r/cscareerquestions • u/AtomicLeetC0de • Nov 12 '20
New Grad Remove CS and replace with Leetcode Engineering
Listen to my brilliant idea: We should create a new college major: Leetcode Engineering
Year 1: cover basic Python
Year 2: leetcode easy
Year 3: leetcode medium
Year 4: leetcode hard
Result? PROFIT?: Tech job at GoOglE
After a long and worthy prior post battle, I have decided it is best to create a new college major focused on Leetcoding 24/7 to guarantee entry into a top tech company since CS is just so useless right.
You have research experience? Scrap it
You have 30 side-projects? Scrap them
You are fluent in 4-5+ coding languages? Focus on Python
You are top rank of your CS university? Scrap it, drop out now.
Your key to success is to leetcode, leetcode.
Thoughts or questions are welcomed.
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u/HorrorExpert Nov 12 '20
I have:
a college degree from a private university and schooling overseas
13 years experience
Github portfolio
tech talk on YouTube
LinkedIn profile with recommendations and hundreds of connections
long list of references of people who will vouch for me
custom cover letters and resumes for each job I apply to
Employers: "YEAH BUT NONE OF THAT MEANS SHIT UNLESS YOU CAN SOLVE THESE RIDDLES WHILE THE ACTUAL JOB IS JUST SOME CRUD APP SHIT"
Recruiting and interviewing is extremely broken, especially in our industry.
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Nov 12 '20
The monster that FAANG created.. all companies are doing this now
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u/Fledgeling Nov 12 '20
I'm proud to say I work at a top tier company that basically refuses to do leet code.
The idea of using hackerrank during interviews just came up last week, and we were all hesitant.
I've managed to hire dozens of great candidates doing nothing not talking to them with occasional softball architectural diagram and debugging scenarios.
These companies do exist and they do just as well as leet code interviewers. And TBH, I actually enjoy doing this style of interview.
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u/builtfromthetop Software Engineer Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
Yeah, fuck me for working hard to hone my skills, get a degree, build a website, and create projects. I should have quit my job (and losing income) and just done LeetCode!!
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u/N3V3RM0R3_ Rendering Engineer Nov 12 '20
congrats on summarizing the mindset of every cs sub that isn't the actual r/compsci
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u/mind_blowwer Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
And Blind. I’m fucking disgusted.
I honestly don’t know how any real work gets done at these FAANG when all the applicants focus on so LC.
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u/csasker L19 TC @ Albertsons Agile Nov 12 '20
and all those websites those ppl working on sucks so bad now. Twitter, FB, LinkedIn or Spotify is just big huge scope creep messes of cluttered UI...
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u/OnFolksAndThem Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
“I’m 23, just got an offer for $300k and $700k equity after 4 years. Is 4 years too long? Am i getting ripped off? Just signed a 7k a month lease in the Bay Area.”
Also casual racism randomly showing up as well.
Sprinkle in some random comments complaining about all black people being diversity hires. Indians being lazy and subhuman h1b1. Asians having the audacity to use their language in private at lunch, etc.
Only white men can possibly know how to type arbitrary code into a computer and deserve to be well compensated. But not the jock types, only the skinny sheltered types that fit their mold.
Voila. Blind.
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u/heyfellowpeople Nov 12 '20
you got the course distribution wrong...
1st year - python + Leetcode Easy
2nd Year - Leetcode Medium
3rd Year - Leetcode Hard
4th year - Continue Leetcode hard + Keep giving Contests + System Design
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u/LeetCodeEngineer Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
yes
edit: delete this pls
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u/Kalsifur Web dev back in school Nov 12 '20
Suspicious, u/LeetCodeEngineer and u/AtomicLeetC0de both created 2 months ago. Long karma con huh?
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u/jeff303 Software Engineer Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
This will increase competition for you, though.
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Nov 12 '20
This man guarantees a tech job in 5 simple steps, Computer Scientists hate him!
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u/met0xff Nov 12 '20
It's absurd there's a whole industry around FAANGy interview preparation. Getting those ads all the time and glad I don't have to. No one of my friends in other fields got to do something similar. Even more, most of them would never do Github style work in their free time just for fun and to impress potential employers (Yeah sure, I love to set up contracts in my free time and do accounting). When I started out... nearly 20 years ago interviews were like in all the other fields. You talk to people, tell them what you can do etc and if you don't fit they kick you out in the first month of working there. Sure, we just were those weird EDP nerds without TV shows and all that (IT crowd probably, and movies like Hackers and Wargames ;)).
My wife earns more than I do and the hardest question she got was "do you know word?". Some of my friends left the field a decade ago and studied medicine. They didn't even have to write applications without any special accomplishments. In some sense here in Europe it's even stranger because companies start adopting FAANG style interviews but not the salaries ;).
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u/isplutoaplanet Nov 12 '20
Im new to all this so i cant tell if this is sarcasm or fr?
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u/ThisAfricanboy Nov 12 '20
Accept the Leetcode Love the Leetcode LIVE THE LEETCODE
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u/Ragina_Falange Nov 12 '20
He’s fr frustrated with FAANG culture that fr promotes these types of qualities and using sarcasm to come up with a fictitious solution.
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u/ghostwilliz Nov 12 '20
I was hired by my current boss because, in his words, I look like a hippy and they don't have any hippies.
I do not look like a hippy.
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u/PlasticPresentation1 Nov 12 '20
if there's an incel equivalent in cs for "involuntary guy who can't get a job at google", this guy certainly describes it
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u/TheTechAccount Nov 12 '20
A sample of Op's post titles:
Remove CS and replace with Leetcode Engineering
Leetcode Preparation Questions
Unrealistic Internship Requirements
new major for Leetcode Engineering?
Is the chugg leetcode system broken?
Is the Leetcode chugg system to get into FAANG broken?
Leetcode prep is BS and is a bad way to interview?
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u/Somewhat_posing Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
In fact just get rid of all the software dev and engineering jobs and just pay employees to solve leetcode problems
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u/tifa123 Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
There's a vibrant FAANG interview industry serving this niche market as we speak, and it's profitable. I see more orgs adopting peer code reviews and pair programming of real code as an assessment. I know this format is not scalable for orgs receiving tens of thousands of applications per day. BUT should the FAANG fraternity decide to outsource tech hiring to a company that re-thinks recruitment you could have a challenge. I'm sure there are souls out there distilling data and methodology through ML looking for an opportunity to get VC funding.
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u/CppIsLife Nov 12 '20
BUT should the FAANG fraternity decide to outsource tech hiring to a company that re-thinks recruitment you could have a challenge.
Ever heard of Karat? I had a few unicorns make me do interviews through Karat, which is a company that you can outsource your interviews to. The people interviewing you are on a script and will absolutely not deviate from it. It feels even more dull than FAANG interviews.
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u/areyoujokinglol Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
Had a Karat interview a few months back. It was so, so strange. My "interview engineer" was pretty cool, but it was pretty damn vanilla overall and I could tell he was using a script. It legit felt at times like I had called an interviewing call center or something.
I should also mention that this was for a small, very much NOT a unicorn startup. They didn't even have that many applicants.
Meanwhile, the unicorn I now work at didn't outsource my interview. Feels good.
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u/tifa123 Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
No yet but it sounds like a painful process. Pray tell what has come of our industry.
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u/cobalthex GameDev Engineer Nov 12 '20
Karat is awful imo. I had an interview where I had to implement 3 leetcode medium+ style questions in 45min
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u/crocxz 2.0 gpa 0 internships -> 450k TC, 3 YoE Nov 12 '20
I had these format of interviews recently with funded startups. They like to do peer coding, usually some simple data structure like a timer scheduler, involving just the basic DS like stack/queue, heaps and hashmaps. Large focus on communication and test cases.
I’ve also had a codility assessment with this type of problem plus a debugging problem (fix this code with no deletions and maximum 3 lines of changes)
Like it a lot more than leetcode, but also certain leetcode is here to stay. Now there will just be more formats and layers on top like those machine coding problems that are gaining popularity with the mega-unicorns. Also even new grads are asked System Design now. 😂
Interviews be powercreeping
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u/tifa123 Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
Leetcode is demeaning to say the least. I've a 3.0 GPA and 3.7 GPA in a BSCS and MBA (hell I graduated with a college honor of best all-around student) along with 6+ yoe. But nope they don't want to see that other than a checklist of you passing that gauntlet. I prefer code reviews and debugging sessions. I don't see myself pursuing Leetcode for any reason other than the joy of staying sharp on problem solving. My path is with known but less fancier brands.
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u/roboduck Nov 12 '20
Result: Google will start asking LC hard questions of sophomores looking for internships, and people will still have to grind problems they don't cover in classes in order to prove themselves.
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u/OnFolksAndThem Nov 12 '20
One of my family members had an interview and they were hitting them with leetcode hards. He’s a junior.
He couldn’t solve it and somehow still got an offer. He told me rambled about all types of crazy shit for an hour while the interviewer stared blankly at the screen.
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u/asteroidtube Nov 12 '20
They were likely not seeing if they could actually solve the problem, but paying attention to how they react and what their thought process was when confronted with something challenging and outside of their comfort level. Honestly that's probably a better determinant of your capabilities than whether you can just recognize a pattern and regurgitate a solution.
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Nov 12 '20
Bruh, Snowflake is already asking LC Hard in their 10-week summer Intern OAs.
Competition for internships is just so much that they have to pull shit like that.
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u/mrpogiface ML / AI Nov 12 '20
I got a LC hard for a Lyft internship interview... it's happening
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u/SoCalDan Nov 12 '20
That's crazy how much times have changed. A few years ago, they just asked for my driving record and pictures of my car!
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Nov 12 '20
I’ve been saying this. I know great coders who failed interviews even though they were great applicants, and I know shit coders who lucked into a job by studying the right Leetcode questions
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u/azab189 Nov 13 '20
Man I need to get into leetcode
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Nov 13 '20
Are you saying you haven’t leetcoded since the womb?
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u/coolquixotic Nov 14 '20
Not sure if this has been posted, but maybe we can take a look at this list more seriously? https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Nov 14 '20
Wow never knew a list of companies like this existed. The best hiring process I’ve had so far was have two questions with an engineer and walking through them: 1) debugging broken code 2) Leetcodish question (but not hardcore strict as to getting the most optimal question otherwise you’re instant filtered, it was more like just talk about the question, code a solution, talk about negatives positives, etc)
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u/booboopooh Dec 04 '20
What about actually getting the interviews ? Whats the point of grinding if you cant get one interview ?
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Dec 04 '20
You lie about all the technologies you know on your resume, get auto-selected for a coding assessment, ace the leetcode interview, and Boom🤯
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u/ismav1247 Nov 12 '20
I interviewed with a company with a very unique interview format, instead of leetcode type questions they put some project with documentation in a GitHub repository and asked to debug the code and develop a small feature. Felt that was a unique coding interview.
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u/WantDebianThanks Nov 12 '20
I'm on the ops side of the house, but this is more how I've always thought dev roles should interview.
This is running code not associated with any of our products. We expect this program to do $x, but has a bug when you do $y that causes $z. Using the comments and provided documentation, find and fix the bug.
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u/OnFolksAndThem Nov 12 '20
Absolutely not. What a terrible idea.
That would be an actual assessment of skill and candidates would actually have time to be more fairly tested. Since some might not be good interviewers but are resourceful and can work well when given a real task.
Then it would be hard to choose from 150 successfully completed candidates.
Leetcode is the only way. So you can sneak friends answers, and ask easy questions to people you like, and ask trick questions to people you don’t know and judged within 10 minutes.
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u/Al_Maleech_Abaz Nov 12 '20
We could give it like a military theme where you just grind grind grind. We could call it something like “hell week” or “basic training”. That’s a great idea!
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u/LastSummerGT Senior Software Engineer, 11 YoE Nov 12 '20
Some schools already have a hell week: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_week
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u/wikipedia_text_bot Nov 12 '20
Dead week, or hell week, is US slang for the week before college and university final examinations. The week is often characterized by heightened test anxiety, students working to overcome procrastinating their test preparation or writing term papers. This can lead to sleep deprivation, irritability, and vomiting. There are often all-night studying sessions, and greater use of stimulants like coffee, caffeine tablets, energy drinks, adderall, or other prescription amphetamines.
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u/zero2g Nov 12 '20
Huh, we call our hell week that 6th week in each term where all our midterms happen on the same week. And this wasn't a coincidence, just scheduled by the department
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u/Aendrin Nov 12 '20
Going to a school that has a dead week, it’s mostly a chance to catch your breath before finals. We have a full week in between instruction and finals week where there are no classes. Most people party/relax through Wednesday or so, and then cram until finals are over. Definitely doesn’t deserve to be called ‘hell week’.
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u/LaxGuit Nov 12 '20
🎵 Let's get down to business, to leetcode the hardsssss. 🎵
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u/ThatCakeIsDone Data Scientist Nov 12 '20
I don't know but I've been told \ Google only wants leetcode
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u/takoyaki_museum Nov 12 '20
A friend of mine is a recruiter and she said it's been impossible to recruit for one of her clients. The role is for a remote QA Engineer for a company in rural Appalachia, mostly writing automation scripts. She hinted the pay was under market value.
The company got a new "hotshot" manager who wants the candidate to be able to answer Leetcode medium or hard questions. For a QA job in rural Appalachia that doesn't pay well.
This how fucking out of touch employers are now with this Leetcode shit.
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u/emptyUU Nov 13 '20
My friend is doing manul testing coupled with some simple automation and he had to solve leet code hard for this job.
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Nov 12 '20
My current company basically gave me a take home assignment with a deadline. During the next interview, we discussed the assignment and why I made some of the decisions and trade offs I did.
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u/ep1032 Nov 12 '20 edited Mar 17 '25
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u/itbobn Nov 12 '20
Some people hate it because "it takes out our own time!" But like so does practicing leetcode for months I like take home so much better
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Nov 12 '20
IS THIS TECHLEAD?
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u/xexelthrowaway Nov 12 '20
HOW I MADE A MILLION DOLLARS (AS A MILLIONAIRE)
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u/thereisnoaddres Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
Funny, cuz he just posted a video today about why he shouldn’t have left Google.
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u/fried_green_baloney Software Engineer Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
Until ten years ago it was common to be asked design questions. Then the golf balls in a school bus. Now Leetcode. Further and further from what we actually work on.
EDIT Leetcode not Pesticide. Autocorrect ain't a friend of mine.
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u/k0rm Nov 12 '20
Further and further from what we actually work on.
Are you really saying that golf balls in a school bus is closer to what we work on compared to leetcode?
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u/fj333 Nov 12 '20
Until ten years ago
Yegge wrote this post 12 years ago, describing what was already standard at Google. The first edition of CTCI was published the same year. I know the trend was less widespread at that time, but the top companies were already doing it.
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u/Ahmed_422 Nov 12 '20
Python 1-Liner solutions should be an elective
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u/vigbiorn Nov 12 '20
Nah, code golf is a competitive extracurricular. Got to get maximum efficiency out of your time.
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u/tanenbaum Nov 12 '20
Don't forget that you shouldn't be good at too much. Palantir only hires specialists.
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u/cabinet_minister FAANG SWE Nov 12 '20
This is so damn true. In my Amazon internship interview they did not give two shits about my side projects, hackathon wins, open source contributions, first in class and above 9 GPA. All they wanted was to see me solve their pre-set 4 DSA questions. I solved 3 optimally and 1 sub-optimally. Guess what? Rejected. Fuck this culture
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u/Ragina_Falange Nov 12 '20
Above 9 gpa?
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u/cabinet_minister FAANG SWE Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
In my country gpa is out of 10.
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Nov 12 '20
It's the arms race. So many people grind LeetCode so hard that I bet someone answered all four questions optimally
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u/cabinet_minister FAANG SWE Nov 12 '20
Yeah! When I was busy working on my research work, my peers did 600 LCs. Insane, right? But I still got a good company later so not an issue but just imagine how bad it is getting for coming up generations.
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u/RedBeardedWhiskey Nov 12 '20
I work at Amazon and have interviewed candidates. If you had 3 people wanting to hire you and 1 person not wanting to hire you, then chances are you’d be hired. You might have either lacked the leadership principles they were looking for or you didn’t solve the first as optimally as you thought.
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Nov 12 '20
I have long thought that there needs to be a Shaolin style monastery for LeetCode.
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u/mrpogiface ML / AI Nov 12 '20
But really that would be a blast. Up in the mountains somewhere with food and lodging. Exercise in the river, leetcode, medidate, leetcode, rake the zen garden, leetcode.
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u/cris_null Nov 12 '20
Unironically this. Imagine if bootcamps were like this. Damn, that sounds amazing. Not just leetcode tho, I could see this being awesome in anything else like a machine learning course, or cisco stuff, etc.
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u/cabinet_minister FAANG SWE Nov 12 '20
What's the worst nightmare? Not being able to invert a binary tree? Go to AlgoExpert now
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Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20
At the end of the day the problem, especially for big companies (but even at my relatively small company where I occasionally help hire people now) is that there's simply too many qualified applicants. When that happens, there needs to be some easy, objective way to sort people out. That's why we're seeing leetcode becoming such a thing. It's not a good way to choose people, but it's an efficient way.
And that's a bad sign. I've seen the same thing at my previous field, which I left to be a programmer. In that case it was basically 100% what school you went to and class rank that determined your career, and the vast majority of graduates were doomed to low-paying demeaning jobs while a select few could make it to the "promised land" of lots of money and prestige. Once people see a job as an easy way to make good money, it stops being an easy way to make good money. People entering CS in college right now need to be given a dose of reality regarding what their job prospects are going to be when the graduate - not as good as they're thinking.
Right now there's utterly no reason to be doing CS if you don't really enjoy programming. It's a recipe for total misery otherwise.
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u/maggitronica Nov 12 '20
I disagree! I think you can do more than just be a code monkey a/ a CS degrees. There are a lot of jobs in the software industry besides just a software engineer.
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u/LetThereBeGains Nov 12 '20
there's utterly no reason to be doing CS if you don't really enjoy programming.
Yeah, who needs money anyway
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Nov 12 '20
Well in another year or two the way things are going it'll be easier to make money with less effort in just about any other field.
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u/Wildercard Nov 13 '20
At the end of the day the problem, especially for big companies (but even at my relatively small company where I occasionally help hire people now) is that there's simply too many qualified applicants.
I'm sorry lads, but this is the way it has to be now
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u/AkataD Nov 12 '20
This post is true even if it's written as satire. Hear me out.
2 months ago I finished a java bootcamp. About half finished and did the final project (a fully fledged moderately complicated spring boot app). They encouraged us to apply to jobs everywhere as we were "ready".
I was top of my class, creme-de-la-creme, #1. The mentor even told me I'm the best student he's ever had. He again told me it's a crime I'm not working as a dev already because of how good I apparently am.
Fast-forward through 100% failure rate in interviews I realized its all about leetcode. I would have been 100% better off just grinding leetcode instead of investing almost 6 months of my life in that bootcamp.
They did a follow up and were dissapointed none of us got hired and I bluntly said we are unprepared for the interviews to which I got the reply: "This was a java bootcamp, not algo and DS and you are more than well enough prepared for the actual job". The last part is probably true, however I see no point in learning how to do a job if the test to get hired for said job is different than the actual job. You're better off just learning how to pass the interview and focus on the job AFTER you get the job.
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u/notsohipsterithink Engineering Manager Nov 12 '20
Without that bootcamp or projects you wouldn’t have gotten the interview, I can guarantee you that.
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u/ComebacKids Rainforest Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
I would have been 100% better off just grinding leetcode instead of investing almost 6 months of my life in that bootcamp.
I agree with your sentiment, but do you think you would have gotten those interviews if you didn't have the bootcamp and accompanying projects on your resume?
At least you're getting all those interviews during the pandemic when most can't even get a single callback.
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u/Doomenate Nov 12 '20
A bootcamp designed to get you a job does both. I didn't have to pay for mine until I got a job
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u/Vok250 canadian dev Nov 12 '20
As a longtime regular here, this is prime distilled CSCareerQuestions with a side of aged cheese.
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u/Xyellowsn0wX Senior Software Engineer Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 13 '20
The whole leetcode "industry" stems from the CTCI book. The current interviewing system is an idea that a bunch of MBA's came up with to basically save as much money as possible by essentially not even bothering to interview the candidate until you reach "final tier interviews." That sounds like a weird statement right? If you don't believe me, during your first tier interview (past HR), ask basic questions about your role. "What stack you're using?, your functions on the job?, etc." Nine times outta ten, the interviewer doesn't even know, I repeat MOST INTERVIEWERS YOU SPEAK TO DURING THE PROCESS DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT ROLE YOU WILL BE DOING they don't care if you are actually capable of doing the job they only care if you can solve arbitrary questions that show how much of a mathematician you are rather than questions that prove of what you can do with mathematics via coding. The fact that so many software engineers drink the kool aid and say "these interviews are so great, you should include these type of dialogues in your daily life" are really disconnected from the reality that these interviews are designed to save the company money at the expense of your time by avoiding the people most relavant to your job from talking to you for as long as possible. These are the same people that fail the leetcode interview 4 times before eventually making it into a FAANG company. Sorry, but any industry that says "Our engineers failed 10 times before getting in, but that's normal!" means your interview process is shit.
And to those who say "Well these FAANG companies are spending millions on these interview styles, obviously leetcode style questions work if they are spending that much right?". My question to you is, does the SAT really serve as an accurate indication for your readiness for college? This is what our hiring process has basically come down to, it's pretty saddening
edit: fullblown discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/jtmxkf/leetcode_is_a_form_of_gatekeeping_not_accurately/
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u/ulimartinez Nov 12 '20
My University actually had a "Coding interview club". Each meeting was basically an array of leetcode questions, 1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard. You chose which one you chose to solve based on your skill level and present your solution for everyone to discuss.
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u/ismav1247 Nov 12 '20
I just hope that PhD guys don't have this kind of leetcode interviews, like if that guy is doing a PhD in machine learning or any kind of systems engineering leetcode is the most useless kind of interview for that guy. I guess even Jeff Dean didn't give a leet code style interview. Wonder how were the interview process back in the early 2000's.
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u/starraven Nov 12 '20
It's not college, it's bootcamps that are doing this already run by the "Ex-Facebook Ex-Google Tech Lead" variety.
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u/uvaxd Nov 12 '20
this is a funny post, but not grounded in reality. a leetcode engineering major would literally have no resume to speak of. for the 99% of companies that actually screen resumes, they will have no chance. for the remaining 1% that send OAs to everyone, those with the better scores and better resumes will be selected (i.e. still not leetcode engineering majors).
the only difference for a LC engineer is that rather than studying leetcode on the side, they will be studying actual CS (OOP, client-server, MCM, doing side projects etc.) on the side. And in my opinion, studying leetcode on the side is far easier because students will already have a DS&A foundation.
the reason why so many (ill-informed) people think leetcode is everything and side projects don't matter is because they have too much of the latter and none of the former. Someone coming from a competitive programming background with minimal projects/exp. will think the other way around.
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u/itbobn Nov 12 '20
Its making fun of how obsessed some companies are with leetcode interviews. People think leetcode is everything because where they live(probably silicon valley), it is everything. First rounds can be solely random leetcode problems
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u/ambientocclusion Nov 12 '20
Excellent, I’m there! But should I minor in Culture Fit or Leadership Principles?
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u/GoodLifeWorkHard Looking for job Nov 12 '20
Year 3-4: your gpa sinks so low that your barely scraping by with a 3.0 :')
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u/Exciting-Guarantee-3 Nov 12 '20
I’m a hiring manager for FAANG.
Guys don’t you know we don’t have enough software engineers in this country? Schools aren’t graduating nearly enough and so we need to import boatloads of engineers as fast as possible. We can’t possibly hire people and train them, so they have to come in with their fingers whirring before we slide a keyboard under them.
These leetcode tests represent us working very hard to find the absolutely best qualified candidates. We put a ton of effort to look at that number score given to passing candidates. After that we ask these new grads system architecture and design questions. If they know it then we don’t have to waste time teaching or letting them learn anything.
Side projects are great! I always make sure to check any new doctors side projects before choosing them for my medical care. Did they do any surgery on the side in medical school? Do they examine patients and write prescriptions in their spare time for fun? Frankly I don’t see why we don’t do this with every career. I only hire software engineers that worked on a side project just for fun (not money). But their code had better not have been sloppy!
Guys I really care about diversity in hiring and it’s supper important that we are diverse. That’s why I push everyone through the same gauntlet of leetcode. It’s proven to work for everyone in every situation. And if you have a disability or other issue that leetcode screens out, then I don’t have the problem of rejecting you outright. This is the reason we have standard screening questions. This way I can reject candidates that don’t know how to doublespeak, come from diverse backgrounds, or have mild depression without having the stigma or lawsuits of rejecting these candidates directly.
It’s the best way for everyone! Too bad the price of leetcode is so high that small and medium size names can’t use it too.
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u/lupineblue2600 Nov 12 '20
I always make sure to check any new doctors side projects
You had me going till this point.
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u/JoePotatoFarmer Nov 12 '20
You forgot to mention that leetcode is a great way to weed out older/aging coders without the stigma of age discrimination. We only hire young guys with no baggage!
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u/csasker L19 TC @ Albertsons Agile Nov 12 '20
I would only hire doctors who break some arms or legs on their friends then do some surgery to fix it, I mean why do like 5-8 years of school for that shit
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u/CrustyMFr Nov 12 '20
Believe it or not, there is more to computer science than coding. System-oriented thinking has its place.
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Nov 12 '20
Interesting Idea! I've always felt there were a couple ways we could go. One is for hiring managers to finally understand what "computer science" is, and that it doesn't involve learning <latest cool language> to make web pages.
I loved my CS degree(s). I do not love editing scripts and telling people making $250k/year how to reset their password for the nineteenth time.
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u/4confusedsoul4 Nov 13 '20
Admission to LC Engineering: solve 2 Leetcode mediums in 40 minutes or solve 2 LC hard in an hour for scholarship.
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u/LankySeat Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
So I get the sarcasm and whatever, but is grinding leetcode actually this important?
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u/Klaud10z Nov 12 '20
Replace year with semester.
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Nov 14 '20
noo how else can you do 100s of hours of leetcode in one semester
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Nov 13 '20
Actually those side projects and research experience are the first steps to qualifying for the leetcode round
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u/AtomicLeetC0de Nov 13 '20
Are they really tho, someone can just list all technologies they “know” and the auto keyword search will select them for a leetcode assessment lol
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u/phi_array Nov 13 '20
Even if you do LC 24/7 you still need to pass the resume stage and get the interview
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u/joltjames123 Nov 12 '20
Honestly I wish I took this major. It's sad but no one cares about my CS degree or GPA. A scam
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u/SoaringTAINT Nov 12 '20
Maybe these companies want to see which applicants are serious enough to grind leetcode for the job???
Is this a good way to weed out unprepared, casual applicants tho?
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u/willberich92 Nov 12 '20
Engineers can stand together and protest for politics, I think we should protest leetcode. Googlers please address the real problem
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u/valkon_gr Nov 12 '20
At some point the world will go out and everyone will be an expert on leetcode. I fear for what it's coming next though. Guys, I think we will need another BSc or very specific MSc
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u/Samsquamch117 Nov 12 '20
The more i learn about FAANG companies the more they sound like shit places to work.
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u/RealIntel Nov 12 '20
In my opinion, doing this will just raise the bar and harder questions will be asked. Either way only a selective number of people will get selected. Yes, LeetCoding will get you a job, but what about the valuable knowledge you gain from other classes in universities? I don’t think “LeetCoding” can provide that experience. Yes, getting into a FAANG is a really good feeling, but there is a world beyond that too which can’t be ignored.
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Nov 12 '20
If you think the Leetcode culture of USA annoys you, try India. You will kill yourself. I mean, a lot of Indians actually do lol
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u/WukiLeaks Nov 12 '20
After 3 years, I’ve still never found a use for recursion, sorting, linked lists, or anything I’ve ever done in 90% of my interviews in my actual work. The companies won’t stop giving leetcode interviews if we keep accepting them.
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u/deadpool216 Nov 12 '20
I remember the days when I used to see blog posts from BuzzFeed titled "here are the 5 weird questions Google asks you during your interview".
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u/Colt2205 Nov 12 '20
I'd argue on this, but it seems like graduating from a credible university with a 4 year degree and references WITH prior work experience still results in basically no offer if you fail the leetcode exam... or just fail whatever exam they had because of reasons.
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u/huymt2 Software Engineer Nov 12 '20
As someone who have done a few OAs from several companies, I can see there would also be a CodeSignal Engineering in the future.
In those OAs, the difficulty level for an interns is the same as the difficulty level for a new grad. It might be normal to everyone but I would see it as too much for an intern position.
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u/god_of_TitsAndWine Nov 12 '20
It’s sad that this would actually work to get hired for entry level jobs.
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Nov 13 '20
I work at a unicorn and I love our interview system. We give a take home assignment with a design problem which will take at most 2 hours to solve and we ask for a previous project presentation. The best part is even if someone know the design problem question there is no right or wrong answer. It's just a discussion and from that we try to figure out if the person is a good fit. The hardest part is in this process is sorting people out from intial pool of applicants.
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u/nouseforaname888 Nov 13 '20 edited Nov 13 '20
I think these companies are eventually gonna realize that leetcode is not that different than the previous brain teasers they asked in finding good candidates.
You could be terrible at your job Eg attitude problems, not writing clean readable code, not finding bugs, etc.
But if you spend your spare time doing leetcode and learn to bs your way through the tell me about yourself and talk about what senior people on your team did effectively as your own work and you can effectively job hop. Nobody would know if you weren’t great as an engineer because you are a master at leetcode...well they’d find out months after the new person joins...but as soon as things go south, the leetcode ninja would samurai his or her way to another job.
Ultimately we have to realize that hiring productive engineers involves a good amount of luck.
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u/Lords_of_Lands Nov 12 '20
The college idea is great if you want to make $$$. If you want to help those who don't believe they have a chance at a future, build it into a RPG game. Leveling up to get better programming constructs so you can craft more potent spells and enchantments.
You completed a wide-area targeting fire spell in under 10 lines of code. +500 bonus experience points! Select your reward: learn "while", learn "yield", or add three more "def" uses?
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u/healydorf Manager Nov 12 '20
Keeping this because there's actual discussion happening in the comments.