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Comment by cutthegrass2 | Hacker News Reader

Yep, agree. 95% of the code I write is owned by my employer and is under NDA various other privacy / IP laws. The 5% that isn't, has no place in an interview. It's a bunch of brittle glue code automating and backing up data between my devices.

"Passion projects" in my "spare time"... maybe once the kids have grown up and flown the nest...

Leetcode is easy... I memorise a bunch of stuff, do the dance and pass the interview. If i'm lucky I get a problem i've not seen before and actually have to use my brain during the interview.

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Isn’t the time spent memorizing leetcode similar to the time spent building a side-project?

I took a look at leetcode when I was interviewing and decided it was a waste of time for me to learn that dance. I was happy with my chances with the companies that didn’t use it in their interviews. And it worked out fine.

No, it’s not, because take home assignments are not typically reusable. Learn leetcode and it is valuable at most companies you will apply to. It’s more respectful of your time.

I was comparing leetcode to sideprojects, not take home assignments. The parent company was also talking about side projects.

Side projects will help you learn useful skills and it is the suggestion of OP that it should be used by more companies in place of leetcode interviews.

Btw, a lot of companies don’t use leetcode for hiring. In my last job hunting season, I would guess than less than 20% of processes used leetcode. Pretty far from “most” companies.

Completely agree re the value of having side projects. I wish I had the luxury of time right now, maybe in a few years once the kids are older.

The leetcode dance is, at least for me at this point, much lower effort than starting a side project on the understanding the code I produce will be reviewed during interviews. It's like Sudoku, once you've done a "few", you get to the point where you're able to solve them quickly.

> Isn’t the time spent memorizing leetcode similar to the time spent building a side-project?

The nice thing about leetcode it is easy to bound the time to what you can handle. I do one puzzle a week and set a timer for 20 minutes. Then I get the answer and browse the forum. It's basically the equivalent of solving the Sunday crossword for me, and it keeps my algorithm skills sharp. Probably no worse than burning a lunch hour on HN.

I do my side projects the same way

> 95% of the code I write is owned by my employer and is under NDA various other privacy / IP laws.

True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP (like util functions, and an integration syncing records from your backend the Salesforce, or something tangential to the business outside the core product)

May technically be breaking your employment agreement, but I can’t imagine it would be too hard to pluck out a decent amount of code, and re-write portions of it if necessary to “anonymize” it for interviewing purposes.

Or if you happen to be interviewed by someone like me, my approach is simply “if you can’t show me the code, show me the UI and explain how the backend / frontend works, and a discussion ensues.

> True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP

What? Yes. I expect I'd be in prison for a few years. Your interview approach selects for people who don't follow their NDAs

Sergey Aleynikov went to prison over copying GPL code.

As mentioned in my original comment, if someone isn’t comfortable showing me the source code I simply ask for them to describe how it works, challenges in building it, how they built it, etc.

I could do this and would welcome this type of interview experience. I'd be able to talk in general terms about the problems I work on and their solutions but not the low level specifics.

To add some context, my work is in Financial Services, trading systems and whatnot.

> would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP

Who decides what is "critical IP" and what is not?

This is a terrible advice, and no, you should never copy code from a work project without being pre-authorized to do it.

It's not just common sense, but you also might trip up over unexpected legal issues (licences etc) that you may not even be aware of.

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