Come on. A friend of mine spent 2 weeks studying the leetcode corpus and then passed Google's coding screening. He complained about having to do the study, and I suggested that Google's salaries were such that it would be the most cost-effective 2 weeks he'd ever spend.
Interview loops aren't deterministic, nor are they entirely objective. Congratulations to your friend for passing.
1. doesn't know much of anything about programming, and should consider taking programming courses
2. is just not cut out to be a high level programmer, and should consider a career path more suited to their abilities
Brilliant person A does leetcode for a week to get the hang of the format, then interviews and gets a job offer. Person B who just isn't brilliant but is highly motivated, studies leetcode for months, interviews, and also gets the job.
You might have fantasies of outlawing "studying for months for the test" but be real. Person whos "is just not cut out to be a high level programmer, and should consider a career path more suited to their abilities", it turns out, is doing just fine with their career path having studied for the test.
I also think calendar time is the wrong way to measure it, since there's a huge difference between studied leetcode for 40 hours a week like it's your job or being in school; and studied leetcode for 4 hours on Friday nights instead of going out, for months.
It's like saying someone cheated on a Calculus exam by studying Calculus.
> not cut out to be a high level programmer
I think that was misunderstood. I'll try again. If one studies for months and yet fails to learn the material, perhaps one is not suited to that field of endeavor. There are certain things others excel at that I would just fruitlessly beat my head into a wall trying. For example, anything involving hand-eye coordination or a musical instrument.
And so what? Sometimes people ask me what kind of career they should pursue, and I don't say "STEM". I advise draw a circle around things you're good at, and another circle around things that pay, and your career is in the intersection.
I've been operating as a high level programmer for over a decade and have a MsC in comp sci from a top school and a statistics/comp sci related Ph.D.
I was bored at my job and thought I'd apply at Meta. I've never really used python professionally (more of an R person, though I've solo dev'ed apps which have been in clinical usage for 3+ years with typescript front ends).
Did hours of leetcode over the course of 2 months to prep, because I was bored at my job and I thought it would be a fun way to improve my python skills.
Failed the coding section of the interview. Feedback was:
"The candidate clearly understands the problem and is an excellent communicator, but seems rusty with python."
No worries and no complaints, the story has a happy ending.
> "The candidate clearly understands the problem and is an excellent communicator, but seems rusty with python."
The feedback is always worthless. It may -- or may not[1] -- honestly reflect what the interviewer thought of you, but the interview process is not set up to produce reliable results, which means that what they thought of you isn't really related to your characteristics. There is only a very tenuous connection between their assessment of you and your performance.
[1] The last time I interviewed with Google, the recruiter congratulated me on doing well in the interviews and told me to expect a job offer. What followed was multiple weeks of silence (technically, not silence, they also asked me to make changes to my resume) and then the message that they were not interested in hiring me because my interview performance was poor. Whatever else we may say about this, we cannot avoid the conclusion that some of the feedback you get consists of intentional lies.