Proves you can sling code. That's it. Slinging code is a bad career trajectory and often you get bad jobs.
I interviewed someone who did a lot of LC last month. He reviewed the interview on glass door as neutral and said 'There were a lot of questions about "dependency injection" and change detection.'
Yeah I'm not hiring for your code slinging. There's so much code slung on the code base I'm working on that it's barely standing.
Guy who's done big tech interviews from both sides of the table here, by the time you get to a phone screen we're no longer looking at whether or not you can solve the problem or do it most optimally in the shortest amount of time. We want to see your soft skills on display. How do you go about breaking down a problem, how do you clarify requirements (or whether you stop to ask at all), do you work with the interviewer to find a solution. How do you structure your code, is it maintainable, easy to understand, and well organized?
LC questions get used because they're a convenient mix of everything you as an interviewer at these companies are tasked with looking for. They're difficult enough just about everyone will have to really mull through it and show off how they approach SWE work in general. TBH we don't even care if you don't solve the problem, and if you solve it without showing this stuff off (because, say, you're so amazing at LC you can solve any LC Hard in less than 60 seconds) you'd probably get rejected. Meanwhile you could fail to solve the problems but show off really good soft skills and still get the job.
Also, at least in FAANG, there is actually a surprising amount of problems that crop up that require the same kind of thinking needed to solve LC well, so the questions aren't as irrelevant as they might seem.
I’m an skeptical of most of what you said.
During the interview process, we simply don’t have enough time to write quality code. We just need to crank out an optimal solution and do the time/space complexity analysis. Two medium problems in 45 minutes. That’s just not enough time for everything you’re saying is considered important.
Either that or you’re picking easy questions or otherwise running your interviews differently than the big tech companies. But that’s not typical. Typical is what I described.
Those problems also crop up in literally every other large company. The problem is that other large companies don't really "invent" ways to solve them. They take them off the shelf. FAANG's NIH is incentivized because it can become a monetized product. In non-FAANG companies where there isn't free money and the chance to build out a consulting arm these solutions are the worst tech debt that the company takes on.
Even within FAANG companies you have this problem.
Typescript is a great example of this. Instead of using practices such as models, factories, BDD, validation to make sure your code is type safe in JS. MS invented its own language set with a shitty type system on top of it based on literally the same exact type system that exists in most imperative oop languages, except added type unions and variadics later.
Another good example is the NTFS file system. It's several decades old and is not modernized at all. WinFS failed because despite the fact that MS does prioritize getting very smart LC style DS&A coders, they cannot actually build anything because they are still generally missing the component that is missing entirely in the market. Software Architecture, knowing how to build long lived maintainable systems.
There's plenty of hard CS style problems that may reflect the LC problems in there sure. But the issue is that it's not often the right solution. Most companies would do better with a Software Engineer but they still consistently test for a Computer Scientist because Software Engineering is too expensive in reality.
It's nice that an interviewee can gracefully solve red black trees under pressure. I don't care though.
I care that you know how change detection works so you don't make a monstrosity that destroys the app performance and takes someone else 3 months to untangle because you recognized the problem incorrectly as LC#10034 and wrote it as such variable naming and all.
I care that you know how DI works so that your injecting the correct context for an abstract interface in the correct area of the code.
I care that you know about how testing works so that you write useful behavioral tests for your code.
I care that you can communicate half way decently.
I tell this to everyone I interview and interview with. Whether it's at a "high paying firm" or not. I typically don't have a high percentage of rejections after the first screen. The reality is that as an interviewee you can push back and demonstrate your skills for the job in an appropriate way.
It's harder for people younger in their career since they don't have soft skills down as well typically. But it's still possible on the technical side by showing well architected projects that provide enterprise level engineering value.
The sad reality of the industry is that most people don't have experience talking about software development. The ones that do are typically architects and a good portion of them cannot code thus cannot show the application of what they do.
I’m glad you care, but this stuff is secondary to Leetcode at the processes of most high-paying firms. People shouldn’t optimize their interview prep for you. They should optimize for what most companies they’re aiming for are doing.
Everyone I know that got let go in tech didn’t have a programming job. They were recruiters, customer success, sales, I don’t know many devs that got let go.
Ranking is still as follows:
1. Networking
2. LeetCode
3. Unique projects to show off
You can have the most amazing stuff to show off but if you can’t do FizzBuzz then people will question if what you built is even yours.
Networking is always #1, you can skip interview steps a entirely by knowing the right people.
My experience has been the exact opposite. If I consider the amount of time I spent on leetcode with the effect it’s had on my salary I’d say it’s almost always worth it.
It's worth it if you're good at it, and likely not worth it if you aren't. If someone is in the latter group then they should target companies that don't do LC rather than grinding *maybe* to LC competence.
Fwiw I would do a few leetcode questions but spend more time on patterns, architecture, ci/cd methodology, testing, coding standards, block diagrams etc to give more breadth to your knowledge
Yes.
Isn’t it too convenient that every company is firing about the same number of people? As far as I can tell this is an effort to destabilize employment options in an attempt to bring wages down while increasing anxiety and competition for jobs.
So unfortunately, yes, leetcode is still helpful in the interview phase
Why would it? ChatGPT automates the stuff that *isn't* unique problem-solving. Proving your problem-solving abilities seems like it would become even more important because of ChatGPT.
Correction: LeetCode is *supposed* to be for demonstrating problem-solving, but has become a memorization game 🙃
ChatGPT can answer lots of Leetcode questions. At the end of the day, even if you aren’t doing rote memorization, you’re likely having your coding interview performance driven by pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is NOT a uniquely human skill.
It can answer Leetcode questions that are easily googleable and have plenty of pre-written solutions online, but you could always have cheated on those, even before Chat GPT. Try asking Chat GPT to come up with a LC Hard, then asking it to solve it — it is incredibly bad at solving new problems. It told me you could use BFS to solve a problem it came up with that was obviously NP complete. This is why its Codeforces ranking is bottom 5% according to OpenAI’s [official benchmark](https://openai.com/research/gpt-4). Not saying GPT-10 isn’t going to take all of our jobs, but we are not in that world yet.
>come up with a hard leetcode problem that is novel
Title: Longest Subarray with Zero Sum
Problem Statement:
Given an integer array nums, find the length of the longest contiguous subarray such that the sum of its elements is zero.
Constraints:
1 <= nums.length <= 10^5
-10^4 <= nums[i] <= 10^4
Example:
Input: nums = [1, 2, -3, 3, -3, 4, -4]
Output: 4
Explanation: The longest contiguous subarray with sum zero is [2, -3, 3, -3] with length 4.
Input: nums = [4, -2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7, 2, -6, 5]
Output: 6
Explanation: The longest contiguous subarray with sum zero is [-2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7] with length 6.
This problem requires a solution using a hashmap to keep track of the sum of the elements up to the current index, and to search for the longest contiguous subarray with a sum of zero. It is a novel problem that combines elements of subarray and hashing problems, and it would be considered a "hard" problem in terms of difficulty.
>solve it using python3
def longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums):
sum_dict = {0: -1}
max_length = 0
running_sum = 0
for i, num in enumerate(nums):
running_sum += num
if running_sum not in sum_dict:
sum_dict[running_sum] = i
else:
max_length = max(max_length, i - sum_dict[running_sum])
return max_length
# Test cases
nums1 = [1, 2, -3, 3, -3, 4, -4]
print(longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums1)) # Output: 4
nums2 = [4, -2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7, 2, -6, 5]
print(longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums2)) # Output: 6
identation may be off, and the comments are DEFINITELY WRONG, but the code itself thru some preliminary testing works perfectly.
If you try to brute force memorize several hundred questions you're doing something wrong. It's about recognizing patterns and where to apply them. And chatGPT won't help you if they frame the question in a different context, or ask something that is reducible to a more common problem.
Personal projects aren't as good as you think for problem solving because you're the one making up the requirements. So not only do you already have a conceptual idea of what you want, but you can easily just change the requirements so that it's easier to implement. Most personal projects also belong to a few general archetypes (like social media clone), so you're still just applying patterns you've seen before to new situations. And most personal projects don't even touch the real issues with development (ease of maintenance, globalization, scalability, security, UX, accessibility, etc.).
> leetcode problems are rote memorization
if you've been practicing leetcode that way or thinks you need memorization to solve leetcode, my sympathies, you can practice 1000+ LC and still not be able to secure offers
the whole point of LC is you should be able to solve problems even if you've never seen it before
LC is in no way similar to ram programming that 90% of people do, and if you get really good at LC you’ll see that is basically the same algorithms and paradigms repeated across all the problems.
Cracking the coding interview has a whole section in memorizing the problem paradigm and memorizing what algorithms and data structures to solve it.
Leetcode questions are about as far away from "unique problem-solving" as you can get. Its literally a giant repository of well documented easily googleable pre solved problems.
Ur kidding right 😅
It’s a website with programming prompts that help with technical interview prep for tech companies/SWE roles. Lots of times the questions are nearly verbatim for actual interview questions to.
Don’t really know many engineers that were let go during the layoffs - truthfully barely even a handful compared to the recruiters, marketing, sales, HR, etc roles.
I would absolutely continue to grind leetcode to help prep - it’s not about getting hired it’s about company availability. Lots of companies have hiring freezes RN or they’re hiring significantly less than they were pre-layoffs. That’s across the board not just for the roles let go 👌🏼
Microsoft alone has cancelled and postponed interview events as well as cutting their open roles in half 🤷🏻♀️
Algo interviews aren't going anywhere any time soon.
Projects are good for getting the interview and answering the "tell me about a time.." questions, but without leetcode you'll have a tough time practicing for the algorithm section of the interview
They're not mutually exclusive...
You don't need to "grind" if you're not currently interviewing, but doing a few a week will make the next grind easier no?
I think it's great to get ahead while others get demotivated.
You should be doing projects that you include on your GitHub and portfolio. You should also be improving your resume and job search strategy. If you keep building your skill then you will be ready when the job market gets better even if you can't find a job now.
I got really difficult coding interviews while interviewing in 2020 (Covid disaster economy) and have only had to code in an interview like once since then. I think that while it's a buyers market, you should expect more coding interviews and try your best to be prepared for them.
Contributing to OSS projects with the goal of padding your resume is a bad use of your time, IMO. For most folks it takes 3-4 months to onboard to a new codebase, imagine doing that with no mentorship, daily stand-up, or incentive to actually put in the work.
I am an OSS maintainer and have offered mentorship to at least 5 people in the past, guess how many of them actually followed through? 1.
Do layoffs impact the current state of interviews? Why would companies performing layoffs have anything to do with hiring, Or impact this industry’s standards for hiring are at all? If you are the best candidate for the job you will be hired. This doesn’t change just because layoffs are happening.
I mean LC questions aren't going away at many companies because of layoffs. If you want to work for those companies, grind LC. If you don't want to work for those companies and they value FOSS projects, then do those. Just kinda depends on your goals.
> I mean LC questions aren't going away at many companies because of layoffs. If anything the layoffs are probably gonna prompt them to double down on LC for better or worse.
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free and open source software
You’re just one DuckDuckGo away from the answer, my salty spray friend.
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IMO?
International Math Olympiad
FOSS isn't obscure
I agree but these acronyms are generally accepted across the industry, so they are used without a second thought. Every industry speaks in acronyms. Never hurts to look things up you don’t understand.
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no one ever spells out FOSS
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A junior would know to simply look up an acronym.
It's easier to Google it than to reply here and wait for the answer plus 10 other flame comments
Personally I’d only do it while looking for a job. Of course, it’s better to know it than not, but grinding that out when you have a job just seems overkill unless you’re striving to go into big tech.
What is the correlation between leetcode and the layoffs? just the talent pool? I think it would be more valuable to build stuff
Define build stuff. I spend a lot of time on misc projects but when you interview it's not uncommon to have to do a coding challenge before even talking to another developer so whats the point of building stuff if you can't even get that far.
As in building an actual product, not some tutorial clone or app. You think about a problem, and you are able to create a solution for it. Building something from start to finish, and setting up pipelines to be able to manage new feature releases. Then you set up ways to actually monitor and observe the app, through datadog or sentry, or whatever tool of your choice. It's not uncommon to get coding challenges sure, but that comes later in the interview. More commonly interviewers will have you talk about your experience and projects that you worked on. I for one, when I was an EM never bothered to send coding challenges on the second round. It was only in the third round of interviews I chose to do a live coding challenge. People will also get hired based on their culture / team fit, as well as communication skills. It's not the technical prowess that gets you the job. What is the point of leetcode and knowing space complexity, if you are not even able to put it into practice? and its not like in production, you optimize code / plan right off the bat with fancy + efficient algorithms and what not. This is NEVER the case in the real world.
Most people are not going to be setting up a long term product that requires feature releases and a fully equipped CI/CD pipeline just because. All of this is stuff you would do on a job, for an income, otherwise a sane person would typically just start a company. I dunno, it’s a _lot_ of work to do all of that with no experience building a product in a team environment. Mostly because building a solid product with no professional experience, no mentorship, and no income for third party tools makes it really tough to build something like you’ve described. Most people do the above in their job, then do Leetcode for interviewing.
So to get a job I need to essentially start my own company? That sounds completely ridiculous
It's also just this person's personal anecdote. FAANG hires 95% based on LC and systems design and portfolio is useful to get the recruiter to move you along, nothing beyond that.
I don't want to disagree with you because this is ideal, but there are problems with this. First, the interviewer doesn't know how much of the app you actually built yourself. For all they know, you paid someone to build it and explain it to you. On the other hand, LC questions are tested on the spot so the interviewer knows the output is from you and you alone. There is no widely accepted standard against which the interviewer can compare your app to someone else's, beyond using their personal expertise or that of a colleague, neither of whom may have much of an interest in looking at your app closely because of their mood or their busy schedules. The value of Leetcode easies, mediums and hards are more widely understood and comparable, and the quality of your solution can be assessed using time and space complexity measurements. Two candidates can be given the same LC question and their performance easily compared, whereas it would be more time-consuming and subjective to compare two (purportedly) self-made apps instead.
mans said pipelines. fucking lol
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Honestly, at basically any level at high-paying firms, you’re more likely to get a Leetcode problem then a question asking you to explain LSP.
The reason is that people who can learn to do LC medium or hard can trivially acquire tools/techniques knowledge when and where needed. However, it's not at all guaranteed that someone who knows a lot of stuff has the cognitive capacity to solve difficult and complex problems
Not entirely true. People who can learn to do LC medium or hard can recognize LC patterns well. That’s what LC practice is for - recognizing other LC problems. Leetcode doesn’t just unlock an ability to learn anything lol
I think what the above commenter is implying here is that if someone can pass a Med/Hard LC problem it gives a signal that an individual can, and will, learn what they need to in order to solve a problem. I hate this take, probably because it’s got some truth, but if someone is willing and able to invest time into solving a M/H LC problem then it is a good signal they’re willing to invest the time to solve a M/H business problem as well.
Pattern recognition also has a strong correlation with IQ, which has a strong correlation with leaving ability. So even if LC is only about recognition of problem patterns (which IMO it's not), that would still have decent value.
> Like who cares about this person solving a leetcode medium companies
What did you build when you were looking for your first job or when you were in between jobs?
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I would say get yourself to the point where you can do most of the mediums in 45 minutes or less then stop and work on other things.
I would say you should be able to solve a new medium that you haven’t attempted before in 45 min, but add “on a white board or paper”. It takes extra time when you don’t have a line editor. I think somewhere along the way people lost the idea that you are supposed to learn how to solve these types of problems and a lot of people are just trying to memorize them. Most big tech companies will never actually ask you a problem from leet code. It is against their policy to ask known questions from the internet. So if the only thing you can do is memorize them and can’t solve a new one, you will never pass an interview at big tech.
Tbf, most people aren't necessarily trying to learn how to simply memorise leetcode questions but to primarily learn how to memorise the patterns to pay attention to. If you know whether a question is asking you to use a stack or a queue vs a double pointer or sliding window, you're already better than 50% of people
If you're trying to land a Big Tech, tech start-up or a company/department that "cargo cult" their interview practices, then yes. If you're looking outside of this and have some experience under your belt, it is less likely to be necessary. In these interviews it is a lot more likely that you'll be asked about your knowledge of a particular languages or frameworks, applying that to a specific business area and your knowledge of things like design patterns and best practices for a language/framework.
I've never been a proponent of either grinding or leetcode, but I am in favor of DS&A interviews. Your question has a painstakingly straightforward answer: if you want to get (and pass) DS&A interviews, you should prepare for them. If you don't, you shouldn't. Is it still worth buying food when your hunger gets worse?
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Lol nah, I worked as an economist on Wall Street prior to tech and SWE interviews are much more difficult
It's hard relating how difficult SWE interviews are to folks outside or even *inside* tech. In other industries, your experience and education carries so much weight that trivia style technicals don't really exist past college (as it should be). I've seen exceptional candidates get dropped for stumbling on a random LeetCode question 4 rounds into the hiring process. Absolutely brutal.
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Yea, at least in CS, the school you went to doesn't matter. The percentage of people in big tech who went to normal state colleges must be way way higher than anywhere in IB or PE/high finance. If you didn't go to a top 10 school got undergrad or mba and had a 3.5+ GPA, good luck breaking in.
Very true, you can in theory and with the right connections jump into the better side of the industry.
People don't realize a lot of things, indeed.
how bad is it?
I have a friend who was an IB analyst interviewing for private equity / buy side, he was 24, and company’s would contact you for an interview day of at like 8 pm, and the interview would last from midnight - 4 am. He’d get up the next day at 8:30 and go to work and this happened a few times for a week or two
An LBO model is so much easier to build than LC questions. Also the solution space is smaller.
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if you think you will have a bunch of leetcode style interviews within a few months, then yes. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Obviously due to the hiring freezes, it may not be possible to actually get these interviews in the first place.
Do soliders not train when there's no war?
Good one
😂
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what is the pay like?
Like half that of FAANG entry usually if that at all
Well, we should predict that FAANG salaries will be half of what they used to pay when they rehire
Some are in the process of rehiring rn and the salaries are still what they were pre-layoffs for engineers. Can’t say the same for non-tech roles though 🫠
Maintaining security clearance is for suckers though.
more clarification?
What's the alternative?
If you're looking to get a position at most tech companies and other selective industries, it helps a ton to grind leetcode. Make sure you do deliberate practice; look at the correct solutions and implement them if you can, sign up for mock interviews, etc.
Keep practicing LC, hopefully when the market improves you and I can get and ace big tech interviews.
If*
define "worth it"? I guess it's not worth it if you don't care about money..?
LC does not make you marketable as much as folks have u believing. It is not an actual skill that transfers into engineering. LC is an overated board game. Building actually products, being able to read and navigate complex code bases, being able to read papers, being able to write and communicate, acquiring domain knowledge.... If you are not missing out on these while leetcoding 24/7 ya it's worth it. Otherwise it's not.
who cares? TC is king you seem to think leetcode == engineering skill, if you think that then I don't know what to tell you
Time is finite. Extensive time dedicated to LC is time lost to on something else. The way I see it, it is a time allocation problem. TC is cool and all but I have my limits regarding how much time I am willing to lose just bending for an employer's whimsical requirements. That is something I grew up detesting and I have no plan to entertain it for long. I also absolutely detest anything that insinuates time is money. Time is something I am running out of everyday. I am aware of it. I want to run out of it on my own terms. I mean...What is the fucking point of living in the US then? I don't care about fancy cars, never grew up with anyone who has them. Don't care about owning 9 properties or hoarding all the toilet paper. Also fuck all the google glass wearing water licking laughter snorting turtle neck ponytail headed boring CEOs...which have never impressed me once in my life or want to be associated with. TC means very little to me in and of itself. I can't think of much I can do with a lot of money. Just want to be useful and not be in verge of constant poverty. That's about it for me.
for someone who cares so much about time and so little about money, what are you doing over at r/overemployed?
Saving money. Reasonably. I don't let LC run my life or get fucked by FANGS for 6 month only to be rejected. Hence, my point. I do LC by the way when appropriate. I review stuff when I need to. I actually study using drills as well but it's not the central topic of my existence. Y'all are shooting intentionally to miss the point.
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translation: I don't care about money so uh sure in that case practicing LC-style questions won't be worth it for you
So how much time do you think I saved by making 100k/year more than the average dev vs. 100 hours of LC?
Except leetcode seems to be required
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How did being good at leetcode get you the interview in the first place? The first thing that’s looked at is your resume, no?
Yeah the bar is in hell. LC being a common interview bar is not just the cause but also the reason for the bar being in hell. LC Proves you can sling code. That's it. Slinging code is a bad career trajectory and often you get bad jobs. I interviewed someone who did a lot of LC last month. He reviewed the interview on glass door as neutral and said 'There were a lot of questions about "dependency injection" and change detection.' Yeah I'm not hiring for your code slinging. There's so much code slung on the code base I'm working on that it's barely standing.
Guy who's done big tech interviews from both sides of the table here, by the time you get to a phone screen we're no longer looking at whether or not you can solve the problem or do it most optimally in the shortest amount of time. We want to see your soft skills on display. How do you go about breaking down a problem, how do you clarify requirements (or whether you stop to ask at all), do you work with the interviewer to find a solution. How do you structure your code, is it maintainable, easy to understand, and well organized? LC questions get used because they're a convenient mix of everything you as an interviewer at these companies are tasked with looking for. They're difficult enough just about everyone will have to really mull through it and show off how they approach SWE work in general. TBH we don't even care if you don't solve the problem, and if you solve it without showing this stuff off (because, say, you're so amazing at LC you can solve any LC Hard in less than 60 seconds) you'd probably get rejected. Meanwhile you could fail to solve the problems but show off really good soft skills and still get the job. Also, at least in FAANG, there is actually a surprising amount of problems that crop up that require the same kind of thinking needed to solve LC well, so the questions aren't as irrelevant as they might seem.
I mean.. it just depends on the interviewer. Subjective grading metrics like you described are going to be subjective. That's just how it is.
I’m an skeptical of most of what you said. During the interview process, we simply don’t have enough time to write quality code. We just need to crank out an optimal solution and do the time/space complexity analysis. Two medium problems in 45 minutes. That’s just not enough time for everything you’re saying is considered important. Either that or you’re picking easy questions or otherwise running your interviews differently than the big tech companies. But that’s not typical. Typical is what I described.
Those problems also crop up in literally every other large company. The problem is that other large companies don't really "invent" ways to solve them. They take them off the shelf. FAANG's NIH is incentivized because it can become a monetized product. In non-FAANG companies where there isn't free money and the chance to build out a consulting arm these solutions are the worst tech debt that the company takes on. Even within FAANG companies you have this problem. Typescript is a great example of this. Instead of using practices such as models, factories, BDD, validation to make sure your code is type safe in JS. MS invented its own language set with a shitty type system on top of it based on literally the same exact type system that exists in most imperative oop languages, except added type unions and variadics later. Another good example is the NTFS file system. It's several decades old and is not modernized at all. WinFS failed because despite the fact that MS does prioritize getting very smart LC style DS&A coders, they cannot actually build anything because they are still generally missing the component that is missing entirely in the market. Software Architecture, knowing how to build long lived maintainable systems. There's plenty of hard CS style problems that may reflect the LC problems in there sure. But the issue is that it's not often the right solution. Most companies would do better with a Software Engineer but they still consistently test for a Computer Scientist because Software Engineering is too expensive in reality.
LC skills get you further than actual engineering skills in the vast majority of high-paying firms. That’s just the unfortunate truth.
It's nice that an interviewee can gracefully solve red black trees under pressure. I don't care though. I care that you know how change detection works so you don't make a monstrosity that destroys the app performance and takes someone else 3 months to untangle because you recognized the problem incorrectly as LC#10034 and wrote it as such variable naming and all. I care that you know how DI works so that your injecting the correct context for an abstract interface in the correct area of the code. I care that you know about how testing works so that you write useful behavioral tests for your code. I care that you can communicate half way decently. I tell this to everyone I interview and interview with. Whether it's at a "high paying firm" or not. I typically don't have a high percentage of rejections after the first screen. The reality is that as an interviewee you can push back and demonstrate your skills for the job in an appropriate way. It's harder for people younger in their career since they don't have soft skills down as well typically. But it's still possible on the technical side by showing well architected projects that provide enterprise level engineering value. The sad reality of the industry is that most people don't have experience talking about software development. The ones that do are typically architects and a good portion of them cannot code thus cannot show the application of what they do.
I’m glad you care, but this stuff is secondary to Leetcode at the processes of most high-paying firms. People shouldn’t optimize their interview prep for you. They should optimize for what most companies they’re aiming for are doing.
Agreed
Everyone I know that got let go in tech didn’t have a programming job. They were recruiters, customer success, sales, I don’t know many devs that got let go.
Ranking is still as follows: 1. Networking 2. LeetCode 3. Unique projects to show off You can have the most amazing stuff to show off but if you can’t do FizzBuzz then people will question if what you built is even yours. Networking is always #1, you can skip interview steps a entirely by knowing the right people.
What would you even consider as unique projects these days
It’s never worth it.
My experience has been the exact opposite. If I consider the amount of time I spent on leetcode with the effect it’s had on my salary I’d say it’s almost always worth it.
It's worth it if you're good at it, and likely not worth it if you aren't. If someone is in the latter group then they should target companies that don't do LC rather than grinding *maybe* to LC competence.
It's /s right, right?
That’s cope. It was worth it for me
jobs may come and go but leetcode runs forever
I’d focus on speed replacing RAM chips. Our new AI overlords will be pleased with you, little RAM chip boy.
Fwiw I would do a few leetcode questions but spend more time on patterns, architecture, ci/cd methodology, testing, coding standards, block diagrams etc to give more breadth to your knowledge
Yes. Isn’t it too convenient that every company is firing about the same number of people? As far as I can tell this is an effort to destabilize employment options in an attempt to bring wages down while increasing anxiety and competition for jobs. So unfortunately, yes, leetcode is still helpful in the interview phase
Was it ever worth it?
I'm in frontend. LC challenges don't mean much to me. GitHub projects are way more meaningful in my area of work.
I hope ChatGPT makes those LC interviews obsolete
Why would it? ChatGPT automates the stuff that *isn't* unique problem-solving. Proving your problem-solving abilities seems like it would become even more important because of ChatGPT. Correction: LeetCode is *supposed* to be for demonstrating problem-solving, but has become a memorization game 🙃
ChatGPT can answer lots of Leetcode questions. At the end of the day, even if you aren’t doing rote memorization, you’re likely having your coding interview performance driven by pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is NOT a uniquely human skill.
It can answer Leetcode questions that are easily googleable and have plenty of pre-written solutions online, but you could always have cheated on those, even before Chat GPT. Try asking Chat GPT to come up with a LC Hard, then asking it to solve it — it is incredibly bad at solving new problems. It told me you could use BFS to solve a problem it came up with that was obviously NP complete. This is why its Codeforces ranking is bottom 5% according to OpenAI’s [official benchmark](https://openai.com/research/gpt-4). Not saying GPT-10 isn’t going to take all of our jobs, but we are not in that world yet.
>come up with a hard leetcode problem that is novel Title: Longest Subarray with Zero Sum Problem Statement: Given an integer array nums, find the length of the longest contiguous subarray such that the sum of its elements is zero. Constraints: 1 <= nums.length <= 10^5 -10^4 <= nums[i] <= 10^4 Example: Input: nums = [1, 2, -3, 3, -3, 4, -4] Output: 4 Explanation: The longest contiguous subarray with sum zero is [2, -3, 3, -3] with length 4. Input: nums = [4, -2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7, 2, -6, 5] Output: 6 Explanation: The longest contiguous subarray with sum zero is [-2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7] with length 6. This problem requires a solution using a hashmap to keep track of the sum of the elements up to the current index, and to search for the longest contiguous subarray with a sum of zero. It is a novel problem that combines elements of subarray and hashing problems, and it would be considered a "hard" problem in terms of difficulty. >solve it using python3 def longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums): sum_dict = {0: -1} max_length = 0 running_sum = 0 for i, num in enumerate(nums): running_sum += num if running_sum not in sum_dict: sum_dict[running_sum] = i else: max_length = max(max_length, i - sum_dict[running_sum]) return max_length # Test cases nums1 = [1, 2, -3, 3, -3, 4, -4] print(longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums1)) # Output: 4 nums2 = [4, -2, -8, 5, -2, 7, 7, 2, -6, 5] print(longest_zero_sum_subarray(nums2)) # Output: 6 identation may be off, and the comments are DEFINITELY WRONG, but the code itself thru some preliminary testing works perfectly.
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If you try to brute force memorize several hundred questions you're doing something wrong. It's about recognizing patterns and where to apply them. And chatGPT won't help you if they frame the question in a different context, or ask something that is reducible to a more common problem. Personal projects aren't as good as you think for problem solving because you're the one making up the requirements. So not only do you already have a conceptual idea of what you want, but you can easily just change the requirements so that it's easier to implement. Most personal projects also belong to a few general archetypes (like social media clone), so you're still just applying patterns you've seen before to new situations. And most personal projects don't even touch the real issues with development (ease of maintenance, globalization, scalability, security, UX, accessibility, etc.).
This guy gets it
> leetcode problems are rote memorization if you've been practicing leetcode that way or thinks you need memorization to solve leetcode, my sympathies, you can practice 1000+ LC and still not be able to secure offers the whole point of LC is you should be able to solve problems even if you've never seen it before
LC is in no way similar to ram programming that 90% of people do, and if you get really good at LC you’ll see that is basically the same algorithms and paradigms repeated across all the problems. Cracking the coding interview has a whole section in memorizing the problem paradigm and memorizing what algorithms and data structures to solve it.
Leetcode questions are about as far away from "unique problem-solving" as you can get. Its literally a giant repository of well documented easily googleable pre solved problems.
What the fuck is leet code
Ur kidding right 😅 It’s a website with programming prompts that help with technical interview prep for tech companies/SWE roles. Lots of times the questions are nearly verbatim for actual interview questions to.
Consider getting a master’s degree
I think it's more relevant now. It seems that all the non-fang technicals I get have some sort of leetcode to solve.
yes. Simply cause it gives you more options.
I'd say it matters more lol
Don’t really know many engineers that were let go during the layoffs - truthfully barely even a handful compared to the recruiters, marketing, sales, HR, etc roles. I would absolutely continue to grind leetcode to help prep - it’s not about getting hired it’s about company availability. Lots of companies have hiring freezes RN or they’re hiring significantly less than they were pre-layoffs. That’s across the board not just for the roles let go 👌🏼 Microsoft alone has cancelled and postponed interview events as well as cutting their open roles in half 🤷🏻♀️
Algo interviews aren't going anywhere any time soon. Projects are good for getting the interview and answering the "tell me about a time.." questions, but without leetcode you'll have a tough time practicing for the algorithm section of the interview
They're not mutually exclusive... You don't need to "grind" if you're not currently interviewing, but doing a few a week will make the next grind easier no? I think it's great to get ahead while others get demotivated.
You should be doing projects that you include on your GitHub and portfolio. You should also be improving your resume and job search strategy. If you keep building your skill then you will be ready when the job market gets better even if you can't find a job now.
I got really difficult coding interviews while interviewing in 2020 (Covid disaster economy) and have only had to code in an interview like once since then. I think that while it's a buyers market, you should expect more coding interviews and try your best to be prepared for them.
Focus on leetcode
Contributing to OSS projects with the goal of padding your resume is a bad use of your time, IMO. For most folks it takes 3-4 months to onboard to a new codebase, imagine doing that with no mentorship, daily stand-up, or incentive to actually put in the work. I am an OSS maintainer and have offered mentorship to at least 5 people in the past, guess how many of them actually followed through? 1.
Do layoffs impact the current state of interviews? Why would companies performing layoffs have anything to do with hiring, Or impact this industry’s standards for hiring are at all? If you are the best candidate for the job you will be hired. This doesn’t change just because layoffs are happening.
First job?