Hacker News Reader

Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

I find this little sub-industry building up around, “the coding interview,” to be highly strange.

Where are the papers that correlate this niche, specialized skill to general job performance and productivity?

I get that at certain problem domains the asymptotic complexity becomes a baseline for performance so I’m not against testing people’s knowledge where it’s appropriate. But is it really the dominating skill?

Reading some of the comments of people who went through the pipeline of this cottage industry, it sounds like it’s not even useful after you get hired. In fact optimizing for it to get through the interview sounds like a bad idea! Imagine landing the job and having no other skills.

I’m curious how these algo expert/monster/crushing the interview businesses survive and perpetuate this highly competitive environment.

View on HN

> Where are the papers that correlate this niche, specialized skill to general job performance and productivity?

I would love to read this research if it existed in the public domain. However, much of this comes down to trade secrets and business practices. It's also not very amenable to controlled studies.

Practically speaking, these companies have a lot at stake in their hiring process. It's strange that so many people are convinced that the Big N companies are shooting themselves in the foot or otherwise making poor decisions with these interview processes.

Leetcode-style interviews might not have supporting research in the public domain, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That is, just because the research doesn't exist doesn't mean that the Leetcode interviews are bad or worse than the alternatives.

Even if companies did eliminate Leetcode-style interviews, they have to replace it with some other alternative. Most of these criticisms fail to suggest actual replacement interview processes.

Anonymous google employees have claimed in HN comments that google has data showing that these interviews do “work” whatever that means.

Can any of you post more info here ?

On your last point, the best alternative I've seen is take-home projects where it would take less than a week to complete. The interviewer is free to frame a problem in a way that allows the engineer to apply their real-world experience and show their fit for the job. It removes all the variables around interview stress/anxiety and as a result is a better (but not perfect) indication of their performance.

> On your last point, the best alternative I've seen is take-home projects where it would take less than a week to complete.

Ironically, take-home interviews are another contentious topic on HN and other internet message boards. The common complaint is that people don't want to invest much of their personal time into interviewing for companies.

I wonder which takes more time, take home tests or LeetCode grind...

If I were interviewing I'd take a LeetCode over take homes any day of the week. Preparing for LeetCode prepares you for nearly 70% of the jobs you will likely interview at.

Whereas with take homes the amount of time doing say 12-take homes can easily be too much. You end up in this weird positions where you can only devote so much time for certain take homes but with the LC & System Design you can at least prepare once and hit up a bunch of companies.

I refuse to do take-home interviews. My time is valuable, and it's important that the company I'm applying to shows its seriousness by allocating interviewer time to interviewing me.

>I find this little sub-industry building up around, “the coding interview,” to be highly strange.

You should see the sub-industries around passing a board exam. Most of us really don't understand the privilege we have relative to other high paying professions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com