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Comment by anon_2222 | Hacker News Reader

we interviewed him and passed. he was horrible. it blows my mind seeing these reports of him crushing interviews and being a great dev. the bar for programmers is woefully low. on second thought there's got to be more to this story because he came to us through a recruiter who talked him up big time. did he come to you through a recruiter too? if so then either the recruiter is in on it or he has an army of different recruiters getting him in front of yc people. also you say you worked with him in person but other reports say he was in india. something not adding up here. i can verify my story by giving you the Nth character of the quirky email address he uses. can you do the same?

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It’s probably because the interview process relied heavily on leetcode questions. If it did, one can effectively prepare for that and only that and can be overemployed.

Is it still common to ask leetcode questions during interview?

Leetcode questions are still the primary way to test skill in interviews.

Where? I have candidates solve a real closed-ended problem in the space we’re working in. I also give them a lot of source code to read and respond to and find issues with.

most medium to large size companies

But this approach takes a certain amount of time and effort, and requires interviewers who are skilled at interviewing.

Leetcode provides an extremely lazy and cheap way of “solving” the problem of assessing an applicant’s skills.

No explanation has been provided to show hes good at leetcode either.

I assume its because his resume showed hes worked at sexy startups recently (true or not)

Having worked at sexy-startup for 9 months recently with a good excuse why you left would get your resume to the top of the pile if it was read

I'm intrigued by this guy, he could only have a few years of experience. What does he have to show for it resume wise? Has he ever built something, oversaw a large project, contributed meaningfully - and does he back this well in his interviewing?

What type of interview you have, I presume non LeetCode style?

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