Coding Interviews are Broken 

😃😃😃

LOL

But please do put those manual corrections in a script

Oufff

This is not freaking funny, I had exact same situation, except it was xml file.

How come this comment has so little likes!!

Kinda like I saw a while ago... This job for an experienced Angular developer, which I tought I was, ya know, with my 4 years experience... But nahh, they wanted a guy with a decade experience in Angular... So I tought best not to apply... 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

That usually happens because HR writes the job offering without consulting their tech staff.

@@einarabelc5 because this never happens

Saw this a lot when iOS first came out. people looking for 5 years of iOS dev experience when it had been out 3 years xd

Underrated comment lmao

I'm a web developer and I don't understand the question...

@@petarprokopenko645 That's the point, you shouldn't understand that question :) It's currently one of the hardest and unsolved problem in computing theory. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem

The answer is 42.

@@NaudVanDalen Brilliant! Hurry up, publish a paper, Nobel prize guaranteed :)

You brute forced the interview haha.

This comment should have a lot more likes 🤣

Me at the moment. I'm working a non tech gig until i get back in the industry, but i've had to put all my projects (the thing that you actually learn better coding practices) on hold and spend my after work time studying for interviews.

My boy created a loop that only end if the company hire him.

​@@gabrielgarcia7554 🤣🤣🤣

ewww hahah

Well the funniest part about that is that it’s actually not an editor that they’re making you use; it’s Google Docs 😂

@squ34ky2 Forget indents, you will have PTSD when the first letter of every word auto-capitalizes. Def Main(): Print("Hello")

Lol he said that as I read this comment

don't let your skill be tainted by the color of the editor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And do that with O(1) Complexity.

:) MDR

Daniel Cunha , 😂😂

@@budsyremo That part shouldn't be hard. Just hardcode the number of particles and say your system doesn't support more than that.

😂😂😂 you just made my day man. Very hilarious and very true.

I read that as "hash mapped" this like button

I tapped it so many times, google server’s went down for .1 microseconds

It's a miracle that the button isn't broken

Same here!! I just can't understand HOW questions like reverse this binary tree or find all common multiples of all numbers of this array can tell if a programmer is good or not! Really??? 20 years programming... hundreds of projects delivered, millions of lines of code.... and NEVER (I said NEVER) needed to use one of those single questions I have heard on these interviews!!! Big O???? Who on earth keep thinking on this shit while coding? They keep saying: "don't over engineer it", but you need to deliver the fastest code ever! People take weeks or months to get into a perfect solution, but you need to deliver it in 30 min.

@@ChristianAlmeidabr that is very dependant on your field. If you work for a service company that builds web sites all year of course you don't need to be good at designing algorithms because that's not your job. But if you work at a company that builds a very specific product where 90% of the job is to improve on service quality/precision/performances of course you need to understand what big O notation is, of course you need to understand what it means, otherwise you can't even chat with your collegues at the coffee break. But on the other hand in that second case you probably don't care about JavaScript and you probably don't even know what react is. All jobs require different skills and knowledge, CS is super vast and so are CS jobs, don't assume a skill you don't need is useless. Most of us are good in one or two very "narrow" fields (web/machine learning/graph theory/distributed computation/optimization/NLP/video games/sounds/embedded systems/... and many many more). Some of us have decent knowledge of maybe 5 fields, but in general we basically know nothing about CS. Don't mistake your field for the entirety of CS. It's just a tiny bit. So yes, most jobs are in the web (which itself contains subfields that most people from the web don't know) but many people also do work in other fields. That's not because they are not on stackoverflow nor GitHub that they don't exist. They just work on projects where reading academic paper is a normal thing, where spending time chatting about algorithms is the best way to write good code. It's a bit sad to see people denigrate other fields like this... That's also a problem for some beginners because that make them think that CS = web development. Which make them think they don't need to learn computer science because they already know so much after 1-2 year. I really hope CS will not starve passionate people because we hide 99% of the discipline with web related stuff. (Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting topics in the large web spectrum, I'm just saying that the emerged part of the iceberg).

Ugh. Red and black trees. We went over them for like a week in data structures before the final. Could not get the concept down.

@@Suekru3 "Ugh. Red and black trees. We went over them for like a week in data structures before the final. Could not get the concept down." Me too! The whole time we were learning them in school, I had two questions that I never asked. Why have I never seen these anywhere outside of class? I know how binary trees work, what is this offering me?

damn, Trees are GREEN!! Da-a!

Try 20 minutes throughout the whole course. Gawking hell

@@misterguy2329 They're largely used to implement map that uses tree as a backend. Examples are ordered_map in C++ stl, TreeMap in Java, and basically in most libraries if they implement a in memory tree it's probably a red black tree

The hardest question of them all.

@@moritzw42 agree :D

Stop the video an came to the comments just for that lol

well, I remember when centering divs vertically was quite complicated lol

"A week", I died hahaha

lmao

Who are they trying to hire? Will Hunting?

Yes, they are delusional

pretty much

They're actually both possible, the second if you practice for months on drawing the particle structures of every type of bacteria, and the sudokus if you're a sudoku world record holder and the sudokus are half-filled in.

Ah yes, the very achievable O(0) complexity response: _applicant has left the call_

@@drklimbal O(0) is not hard to achieve. Just had // before every command. It makes the code really fast. If you are on python add # instead.

hey. I'm an idiot. and i need to ask. what in the sweet hell is an unweighted binary doubly-linked tree graph?

@@lepruconx its a tree that has 2 ropes coming to it, and doesnt have weight

@@lepruconx Look into data structures & algorithms; very good material to learn. Binary trees are [often] implemented using linked lists. A linked list is comprised of a number of nodes(items) which each track the next node in the list(essentially forming a chain of 'links'). A doubly-linked list has each node tracking the node prior & next(parent & child) in the list. Binary trees track two child nodes(typically 'left' and 'right'). A node which has no children is a 'leaf' whereas a node with at least one child is a 'branch'. Nodes with descendants beyond immediate children form a 'subtree'. Doubly-linked binary trees track the child nodes but also the parent node. Weighted binary trees are 'self-balancing' trees that track the size of subtrees(descendants). Balanced trees ensure that the number of subtrees on one child branch does not exceed(within acceptable limits) the number of subtrees on the other child branch. Graphs are data structures comprised of nodes(vertices) and edges(links between vertices). They can be implemented using a number of different data structures, including binary trees. So an "unweighted binary doubly-linked tree graph" is a graph using a doubly-linked binary tree internally that doesn't need to track subtrees(and often isn't 'balanced'). The O(0) time complexity is a joke... unless possibly using quantum computing and somehow finding a node before requesting it. *Special note: An unweighted binary tree can still be balanced by using a 'state' variable to dynamically choose which branch to follow when adding a node. State variables, in this sense, merely keep track of the branch on which the last node was added(flipped from 'left' to 'right' and vice-versa). I don't know why it isn't taught more often in CS courses.

Should I go out of my way to memorize all of these algorithm stuffs while I also do my best to learn these design and debugging skills? (I'm just getting into coding with the desire of becoming a software engineer

@@KingMidgardsormr Hey I think a better way would to balance between both. I would say on a 4/1 ratio where you spend most of your time developing stuff and the rest doing algorithms. What kind of software development are you doing by the way? Web development, mechine learning or something else?

@@hmshuvo2332 Im really not sure it's still early days. All I know is the term software engineer which was defined differently than web development etc etc. I'm really not sure what's the best option for me yet.

@@KingMidgardsormr Well. web development is basically a sub domain of the software engineering industry. So, please don't get worked up on this. If you like web development, machine learning or whatever, just do it. As for myself, I am a software engineering who does full stack web development.

@@hmshuvo2332 Could you give me a description of what you do in a typical days work? Im really set on software engineering I just don't know the intricacies of it all yet xD

Banking projects too. And after two weeks send it back saying the documentation was wrong.

@SeasonedGamer should told him hes a fucking idipt

Bet imma apply to the IRS

People think these kind of comments about 1 second things taking weeks or months are jokes. Its true. If you ever work for government, you will know its all true!! lol

Lord Nerotix don’t think it’s a joke. Have you seen the government try and repair roads vs a private company. Big government sucks. Trump 2020

Dude u r literally everywhere. No matter the topic u have a comment. U crazy man

@@Test_749 counter ratio

hi

@@henrybottomsworth ello

Bro Y do I always find you in the same videos I watched

Not all interviewers are the same. I never ask these types of questions. I sometimes will ask them to do a takehome problem but they are always relevant or to reinforce skills they will need to use on the job that they showed weakness on during the interview. For instance the last hire I made, the project he needed to work on used GraphQL, and he said he had never used it before. I thought he had the skills for the job, so I asked him to set up a simple GraphQL application using our build system, no code just project stubs. He finished it perfectly, even went above and beyond and actually implemented the endpoints to work with the database. Didn't ask for it but he went the extra mile. Needless to say he got the job, and he learned something he will use on the job.

@@trollnerd yo! I know how to write hello world and that alert function in js. Can you hire me now?

Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

I would never want to work for a company like that. Because clearly the interviewers have no idea what the job involves and they have no idea how to assess it. You'd think these kind of people would get fired for not knowing what they're doing. But no, they got to judge other people on who to hire. Yes it's a pretty sick world we live in.

Ah yes much joy being quizzed on the irrelevant.

Yeah. Buddy graduated and hasn’t been able to land a job within a year. Definitely making me nervous.

@@Suekru3 did they ever find one?

Yeah I'm a year in and I don't know really anything. I think I'll just have to go ahead and teach myself everything asap

Hey for you folks who are struggling to land their first job. I struggled almost a year after my graduation to get my first job as a developer. I would say focus on one area and land the first job. The easiest one would be JavaScript and front end because of the amount of resources available and the learning curve. Now i have more than 5 years of experience and am currently working as a senior software Engineer. All these things happen that time properly for like 2 months .

​@@hari2061I also have a ton of experience but because of the horrible job market, the companies are having fun with us. I'm so tired of this outdated process. I even resorted to using an AI tool for my last interviews after my old company decided to "right size" to help me answer the trivia questions they are throwing at us!

Nice job Josh

Hey you guys still hiring?

most of IT is just googling things lol. New stuff comes out all the time, basically doing IT support is just being less lazy or smarter than the employees who could easily fix the problem on their own if they google.

@@Alistair You could apply that logic to literally 90% of the professions out there. As most stuff exist on the internet.

@@lockofmetal8894 Its right to let people look up information on the internet. Searching for information and solving a problem is a skill in itself and also part of life in 2022. Searching the internet for answers was seen as cheating before but I think people realise now its common sense to not limit yourself to your own head. There is really no need to do it.

I'll take that job interview from you np

Center a what?

@Zdeněk Grůza Is this a web design joke, I'm too smart understand?

Taxtro Everyone should learn enough web design to know what centering a div is... plus it’s helpful when you need to build your own portfolio page and stuff

Display: block; margin: 0 lul

Are you from Algeria? xD

So what? You are not asked to write an entire application on paper. As long as syntax errors don't count too much, I don't see the problem with this.

The same, and i even failed few exams because i forgot to put ; or a typfeller error. Its absurd.

Matija Novosel getting out of a test knowing you did well then seeing your mark get destroyed because you forgot some semicolons or brackets is beyond frustrating

@@MrCmon113 I lost 25 point on a 30 point question for writing "=" instead of "==". Something that I did perfectly 5 lines above it, which showed I knew the concept. I was a test pressure pen and paper hiccup which made me retake an entire course. so fuck that shit.

strings.sort()

That's very sad dude wtf

I'm not a software developer but I've done a few coding tutorials, isn't it quite easy to sort an array of strings?

@@superpantman of course, and that was the point. I am a dev with 20+ years experience. I told him he's wasting everyone's time by asking silly questions, and that I found it insulting. I also said that if he wanted to proceed with real software development questions, then fine, but he insisted on this silly interview so I said goodbye..

@@mantisory smart person would take the easy question and just make the money

Same

Lol that algoexpert ad

That’s megan

And that girl hates computer

dO YOu WaNt tO bE a SoFtWaRE eNGineer aT GoOgLe???!?!!

@@whatgaca And why would you? Binary trees are built into literally every single language.

@@trollnerd Exactly the point!

Sorry bro you just didn't pay attention if you don't even know what that is lol

@@whatgaca I have zero idea what that is

@@aj-sz8mu the original post by the op makes it seem like he literally has no idea what a binary tree even is. You should at least know what one is.

The main problem I see with this is that this isn’t as language agnostic as the coding interviews. In general, if somebody is applying for a company that primarily uses Java, but most of their experience is in C++, they might not be able to debug the issue in real time (depending on what it is). But I’m the job, the developer will be able to pick up the new frameworks and languages relatively quickly if they have good fundamentals.

Lol you must think you are special. Coding interview is meant to filter down from a bunch of qualified candidates. Everybody applying to this jobs can code. Passing data structure and algorithms is the bare minimum. No matter what format they change the interview into, the people passing now are probably going to be the same people passing in the new format because they are grinders. The only difference is that the new format will be less objective.

Please, never be an interviewer.

I created a pull request exercise and it was very effective for awhile. I could tell when the recruiters caught on and started feeding candidates the answers, suddenly everyone was passing even if they couldn't code.

I actually this this in my last company where I was responsible for hiring. and the people we got this stayed longer and did have high output and impact. Last month I was in the market for a new job and every company thing they are google, in all of my years in working in companies large and small I never once needed any of this LC stuff, the skills are totally different. I could have spent a couple of months grinding LC again, but what's the point, luckily the new AI stuff is going to kill this process before it kills our jobs, so I found a tool that helps me answer these kinds of questions in the interview and the fact I got a job with it proves to me how useless the whole process is, I use GitHub copilot and ChatGPT in my day to day work then why can't I use them in the interview! end of rant

The situation is often even worse: how can a recrapper evaluate a candidate for skills he does't have? For many years I have a phrase: "How can you find a real russian speaker if you don't speak russian?" Sono capo di capi. Some time ago I was returning from an intrv and I got a call. It was from the same recrap co. proposing me the very same job!

It's honestly more disturbing to get that stuff from actual engineers. They know it's wrong but go along with it.

Defiantly, If you're going to hire a programmer, get a programmer who's been through the system and know what they're doing interview people and devise their own appropriate tests.

Docs have massive board exams every 4 years which are hard/time consuming af. But yeah I agree with u

​@@hvnc1756 yeah and the board exams are just as pointless tbh a better example would be the field of dentistry or orthodontics where instead of testing you on useless garbage every few years, they force you to attend conferences where new *practical* techniques are presented, and you can take as little or as much knowledge from the presentations as you want

The most similar job is probably being an actor, where even famous actors still have to audition for roles (even small ones). The difference is we're not competing for $20M gigs and widespread recognition.

Dijkstra is an easy algorithm though

@@joshuafrazer9224 I'd say acting is the exact inversion of this. Most auditions require you to display the exact skills you need for that specific role. Can you read perform as this character on command. It's pretty straightforward. A direct comparison would be requiring auditioners to sit down and take a test on theater/film history, vocal placement, body language and microexpressions, etc. But they don't do this because no one cares if an actor understands the theory behind their abilities. They care about whether they can perform. That's why there's so many stories of performers from extremely varied backgrounds. Because sometimes going to Julliard pays off, but sometimes a random construction worker can intuit their way to stardom. Pavarotti couldn't sight-read music. Something many vocal performance schools require before they even admit you. But one can hardly argue that the opera houses that hired him didn't get their money's worth.

Ask the Google interviewer if you can use Bing instead.

Duckduckgo will give you a better answer anyway.

fine, i'll use bing then

Not really a paradox, I think we're missing the point of what they're looking for here

@@IrelandVonVicious yup. "You may not use Google on this interview." "Why are you looking stuff up?" "Why can't I?" "I said no Google!" "Alright, then I am, and was, fully compliant." "How?" "take one look at the screen"

So, how it's going now?

@@Haise-san making 6 figures with an amazing team. Super happy

@@Conceptsexplainedsimply Wow, that's is so nice to hear! Ty

@@Conceptsexplainedsimply I am proud of you stranger🥺🥺🥺

@@Conceptsexplainedsimply🙂 sweet!! How did you study for the interviews if i may ask?

I hope The Netherlands is the same. I want to go into web development.

But even here in Germany this kind of interviews raise up here and there with big players. Some companies outsource the recruiting process and there are freelancer platforms offering positions to check applicants in coding interviews. Still, with KMUs it's more or less unlikely.

well u were lucky! ive had around 10 interviews in germany, or even more and all of them required live coding

when did you have your interviews?

What? Questions related to your job? That's crazy talk

Bout to have another interview tomorrow lol And round and round we go

Matthew Morton how did it go

You're not alone.

I fucking hate it. I feel like a fkin imposter with a fake degree

@@blackfrogstudios6670 as expected. The coding section, administered by a native indian speaker, went poorly. The admin section, administered by a white guy who naturally speaks english, was apparently fantastic!... I'm not kidding. The game is rigged...but i still need some fuckin money lolol

Reversing a string in place, fizzbuzz, validating BST is not a complex algorithm. It's more like asking chefs to show that they can boil water.

@@etopowertwon you would be asked tougher algorithm questions like reversing a linked list.

I'm applying for my first job as a front-end dev and I couldn't agree more with Ben and your comparizon is very true as well. I think the employers are also right to do these hard tests. As Ben said, they make it hard on purpose so that they can point out your strengths or your capacity to work under stress and how well you perform and I'm sure they check for some other stuff that I couldn't know. For example, I just did a test and I had 10 questions to answer under an hour and 40 minutes. I did not answer the second question at all and did not even spend more than 30 seconds reading it. The context was like 3 paragraphs long and I knew if I didn't skip it, I would've probably spent the whole hour and 30 minutes on it. That proves them for example that I know what to prioritize so that I can respect their deadlines by doing more simple tasks under a short period once I'll be working for them.

Wow, what a great analogy!

I am currently on the market interviewing, I am a NodeJS Fullstack developer and I've been asked questions about LinkedList (which is more of a Java question) and rotating all the values in a 2 dimensional matrix that represent an image right if a passed in flag was 1 and rotating them left if the flag was 0. I'm like WTF? Two questions like this, 40 minutes to solve both. in 20 years of programming, I've never worked with matrices; I did in college. Interviewing was never like this 6 or 7 years ago.

May I ask what company it was? That sounds like something I'd like to apply for lol

@@Maha-rg5xh Same

Had the same experience, it was pharmaceutical company and the position was for software engineering. They asked only about my experience and what I wanted from them and basically that's it.

@@elchupacabra4936 which one bro, please share

I mean if he's had job experience already then he wouldnt need to go for the whiteboard part again.

I've had similar experiences. You are not alone, and this does not mean you are a poor engineer.

>but then I forgot how to solve that problem about calculating the minimum number of moves for a knight to take another piece on a chess board of infinite size. That's the kind of problem solving you should be able to do on the spot. A dead simple naive solution which scales horribly is a simple BFS. Then you can realize that you can do the problem quite greedily until you get close (within a few moves) of the target, and then do a BFS from the target. The greedy first part should be O(1) (essentially just teleport to a known spot that is still optimal) and then you pay for a very cheap BFS to find the shortest path to that known optimal spot. That particular example was not about knowing a particular problem. It's about problem solving fundamentals and some algorithm fundamentals (realizing that BFS would give the right answer, and that maybe this problem allows for greed). The question is if you can take some basic knowledge (maybe probing for info you need) and figure shit out. From my experience, that's what the process is about.

It tests your analytical skills bruh

Alcesmire thing is, whole that makes sense, in my opinion is still wrong, for even the basic algorithmic knowledge tends to be useless, a senior I used to work with told me he walked out of a FAANG interview after they asked him a question just like that one, he said “I’ve been a senior at Boeing for almost a decade and they think I can’t handle the job because I can’t figure out on the spot an algorithm that took months to create, that’s just insulting”, he worked in the industry for decades and never used any of that knowledge, so even a basic BFS with a little greediness is out of boundaries for most developers, because... why wouldn’t it be? If they asked you to write a garbage collector from strach I’m sure you’ll be lost, but it’s the same concept as this algorithms, something difficult that less than 1% of the industry actually does and that is not related to the job you’ll be doing.

@@willinton06 This kind of algorithm doesn't take months to create though. It's simple application of truly basic building blocks (after being able to break apart the problem enough). Even at the scales of garbage collectors the same kind of process applies. The basic building blocks may be quite different (memory allocation, cache, atomics, ...). However it's still a process of breaking down a task and figuring out how to apply basic knowledge to figure out how to build something that solves the problem. Be it something as basic as ref counting GC, something more intricate like tracing GC, or something else entirely. The focus of these kinds of interviews aren't (or shouldn't be) about quizzing you about some obscure algorithm or data structure, but to see if you can break down a problem and apply basic knowledge. It just turns out that algorithmic questions (and to some extent system design questions) are some of the easiest way of teasing out that ability and see it in action. In my experience with FAANG you are often hired as someone with a lot of general knowledge who knows how to apply it, maybe with some particular subject knowledge. You will likely be moved about, general skills and picking up new skills are important (ime general skills helps you in picking up further skills). For sure the requirement will change if you are looking for a subject expert. I presume in such cases the interviewing process will look a lot different.

Yuppie culture is a disgusting infested hemorrhoid on the a hole of humanity...

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

What done? Those companies are literally mafias filled with rats that just buy the products that experienced programmers at startups make. Yes, they always have a small team of people and research teams that build stuff like grafana, but you know what? Welcome to the second America, the old America, the post WWII that built this country up is being overtaken by this college grad/internet/Marxist mentality. And for the record, this cookie-curter mentality is part of the Marxist landscape of thinking.

I have been coding professionally for 15 years now, and even owned a startup for 2 years. If I go to an interview that asks me to do a coding exercise on the spot, I tell them to fuck off. If they ask me to do at home, 80% chance I tell them to fuck off. Last time they did, they offered me a chance to alternatively show my portfolio of previous coding experiences. Now that is top notch in my book!

I have helped administer (and have been given) coding algorithms that DID gauge how the candidate thinks. The key is treating it as a pair programming exercise. Ask what they're thinking, give them hints, don't worry about syntax errors, and make it clear that you don't expect a complete solution. If you aren't treating it like pair programming with the interviewer, then you won't find out how the candidate thinks.

The problem with this approach is candidates feel obliged to spend days on these things. Also you can’t be sure who wrote the code...

@@Cassp0nk It's easy to see if the person lied with the next step he described, pair programming. It's obvious if they have no idea how what they supposedly did works or can't modify it properly.

I’m not spending a few days working for free hoping I get a job. Lol fuck that.

If they don’t want me at the interview then that’s their loss, I’m not wasting three days of my time writing shit for them. They hire me, pay me, then I’ll write it.

The few days is basically take your time and do it when you can, not a spend 8 hours per day and have it complete by X date. But yea, I totally agree that people get sucked into these things and spend days on them which is a shame. I set myself a max of 4 hours (mainly because I actually enjoyed the task!) And yea, the idea behind the pair programming is to test out knowledge of what you built. Making changes to something you know is easier than something you dont, so it will show who's lying

Watcha doing.now ?

Watcha doing.now?

What do you do now?

@@ItsVab which makes sense because under the pressure of an interview, one is unlikely to be in the perfect state of mind to use their problem solving skills, which never flourish under such silly time contraints as those in an interview. Of course memorization has become the go to.

Memorize the most u mean

@@Bayo106 u and vaibzz123 are right on. I once have an interview where the problem have no real world application lol just to see if i can solve. smh u have a list like this [7,8,9,1,2,3]. it is sorted but rotated lol . the problem is how u implement the binary search so that u can search for a value lol. in real life, i would use a sort function and then binaray searcch. i dont see how solving this problem have any application in real world.

well what if those big tech companies wants no out-of-the-box-thinking worker? I mean they are huge, and they needs to tame the employee isn't it.

Cindy Liang yes, part of it is to test how subordinate the candidate is. Sometimes they are looking for someone they can utilize as opposed to someone who thinks for themselves: a good slave.

Mine had windows, and it had a nice view through it (spanish speakers will get the Windows Vista reference)

Loooooool

After three interviews (in ne intervew I mean, just 3 talks) for 2 hours each, you can screw it up.

Dude saying that is better than what some companies do after keeping you in their interview process for weeks: nothing.

I pretty much saw that on a guy's face last week, after I panicked and answered a very simple question in an overly complicated way. I realised later he was just asking about basic maths and not about computer vision algorithms/implementations. He was very polite about it but he kind of winced and leaned back like "ok I think we're done here"

IT's hard to believe but it actually happened to me hahaha - I certainly dodged a bullet though so pretty happy

I'm sorry this is unrelated. As a student I'm really curious how someone with a PhD organises the things they learned long term. I mean you have the deep understanding of things that you gain, which you don't really forget but there are probably also those technical things you only need occasionally that anyone would forget given enough time. Do you have some tips for that? I'd love to build this kind of system from my first year. I think it can be really valuable

@@ghosthunter0950 Hey, that's true I do forget things a lot. But the way it's always worked for me was to focus only on the things that I'm actively working on. If I feel like I need something to solve a problem and I've forgotten then I just go review that and try to use it. Nothing more. However, recently I've been working in industry in a job that's not related to algorithms so I was starting to forget algorithms. To prevent that I only spend 4 hours per week to review or solve problems. This is a really good system if you can maintain it. 4 hours per week doesn't seem like much but it will compound.

this is absolutely bs , tourists is a competitive programmer and specialized in tcs, would he ever get beat by someone who crammed leetcode ? Never. If you are red at codeforce , your algo skills probably stick with you forever , all normies out there can't beat you. Maybe you are just not that good , lmfao

Sir, i salute you

I read this comment and immediately showed this to my girlfriend. This is SO me and these words have come out of my mouth multiple times lol I’ve already done both multiple times - walked out on crappy interviews and quit crappy jobs

@SOLVM, this is the only way about it. F#ck this bs.

I have done that in my imagination quite a no of times, but mostly I have been a sucker. I think I am going to start doing that pretty soon.. whenever someone plays a dumb "Can you solve this super popular internet sensation coding challenge (that I just copied from the internet)?" LOL or tries to put down my work and achievements without even trying to know what kind of contributor I can be, once I join them... you are right... we need to start making the change and I hope it turns out to be "working" :)

You forgot: a few months later anonymously d*uche the company - Reddit (if they don't already) should have a special 'Tech companies that suck' sub that allows people to describe the horror stories. They need to be named and shamed. Especially the smaller ones who think they're high and mighty.

hahahaha

Ya want Clemente come here too

lold hard to this.

Well he made an video on this and ben actualy commented on that video. The thing is the Interviews are great for FANG companies. Other companies can use different hiring methods, which might be more optimised for their company, but it is questionable wether the implementation of such a system is worth it, when you can just copy the system FANG uses and it will probaly work good enough.

TechLead: Sip coffee, Sip Coffee, I'm a millionaire btw, Sip coffee, I'm the TechLead. Ben, you would never be like me, Sip Coffee. I can solve 30 problems in 1 hour because I'm the TechLead.

Yeah what is up with that on stack overflow lol There is always at least one person commenting on why someone is posting such a question, always negatively. They don't know the context of the question, why do they care. Just give them an answer than pester lol.

idk I've always had a great experience on stack overflow, and the small number of trolls are usually well outnumbered by those actually trying to help so its easy to ignore

What the fuck was the point of 60K in student loans if they're just gonna make me "RE-prove" my credentials everytime I get laid off due to their poor management? No really...fuck the modern world. This shit aint gonna last lol 🤣👌🏻

Read the docs..... RTFM

Ive worked with people in many fields...and unfortunately, where Ive seen more cockiness and egos as high as the sky...its in the software field. I can almost picture one of those big head cartoons throwing a tantrum everytime I hear one of these kind of soft engineers speak...

I shared it on linkedin already. hahaha

Dude, if you're pressed, remember to: - Ask clarifying questions, like if you are allowed to mutate it, or if you're allowed to build a new collection, etc. - Ask obvious questions to buy you a bit of time, like "can I choose language etc., can I assume certain reasonable methods being present, etc.?" (you know like left() and right() on a binary tree. This gives you a few minutes, and it makes it seem like you're thinking instead of desperately kickstarting your brain. Also, know the simplest implementations of simple things. If you're asked to sort, heapsort is dirt simple, uses recursion and is n log n. If you're asked for better say that you don't remember radix sort, but you can look it up, unless you remember exactly how to do radix sort. Also remember that interviewing is a skill. Find someone to practice with. Especially if you're a student this shouldn't be too hard. GLHF. You'll need it.

@M B I do, but have never learnt, wanted to know, needed to know, nor in any way understood any of the above.. so we are on the same level :)

tree.left, tree.right = tree.right, tree.left

Commenting to find this again! (Who am I kidding I probably won't look at this again)

Outsource UI for Apps to India.

Sooooooo true

Sounds like Effort Justification Fallacy.

lol, many many years ago before the dot com crash it was DOM questions, like you were going to memorize the entire model or something. If the list object doesn't have a method for what you need create a new object that does. So my answer is to extend the object then Google the algorithm and create the method in the new object to do what I want, so I never have to use the algorithm again, simple yeah? I remember the college kids coming into the industry in the 90's always wanting to abstract the object or isolate however you like to think of it wrappers around wrappers around wrappers. But the young man spent so much time philosophizing about it he got almost nothing done! I've been kind of a solo entrepreneur for many years just because of these kinds of things. It's a construction job your building software... "Get 'er done Mister!!!" The really cool stuff is in Quantum computing, micro services and Kubernetes

If you got a problem with this answer we can come back and refactor it later!

Commenting to find this again

😂 😂 LOL! A week minimum!

Hard... Sure...

Has anyone figured out how to center a goddamn div?

@@hospitaller100 it's not possible

@@hospitaller100 (CSS) div{ margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; } OR div{ display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center; }

codematrix good for you man, if interviewers are looking for machines they should just build one

How to finish a project that would take days in one hour for free - get a job candidate to solve it for you during an 'interview'.

"If I could do this in an hour, and do it well, I would be applying for a much more lucrative job than this."

@@Dxpress_ if i could do this in 1hr, i would start the next open ai company..

I would have said "Great answer, can you start Monday"? I'd rather have someone stand on their principles of good coding practices than someone who can write code fast.

I have a sneaking suspicion this is their way of hiring semi competent drones that are good at memorization but don't think above their station.

Spot on :)

I have had to use these algorithms but as he said the very first thing I would do is look for a library, and 99% of the time one exists.

What company do you work for? It sounds like somewhere I might not mind applying.

@@MrFrazerz Unfortunately, we were acquired at the end of last year and some of the folks responsible for the culture have moved on. I'm not comfortable identifying the company in this forum but feel free to DM me and I can provide a bit more information.

Yike มานี่เลยหรอพี่

today I had an interview. I've been cracking fkn leetcode questions for the past 4 months and they ask me to read .txt file and extract some info from it using regex. WHAT? WHY??

We all know that if you dont solve a software problem in real life in 30min your computer explodes and your business goest bust. Many businesses have gone under due to this, thats why they have to give you timed questions... and prevent you from using Google. Oh that reminds me, if you use Google to solve a bug in real life your entire family gets killed so the interviewer kindly stops you from making that mistake. Interview questions really do represent real life coding problems.

The only thing algorithm interviews prove is that you went to college and studied math theory in the context of computer science. They are good for fresh college graduates, what if someone has 15 years experience developing real world applications? Oh but he needs to remember everything he learned in college because bla bla bla bla bla bla bla... I don't buy any excuse for wasting real engineers time with these gotcha math problems... unless the job is to teach Computer Science these algorithm questions have no place in the interview process.

This is full of stereotypes. They aren't going to ask you to code in a doc... And light theme is fine.

You should try Leetcode and Hackerrank. They are nothing more than glorified brain puzzles, but incompetent hr people cannot stop relying on them. It's all about memorizing and finding patterns by solving a bunch of these brain teasers.

If you've ever played a game like Starcraft or Tarkov, you'll remember the scary feeling of possibly losing. This is the same. The only way to get over that feeling is to do interviews. Creating and sending out resumes takes time. Going to interviews is scary. But if you've done it a few times, you'll get better at it. That's unfortunately the only way to go forward, no matter how flawed the interviews are.

Hi Yesitsmedaphne, do you need some tutoring for algorithms and leetcode problems? Also I can tutor you on hard debugging questions, which are getting popular

@@rookswoodsrok3614 sad thing is after college you shouldn’t need another course to prep. That’s what all the college is for.

@@IL_Bgentyl Actually, college is more like "if you want your degree, then you have to pay us a bunch of money, and we can make you pay for your class again if you don't memorize everything we want you to think about the world." It's kind of a scam. You're paying them to teach you, and yet if you don't learn, they flunk you out and make you pay extra fees. They don't want to prepare you for the real-world at all; they're mostly for-profit organizations.

plus if you have an "authority problem" then it's ideal.

The thing is that it's not that cut and dry. There are plenty of companies that knows what questions to ask and what to look for in a candidate, rather than just the amount of knowledge you can memorize. But it's difficult to sort out which interviews are bad if you haven't had one. As an interviewee, it's best just to ask what the purpose for the interview challenge is, if it doesn't seem related to the position that they're looking for.

I mean...you sell courses on the very skill you refuse to use at a day job but your audience aspire to do so. It’s like the make money online guys that teach people how to make money teaching people how to make money 🤦‍♂️

@@lareluxe5899 that's a stupid comment because those skills are applicable in all domains whether working for yourself or for an employer. Your logic is off.

My favorite interview questions is "Why do you want this job?" For some reason it's considered "bad" to respond truthfully with "Because I need to pay my rent and feed myself."

"Damn, he's good"

I would use DuckDuckGo. :p Bing? Ewwww... stinky Microsoft.

The interviewer calling the CEO "Sir.... I think we have a situation here"

Google: He betrayed us

Wait that's illegal

God knows when will i be able to solve coding ques. I will go crazy some day.

Not really though.. I mean sometimes, don't get me wrong, they are used but so far (4 years) in my experience I have never had to use an algorithm. In fact, 90% of what I do is figure out how old cold works so that I can fix it or manipulate it to some degree.

AMEN. This

@@xMrJanuaryx well you have to devise algorithms in code(simple ones typically), but they aren't some complex Divide and Conquer algorithm regurgitation. I completely agree though most jobs are "here is this old C code base port it to C++(whatever version) and make changes where you think necessary for ease of use and effeciency"

My company has a software design interview for experienced candidates. It’s a bit unfair to expect new grads to be able to design software systems under constraints without any experience though. I think it’s pretty common for FAANG companies to ask software design problems as well

That takes Bolas man. I hope you have a family backing you up.

@@einarabelc5 I had a job, I was looking for something else ahah

😂😂😂🔥

Was the CEO also sitting in? In that case, the CTO probably cared more about impressing his boss with his obscure knowledge than finding a good candidate. Walking out was definitely the right call, you don't want to work in a place like that. Had such an interview recently, but was too polite to just walk out. In the end, they found my (IMHO rather reasonable) offer too high, didn't even try to negotiate. I'm kinda curious whom they will find in the end - but happy that it won't be my problem.

Well done. I do the same when asked.

Honestly, this sounds super easy.

@@aznninjaknight I mean, if it was not for junior position (which implies ~zero real experience), this is a task you might have already done a hundred times at least. So it should not be neither hard nor tedious. I am fullstack (but 80% of work is back end), and for the last 10+ years I had to create html tables (or table-like structures via divs & css) hundreds of times. I'm wondering how these tables are not coming to me in my dreams.

@@fenderbender2096 writing and typing are two different things

@@averagehololiveenjoyer8496 black and white are different colors. You are welcome!

Lol, I could fail that I'm so used to using emet, js, ... to generate stuff like this xD, fuck me. hehe

Well if it was only about problem-solving why wouldnt you let them use google?

@@jandetmers6478 Most interviews I've done allow you to google search syntax and things like that. You just can't google search the answer/algorithm. But obviously, if you have two candidates where one knows all the syntax and the other doesn't, if both solve the question (and all else equals), then the person who didn't need to look up syntax is the better candidate because they were either more prepared or used the language enough to be familiar with all the syntax.

You’re spot on, Grant. I’m an interviewer at a tech company, and this is exactly what we’re looking for. I don’t care about syntax (I usually give the candidate syntax if they forget, or tell them to make up whatever syntax they want to use) This largely depends on the coding question chosen, and it’s really important to pick realistic challenges, instead of things like knapsack or towers of Hanoi.

Problem solving as a Software Engineer doesn't equal algorithm. Most problems we solve have nothing to do with using an algorithm to solve it.

@@ntimeproductions It's true that sometimes solving problems doesn't mean using algorithms. However, can you think of a more consistent and fair way of evaluating problem solving skills than asking coding questions? Is the most fundamental tool of a software engineer not data structures and algorithms?

Probably had his heart broken. This doesn’t change the fact that he is absolutely right. Algorithm questions for weeding out candidates is so stupid. You wind up working with assholes who don’t know how to communicate, don’t mesh well with a team, are know it all’s... but hey, they know how to find if a binary tree is balanced.

Something tells me it didn't get the job

@@josephmorales652 no because if he had gotten the job he probably would have made a video saying how fang interview's are easy and people who complain about them don't deserve to be software engineers

@@jeremyariche4332 Were you at the interview with him?

@@jeremyariche4332 I go in the opposite I had passed a test and I don't care that test was beyond bs it was like being told to shove a cactus up the ass

as an (almost)graduate software engineer, I have to ask: is the difference indeed that big?

string[0];

@@tootaashraf1 string is null :(

@@alxjones who said that

@@tootaashraf1 The error log

Coding problems == Test whether or not you just googled the problem beforehand, not your problem solving skills

@@HardcoreMasterBaiter true these days its much more like have you bought a leetcode premium or algo expert and seen this question before or not some people literally take 30 minutes just to understand these stupid algorithm questions meanwhile some dont even read it and solve it LOL shows the standards of so called "FANNG" interviews

yup, they give 15 min to read a paragraph of 25 lines and expect you to find solution and start code, I mean what's the point

lol. dude i have an interview where there is a singly linked list and there is a loop so the interviewer ask me how to detect such loop. my first answer was correct except it not correct if u have duplicate value. my answer was u use a secondlist to put it in there to check if the value have been visited. the problem is if u have duplicate, this algorithm would fail...well the interviewer didnt realize that it fail and consider it a correct solution lol. she press me for a better algorithm which i figure out few day later when i was eating.

You intellectually tea-bagged them.

I hope this is a true story because it's fucking awesome

So you basically used a reverse card?

@@johnchau7641 Thing is with that algorithm, it would work if you used the address of the node (assuming your language allows you to use the address) or a UUID somewhere in the node. So your algorithm is really, like, 90% of a correct solution

Sir, it’s a collider that only partially collides its particles

@@rahulray5411 holy fuck, here, have a Nobel prize

I'm not sure how would you mirror working environment in two hour interview. The key decision you'll be paid for will be closely related with business domain you're working and that's ever changing. The interview is generally structured in a way to see if you're not a clueless moron. If you have general cognitive ability you'll be able to muster something close to the answer even if you haven't "prepared". Ben's example of color change is quite dismissive. Although I'm sure a lot of freelance gigs with small businesses and so runs along the lines of that kind of work. But even mid size companies will have fair amount of ever changing complexity at one side while being restricted by legacy creep at other side, not helped by communication problems in between departments. Question is, can you deliver value under these conditions and take ownership of your work? Being able to code is a necessary requirement, however it's not something which will win you points, it's just a baseline to qualify for being talked to. I mean if you're aiming to be a lawyer, reading and writing alone does not suffice. And company has a limited time to check how you deal with complexity. And if you're a newbie, can you even code?

And even if you did need it you could easily just look it up like literally everyone else does. Everyone forgets this stuff eventually because we just never use it on the job.

Antanas Kiselis , if you are not sure how to mirror working environment in 2 hour interview, it’s an indicator someone else should interview people. Mustering a naive approach algorithm won’t give a high score, the correct answer is to always look it up first even if you know it. Having a known good set of algorithms makes choosing a best algorithm much faster, and best algorithm optimizes performance and memory usage. Profiling comes before optimization, and shows exact places to optimize. Many projects don’t even reach profiling stage and are dumped after market test, some one off tools don’t need optimization that much but have marketing value. It depends on software and everyday workflow which questions to ask, and should be chosen wisely by interviewers

That makes me feel sick inside. What lunacy.

You're the kind of person who doesn't like Calculus and say "I'm never gonna use it". This is a naive attitude. Interviews are supposed to test many things in a small period of time, including capacity to handle difficult and annoying problems.

You gotta understand that these tech companies are not looking for geniuses or unique individuals with a brain. But braindead obedient robots with a fancy degree and alot of debt. Hence, the asinine interview questions... Notice how most of these questions sound like something you would ask someone that is applying for a factory job. Notice how they only ask you about what algorithms you know, or were capable of memorizing, and nothing else beyond that... What they're really asking is how good you are at following and memorizing instructions. (I.e. Are you familiar with X, Y, or Z machine? How would you assemble a nike sneaker in 30 sec? What steps would you take if a Series (insert digit) X machine broke?)

Dude I'm doing my PhD on a CS related field, where we mostly invent heuristics and local search algorithms do solve specific operations research programs. Except for some network algorithms that I'm frequently implementing there is not a single algorithm that I remember by heart, and honestly there is also no fucking reason to memorize algorithms that I've never never use in practice. I'm not stupid, If I need something I'll be the first one to research all the alternatives, find the one that suits the job understand it, implement it and use it. I followed some code interviewing channels here on YT, and they are fucking depressing man, I"m programming for 10+ years and I don't feel confident at all with the questions asked, unless if there is something that I have specifically worked on in the past. Is this just an impressions game?? I just wish I won't have to get through that ever in my life. This is literally a fucking waste of time for EVERYONE involved...

@@mitpoker7319 honestly I would gladly be their braindead obedient robot for the salary and benefits they offer. I know it sounds silly but I want to work to live, not live to work

@@essayedgar look, a sheep. You forgot to "Baaa." Come on. Say it with me: Baaa!

@@TheRomanRSPS good luck keeping your family fed with morals instead of food

Best way is to not ask hard leetcode questions just easy n medium questions

We ask this type of problem during one of the interviews at our current company. I respect them because if you can’t answer this question then you are not eligible. It’s very relevant to every day job.

@@aj9706 I don’t think I’ve ever encountered or given, or had a friend encounter or give, a leetcode style problem that would be classified as hard on leetcode. And I work for a company that has a reputation for particularly tough interviews (although our tough questions tend to have a more real world spin than standard leetcode problems as they’re based on actual problems engineers ran into on the job).

Depends how broken you define significantly as. Also setting it up in a development environment + docker config e.c.t. You could be sat there watching them read through code for hours

@@triblion4543 I am sure that the problem wouldn't include doing the teams work for them lol... You could easily create a common error for the type of work and see if they are either already familiar with that error(They have encountered it before in their work) or they could use resources to figure it out.

Bro same and bet, 2023 we come straight back here to confirm our findings.

@@stevensanchez1192, I am excited to read it! Let us know!

Good learning journey , you can learn AI too!

Let's hope y'all don't forget this

Same

This.

Hopefully to know the differences between a lycoming 0-320 and a PBS TP100. Knowing how they work. Not needing to put one together.

But is a pilot who knows how to also build an egine *Objectively Better* than one who can't? Honestly...I still think that answer is "We Need More Evidence Before We Can Know", but thats me. Most people would blindly answer Yes to that question tho

@@Macheako to be able to build engine you need at least bachelor degree in mechanical engineering field, pilot is highly skilled operator of machine. Nothing wrong to ask questions about algorithms from those who supposedly know them. Just spend month learning them, 3 books is enough to cover most of them.

This is a dumb analogy. A pilot isn’t supposed to know how to build a plane’s engine. They didn’t go to school for that. A software developer SHOULD know how to write algorithms cos that’s literally what they went to school for.

100%

Learning c# and that comment (even if it is a easy one) made me giggle for understanding!

@CooCooWizard of course, but there is no way to build up experience if you can't even get an entry level job as a CS graduate..

@CooCooWizard some ppl just have bad memory

As a guy that has relied heavily on memorising things, this is a harrowing truth. Memorising a bunch of info is useless compared to actual understanding.

Algorithms are designed to weed people out of the large corporate drone machines like Google and Facebook that get 1000's of applications every day. They have their use there to narrow the field, and than you can pick and choose based on other skills. They are entirely pointless for pretty much every other company out there.

@@coherentpanda7115 Not only that, but FANG companies actually know which challenges to put into the interview, based on the position you interview for. They won't give you a question about how to solve the Postman Tour problem if you're interviewing for a UI engineering job. There's also likely a lot of Googlers that haven't solved the interview question but still got the job because they communicated well. The issue is that the companies that try to follow the FANG processes gets this very wrong and focuses on memoization rather than communication.

Actually knowing them does help you write better code and understand problems better.

Companies like Google creates new product. This is quite different from some companies whose products depends on existing products like say Reacts. Where you will be using such tools all day. They are at the front line of creating new products that are used by other companies and thus good problem solving skills is important here.

Agreed.

I wanna work for ESRI, how do i get ther?

@@snapsmicrosystems7532 Have you tried looking on their careers website? It's how you apply for every job.

you have bigger chances wining in dice game at witcher 2 than passing that.

Did you have to make just one of those out of your choice or did you have to make all of those?

I applied to TopTal as well, but as back-end developer. They gave me 3 test in codility (I still have them) and they have a difficulty of easy, medium and hard, the easy one, is actually pretty simple BUT even if the few simple tests that the page gave you pass, you gotta think of all the edge cases that may occur you, or otherwise you will fail. The medium one is do-able and the hard one is just as do-able as the medium one... problem is that they require you code them in a really well optimized way and validate all edge-cases, with just 3 hours to do them all (The time is okay, but the challenge is just ridiculous). So, in order to pass those tests, you will need to at least ace 2/3 tests in order to go to the next phase (which you could very much fail as well).

@@diogocoelho2314 I think it was all of those.

Write the solution in pseudocode and provide time estimates for every component. Let them know in 30 minutes instead of 90 to prove you can think fast, but what they asked was impossible.

trueeeeee

Most of the need for algorithms has already been solved anyway, and bundled into handy libraries or packages. If you are an algorithm and math genius, you wouldn't be wasting your time at 90% of the jobs out there anyway.

@@coherentpanda7115 that exactly. And also being web developer, many of use don't actually use much of the algorithm or maybe not any of them, I didn't remember any situation where I need to implement an algorithm in my react app.

@@shreyasjejurkar1233 It depends, if you making libraries and frameworks which Google, Facebook and so on do, then knowing about data structures and algorithms is very useful, it's true if you only ever consume libraries and use them it's better to know how their work than knowing if a heap or red-black tree is the right way to go.

Bunch of ding dongs.

But if you don't know how an algorithm works, there is fair chance you're bad. The idea behind this pattern is : "There's no way this candidate is bad if he/she knows well." But if you dont, then this remains uncertain after which they'll reject you or use different testing methods(which is very unlikely)

What is the course?

@@4everInTheClouds He's probably talking about the guy who runs Algo Expert. Just search that on RU-vid and you'll find his channel.

Both algoexpert and techlead did UI stuff at google.

Pretty sure techlead

Pretty sure techlead

Did they pay you for that?

@@elysianprime lol. When I worked for other people as in freelance "hire me", I used to get paid to do stuff like that. Some people really are honorless scum.

@@elysianprime yep, stuff like this is truly disgusting

Actually preparing for those type of interviews takes a LOT lesser than algorithmic interviews. Its the time which is wasted that is so soul crushing

Those interviews are easy, just steal all their other pens and now they need to go buy new ones. Luckily for them, you have an excellent pen that's up for sale.

When was the last time you bought a pen?

why? you lookin for a pen or something?

@@theillegalhumor8955 I don't think it's soul crushing.. If you learn whats behind them, and use your own ideas it doesn't even take long. Algorithms are something every human can understand well because it's built in us For me it didn't take long to learn (at uni) and doing every problem felt refreshing if you look at it as an other way of developing your problem solving skills If you just learn the bases of it without really using your problem solving skills and just learning the basic algorithms for FANG I don't think you really are a dream developer to have..

source?

@Ryan Howe Or because IT is not as standardized as others technical jobs

@Ryan Howe I can write a program with 1/10 of the lines in 1/10 of the time though. Will I understand it a week later? No. But I can write it.

@Ryan Howe That is a lie idiots tell themselves to feel better.