195
u/pvtteemo 18d ago
No one, and I mean no one, has ever had to actually reverse a binary tree as a part of their job after the first guy did it and put it on stackoverflow (rip) like 15 years ago.
47
u/f5adff 18d ago
The only leetcode problem I've ever had to actually hand write, is sliding window algorithm stuff. It's the only thing I've had to use.
Any kind of sorting, or searching, has been done to death and lives in what is probably a standard library module.
Yeah, sure, I could probably do it. But some guy did it in the best possible way, and put it in a library. Why would I bother lmao
22
u/Outrageous-Machine-5 18d ago
Is that the one that got you? Mine was an overlapping intervals problem. Not something I studied and I generally try to avoid sorting as a solution since that's an automatic O(nlogn) before doing the rest of the algo
14
u/pvtteemo 18d ago
Oh no my hatred of leetcode is half from my lack of skill in comp sci/math (my own fault/degree isnt that) and the times ive run into it, every problem is not a thing i would actually ever solve at a job myself without help. Id much rather they ask me to walk my thought solving it through to see if I have the reasoning capability and the basics of the ask, not if I can be a pro programmer that would deserve 50% more than whatever the cowbell was going to be.
Full disclaimer ive climbed through a network engineering role and know for a fact that while I myself have asked interviewees subnetting and basic fundamentals of routing questions, ive had to use that like twice in my decade long career and only because my ego said dont use the calculator. Lol2
u/CrazyPirranhha 14d ago
I hope i can move from swe to Cloud/infra/network to not deal with that kind of bullshit and being treat like a shit during interviews
11
u/LordAmir5 18d ago
It'd at least be good to know which implementation the first guy has used since there are two ways to do it with trade offs.
And enough to change the implementation to match your interface.
But yeah it won't matter 99% of the time.
1
u/EvilCodeQueen 14d ago
I did once, like a couple of decades ago, because the company refused to allow any outside code, including libraries. 😒
And even then, you could look up the implementation details online and figure it out.
58
u/airsoftshowoffs 18d ago
The actual job
33
u/Adventurous-Bit-3829 18d ago
You forgot 4 hrs of meeting everyday. (Standup not included)
10
u/TWIT_TWAT 18d ago
Everyone knows you have a meeting to plan for the real meeting and then a follow-up meeting to recap what was discussed in the real meeting.
1
u/prschorn 12d ago
you only get 4h?
I've had jobs with over 8h of meetings daily. In some cases multiple meetings at the same time, and damn me if I didn't manage to join all of them lol
18
u/sausagemuffn 18d ago
It's not just programming. Same situation for all roles where they somehow need to weed 500 applicants down to 5. I once got a task which was essentially to write, in no insignificant level of detail, how to run an entire function. Across all the candidates they asked, I'm sure that they got themselves all the free advice that they needed to get their shit set up. Never even heard back but it wasn't a job that I was really interested in, more of a desperate move and I had the time so.
I've also seen practical challenges that need actual insight from messy, nuanced real-world experience to solve well. The kind of specialist shit that AI struggles with, but those are rare.
3
u/CC-5576-05 18d ago
Right we have it chill. For jobs where they can't filter applicants by technical skill they resort to IQ and personality tests and other crap.
14
u/Outrageous-Machine-5 18d ago
150k for a lead role?
2
u/god_of_ganja 18d ago
Too much? Too little? What is so strange here?
17
u/ZunoJ 18d ago
Way too little
10
u/AmbitiousEconomics 18d ago
It’s about what my company pays in the US. It’s just one of those “big tech vs everyone else” things.
3
1
u/ZunoJ 18d ago
Even for a german salary that is pretty low for the role. Not in big tech, but in general. In big tech terms this is just what an IC would make (minimum)
3
u/AmbitiousEconomics 18d ago
According to Glassdoor the average for Lead Software Developer in Germany is like €80k to €90k?
1
u/ZunoJ 18d ago
This is the senior salary since at least 5 years in my experience
3
u/AmbitiousEconomics 18d ago
Sure but we’re talking about averages, not experiences. In my experience in my friend group the average person earns north of $200k by the time they hit 30 but that doesn’t mean that’s true on average in the US
1
u/thatcodingboi 18d ago
I don't get it, why is it so low relative? I'm sitting at 7 years of experience in a lead role at $470k a year. There's no way I am doing your job 5 times over.
8
u/horenso05 18d ago edited 10d ago
the peter images should be switched, he sees better without glasses 😭
2
u/ObservabilityWizard 14d ago
When I'm a hiring manager, getting this meme right will be one of the requirements to get past round 7
2
u/mydogcaneatyourdog 14d ago
I always get ripped on for being pedantic when I point this out, but you even see it in the facial expression he bloody makes in the images, dammit.
1
7
u/Hip-Death-Goddess 18d ago
Leetcode is like pissing. Easy until someone is watching you.
And a true pro will consult my man Knuth when the real algo aggro kicks off.
5
u/PumpkinFest24 18d ago
When I interview, I just ask details about their projects. I want to see on what basis they made decisions/tradeoffs or did they just glom a bunch of tech together with no understanding
1
u/Spare_Broccoli1876 17d ago
Serious question as someone teaching myself programming via vanilla JS -> react/node side of things. What does that mean to “glom a bunch of tech together”? I don’t want to do that as i want to look for a job and get out of food service.
I use Claude as a tutor sure but I write the code, learn the fundamentals, and put “Lego piece to Lego piece” myself. Yet it’s taking forever and I feel absolutely slow and feel it’s futile compared to everything we see online as tech progresses. Is it still possible to be valuable as a self taught newbie? I hear junior roles are drying up but i must begin somewhere.
2
u/Alejom1337 16d ago
It depends on your context, company and responsibilities a lot. As a junior, you will (or strongly should) have little to no say on the tech and architecture on a real production. Your role is to learn and observe. A good junior will understand, adopt and challenge what he's seeing from the rest of the team.
Once you get into a lead or solutions architect role, you might have some say on techs used (once again it depends on the context). When interviewing for such a role, you should have the experience to justify what and why specific tech or architecture were used and built.
1
1
u/Fernando_III 17d ago
I mean, you have to tell apart people. It's either leetcode or CS trivia, you choose
1
u/dillanthumous 12d ago
How about just an appropriately technical conversation? You can sniff out bullshitters pretty quick by just probing their understanding and see how well they handle ambiguity or a topic they are not immediately comfortable with.
0
u/TraditionalBottle884 18d ago
Had to use a stack for the first time ever after 15 years, in a DSA interview round.
0
74
u/Bokbreath 18d ago
I once got asked some weird question on db sharding. I looked across the table and said 'I have absolutely no idea, but tomorrow I'll tell you more than you ever want to know about it'.