Have coding interviews gotten harder?

[@NeetCodeIO]

Thanks to Konrad for chatting with me. www.linkedin.com/in/konradjanica Will be uploading more clips with him, so let me know if there's anything you wanna ask him.

[@konradjanica1607]

Thanks Navdeep, I had a great time working with you at Google! And I'm really happy to see your positive influence on hiring in the tech industry. Through your channel, you have enabled countless aspiring engineers to fulfill their desires of building great things at great companies. Like you said, I'm happy to answer any questions that come up.

[@hamirmahal]

​@@konradjanica1607 What should people do today to "future-proof" themselves for the next 5, 10 or 20 years? Should we be learning Rust, and maybe Mojo, or maybe not even focus on programming languages at all, and just focus completely on AI and ML? Which sub-fields, if any, within Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning should we focus on learning, for job stability? Thanks for offering to answer questions.

[@vedrankaracic265]

Will you release the full interview?

[@EstebanWong88]

Could you have Konrad roast your current "design doc": kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJbOnIunibJ3nNk

[@giantbush4258]

Have Conrad go over the top 20 interview questions he asked candidates from the Google questions bank.

[@onlylikenerd]

To get a tech job: 1) 4 year degree where 99% of what you'll learn is not applicable to your job 2) Teach yourself how to actually build full stack web apps 3) Spend months building projects 4) Forgot to do leetcode? Well you're screwed. Spend another few months doing leetcode 5) Sorry, new javascript framework was released that's all the rave, have to learn 6) Repeat except the degree part

[@lottexy]

5: like what? Just curious.

[@cschandragiri]

sad reality!@lottexy: Frontend dev has some new shiny js framework trending every few days

[@persononyoutube3000]

Meh, there was a time when that was true but React has been the backbone of frontend for like 5 years now

[@Tech-dl7iy]

7) Get replaced by an AI in the next 3 years

[@romevang]

@onlylikenerd Webdev isn't the only kind of job in tech. There's engineers, analysts, technicians for various types of fields.

[@brawlgammer4424]

LeetCode questions should never have gotten the relevancy they have nowadays, but here we are. Companies who post CRUD Type Jobs are expecting us to know Djikstra's algorithm of the top of our heads? Come on now. Job Interviews should be geared towards what your responsibilities will be, otherwise, you're essentially disregarding Domain Expertise in favor of LeetCode grinders.

[@sklz00]

Dijkstra is not that hard tho

[@Jared12336]

​@@sklz00The point is that it's not relevant to the job.

[@LetszGoo]

nd finTech asking bridges and articulation point 🥲🥲

[@riteshsingh112]

In today's world, faang needs leetcode grinder, and consultants' jobs need domain expertise. Faang doesn't seem to care about domain expertise anymore.

[@austinscott4695]

They are actually testing your thinking and analytical skills. People who are good at these will be able to grasp stuff in the long term.

[@Supakills101]

Coding interviews are just frat boy hazing for computer nerds.

[@SmoothCode]

I hate to say this but you're right.

[@hongquannguyen5532]

so true

[@nafi2683]

lmao

[@sancho7198]

true

[@SzTz100]

True, I always thought this as well.

[@BillyL6]

I hate it, it's a never ending game where you constantly have you hone your skills just to get the job. Once you get the job, the job isn't even 10% as difficult as the months of preparation for the coding interviews. Then once you quit or get laid off, you have to go back to doing more leet code questions again, but now there's a bunch of harder questions during the few years you haven't practiced. It's a never ending cycle, I wish there was just a software engineering test where you can get verified by an elective body, like how civil engineers and mechanical engineers have to do to get licensed.

[@schan263]

I didn’t have any books when I started my career in late 90’s. I just reviewed linked list, search, sorting and graph topics. Back then I never got a question on graph. When the books came out, I started to notice the questions were slowly getting a little harder. When leetcode came out, the interview difficulty definitely became more harder and now everyone needs to grind leetcode.

[@sanketkhot05]

Hello ma'am will you be my mentor??

[@bsdetector6908]

"Everyone needs to grind leetcode" No they don't! Im a developer with 28 years experience of delivering real systems; if I was asked CS questions for an interview I'd tell them to ram their job.

[@schan263]

@@bsdetector6908 Sure, you can avoid companies that ask those leetcode questions.

[@fark69]

In the 90s graphs weren't popular because social media hadn't taken off. Facebook made graphs very popular and to this day they still ask a heavy amount of graph related problems in their interviews

[@schan263]

@@fark69 Unfortunately during the 90s some Microsoft interviewers liked to ask those brain teaser questions, which was worse. I got asked one of those.

[@annaczgli2983]

Yes. Folks need to understand that coding interviews are less about filtering the best, & more about just filtering.

[@fark69]

Yep. Reality of the matter is that for 1 position there can easily be 10-20 with really nice marching work experience at big tech cos, how can a company filter those 10-20 down to 3-4

[@aw2031zap]

Imagine you have 100 applicants. 80-20 rule: 20% of those people are great for the job. You could interview all 100 people, but you'll exhaust yourself. You put a screen in front. Even if the screen sucks and 4/5 of the people remaining suck (80-20 rule again), you'll still have 20% of people left over who are good. You can usually identify this one person and hire them. Basically, if you want a coding job - just keep applying. Eventually you'll get in. Even if you suck at leetcode problems. The main thing is, most companies are not hiring anyway. Don't get discouraged and always ask for the highest wage you can get. Don't settle. They are always underballing you.

[@angelg3642]

They filter everything though. They want the best hard skills and the best soft skills in the same person for more often tasks that don't require so much perfection.

[@tomydurazno6243]

I have 8 years of experience as a software developer, working with different languages mostly C#, Javascript and Python. I find the interview process the hardest part of the job, by far. I think I'm able to adapt to a project fairly quickly and deal with complex stuff, but for interviews I need to practice and prepare. Also found that the technical interview quite challenging, sometimes the interviewer can ask tricky questions (like puzzles) or stuff that has a big degree of opinion, so you better be on his/her side of the opinion. I don't think anyone likes them or find them well implemented. But here we are, and this is what we need to deal with. Adapt or perish

[@natescode]

Interesting. As a 11yoe C# dev, 90% of my interviews are basic technical screen questions and architectural / design questions. I've never done Leetcode, I likely refuse to anyway.

[@tomydurazno6243]

@@natescode I try to refuse them aswell. I found that is a process that I'm never confident about the outcome, I have left interviews feeling like a did great and didn't get the job, and one I felt like I didn't get it at all, by the amount of times I answered "No, I don't even know what that is", and actually landed the job.

[@evancombs5159]

What i think a lot of people and companies do not understand is that hiring is a crap shoot. There is no process that will do a better job of selecting a good employee than picking a random resume out of a hat. The best you are going to get is filtering out the obvious incompetents and liars, and filtering based on company culture. Skill wise, though, just put the people with a resume who fits your needs and randomly pick one.

[@kaventan6485]

It sucks but interviewing at this point is luck. Luck that you'll get a question that remember solving. Luck that your interview had their coffee today and feeling good. Luck that the next 5 people won't try to screw you over in the interview cycle.

[@sK0pe-d9b]

Yeah same case. I find regular feature development and design pretty easy compared to having to come back and re-learn the niche parts of coding interviews require. It's completely irrelevant.

[@ManasicPlays]

Me doing a full SWE loop for an AI Research job. Got the offer without a single AI/ML related question, like bruh these MAANG companies are blind in their own process now.

[@janardhan2jordan]

😂😂

[@fark69]

Because you have the credentials and resume to prove you know AI. The coding interview is just to see who outperforms between you and 5-6 other people with similar resumes

[@biashacker5542]

Maang companies know you'll eventually learn things while working anyway just wanna see if you're a good problem solver in general

[@Chilli_Tea]

Meta lol, nah I'll stick with Facebook thanks

[@FifthArima]

LOL

[@LeeK301]

I just did an Amazon online assessment and was thrown a hard LC question right off the bat.. can confirm lol it’s definitely more challenging nowadays..

[@sirrus3009]

Bro, I took the OA for Amazon in November. It was so difficult to solve I just gave up.

[@LeeK301]

@@sirrus3009 yea it’s pretty wild that it’s technically not even the first round either.. think I’ll just stick to the DOD/GOV side of the industry lol… it gets boring a lot of times but the gate to entry is much lower with more job stability

[@sirrus3009]

@@LeeK301 yeah, I agree. Better to wait till you’re a senior SDE and then you don’t have to worry about coding that much.

[@johank3007]

its a little RNG, I got a leetcode hard the first time and the next time something reasonable

[@fark69]

​@@sirrus3009I'm a senior SDE who just finished an interview cycle. You still have to be able to crack Leetcode interviews and they'll get much harder later on. At least you'll have a network to refer you around at that point

[@libra2054]

leetcode interviews are garbage I have 3 years of experience I have done backent frontend made a 6mill revenue project from scratch with my team, II never needed these leetcodes at work, now I cant land a job because I can't solve a leetcode question

[@morkallearns781]

It's a side effect of the ease with which information now spreads. Google asks an interview question, in a year its on LC. So naturally they have to come up with more and more questions, and harder ones, to be able to evaluate candidates, to the point that we've now lost the plot.

[@aufkeinsten7883]

It is naturally that they have to come up with more questions, that follows. The part about harder ones, not so much.

[@morkallearns781]

@@aufkeinsten7883 As you exhaust the easier questions that were just supposed to check that your candidate can actually code, you need to pick from higher on the tree. You can only ask fizzbuzz so many different ways. But I also acknowledge that part of it is an ego-trip/hazing ritual from guys that got into these companies back when they still asked fizzbuzz.

[@MrPatrickbuit]

@@morkallearns781 Why should you need to pick from higher on the tree? That certainly does not follow from your anecdote.

[@morkallearns781]

@@aufkeinsten7883You can only ask fizzbuzz in so many ways. Part of it is also an ego trip masking imposter syndrome on the interviewers' part, that's for sure.

[@johnprice6805]

Yup, I have definitely noticed that the minimum requirements to be a developer have increased dramatically and interview process difficulty has been raised

[@coherentpanda7115]

Junior positions have pretty much gone extinct in my area. I'm thankfully a 4 yoe dev, but I still browse the jobs every week or two and it's scary for those just starting out.

[@fark69]

Unfortunately many people who are graduating now are graduating into a bust cycle. It will never get easier, but there will be more jobs eventually. Just not right now. Sad thing is if you can't crack it out of school, it becomes a lot harder to get a job...

[@angelg3642]

@@coherentpanda7115 Its even worse when you manage to find a junior-mid dev position and you're one of the best yet not good enough for the position. Imagine seeing yourself how you've done against hundred other candidates and that you did better than 90% of them and that still not being enough. It really shows you how brutal the market is

[@ninjaasmoke]

this makes so much sense! at my previous role as an Integration engineer, where I primarily had to work with SQL, writing lambda functions in python; I was interviewed with DSA questions. I did get through, but NEVER actually got to use any of that DSA knowledge.

[@iipancake3064]

A few weeks ago I did my first hackerrank assessment for an internship after my first semester of college, and got a hackerrank "advanced" problem (which I guess translates to a leetcode hard). With that and a medium-difficulty SQL question in 45min, safe to say I did not pass lmao. Just hope it gets better.

[@a1337turtle]

All that for an internship?!

[@mack0ka]

Indians are gonna grind night and day, do 1k lc and the bar will be so high no one with a life will get in.

[@joeydotdev]

Inflation in leetcode problem difficulty is unfortunately a real thing. Hopefully we can get a paradigm shift of more practical work with algo-like concepts infused in the interview

[@infiniteloop5449]

What is the equivalent of increasing interest rates, but for leetcode inflation?

[@fark69]

​@@infiniteloop5449They are heavily correlated. If ZIRP ever comes back, the questions will get easier

[@cesarfa-b3t]

I'll never forget when I got word-search-ii with a twist of being able to look for characters up to K distance from the current cell for a new grad google phone screen

[@Cleanser23]

Oh wow. Konrad and I used to both work on Flume. Hi Konrad!

[@konradjanica1607]

Hey Brandon! I hope we get the opportunity to work together again!

[@zakenmaru8612]

I got set up during a recent tech interview. The guy asked me how low-level memory management works in Python and how would I go about using pointers in the language. New Grad interview btw

[@webapple1]

what the f... i have no idea what that even means so no hope for me .

[@Flackon]

Hahaha holy shit.

[@Randorandom232]

Lmao, I would tell them why bother with python when we have c/c++

[@ryzikx]

bruh why😂

[@tanthole0306]

Tbh, if you claim to know a language, you should know most of the those fundamentals: memory management, concurrency, etc. But I gotta admit it's harder now. But it makes sense since employers have the right to be picky now. 🫤

[@deneb635]

Your content really helped me improve my skills. But, I still wasn't good enough to qualify my Google interview. So many platforms and so many problems, and I have to admit that your content has been really helpful. Thanks!😊

[@shubhamjain54519]

How much time did you spent preparing for interviews

[@deneb635]

@@shubhamjain54519 Whatever amount of time I could spare between my college studies, college hours and development.

[@slover4384]

Interviews are getting ridiculously hard. Walmart asked me to code a hard-medium level coding question in

[@fark69]

Tbf, most places that pay that level expect an LC medium or medium-hard to be done in 20 min

[@skinnykneega9511]

@@fark69 Walmart pay is shit compared to MAANG

[@slover4384]

@@fark69 fair enough

[@rithvik119am6]

a gentleman's ending.

[@angelg3642]

Yes they did. Perfected my CV to the dot. Just managed to beat 90% of that candidates on a quick pacing test that tested your problem solving skills and your knowledge. The first interview was about my own introduction where I've shown qualities of a persistent, calm and collected person who performs well under stress and difficult situations. Person who is willing to learn and is motivated to work and overcome difficult challenges (aka most of their soft skills requirements). Did fine on the third interview where I was slightly distracted from my grandma passing the day prior and straight up going to her funeral after the interview. Wrote an email to the HR lady about the one thing I couldn't answer - Indexes in sql and added my questions to the senior dev and the team lead because in the last interview I told them something personal happened so I'm having hard time focusing on the tasks. I explained the reasoning in my message to the HR lady though. And today I saw the same exact job opened for the position that I was applying to. Yeeeeeah sh1t is just brutal....

[@feanorwasright]

My key takeaway from this video is that the next paradigm for the interview studying will be codeforces :D

[@MacroEnabled]

Imagine job listings start requiring minimum 1500 ELO on Codeforces

[@cosmicnexus7301]

@@MacroEnabled lol already happens for some jobs in in india

[@natescode]

11 yoe and I've solved 1 Leetcode medium problem just to help a friend prep for a FAANG interview. Stop chasing big tech. I've never done Leetcode style interviews and never will.

[@ABagOfLag]

A few years ago my friend got his first internship offer after passing a hackerrank question asking to reverse a string in 2 hours. Just last week I failed an OA asking me to solve string compression 2, a leetcode hard in 30minutes

[@daniyalmujtaba]

I was asked a leetcode medium question in a low to mid sized company that was looking for experience only in Frontend development. I understand big tech needing something like leetcode to filter out people based on generic criteria irrespective of their current experience in certain technologies but mid to low size companies expecting candidates to be good at both what the job requires (React/Angular etc) and be able to solve leetcode medium/hard question is just not fair imo

[@SzTz100]

Well said. I get these tests every year because I'm a contractor and have been for ten years. In the last two years my policy has been to decline the online code tests, almost half of jobs don't require them, they just do a face to face technical interview, which I'm good at.

[@mateusmattossabarreto2852]

getting a job is basically luck at this point. I'm busting my ass studyin everyday for over a year and only got a few freelancing jobs and a job offer I couldn't accept bc it was in another state and there's people that studied with me that don't know half of what I know and got hired anyways. I don't mean to say that they didn't deserve it, clearly they did something right, but most hiring process just got too random

[@amynguy]

I would have taken that job because you get experience atleast

[@mateusmattossabarreto2852]

@@amynguy the job was amazing but I didn't have the money to move to other state and the company doesn't pay for juniors employees

[@zaki_1337]

Got Text Justification in PayPal Summer Internship SWE hiring manager round. I had solved the problem a few months ago from this channel because it was a Leetcode Daily Problem I think. But I didn’t communicate properly and misunderstood the problem and the interviewer had a few words to say about that. Jumped into coding without discussing anything. 😢

[@TheArmenianSolider65]

The call to action at the end was 👏 👏

[@Qwantopides]

Because of you I learned to love these problems. Sure it took me a few hundred to get better, but I got a lot better.

[@brianviktor8212]

I am an experienced C# developer with a strong emphasis on doing algorithms and complex systems. I was able to solve every problem I encountered. These leetcode things are for beginners who spend excessive time to practice them. These are theoretical nonsense, and require theoretical knowledge from school. I can create a chat/file transfer/streaming client-server library with various features including encryption, SQLite for account data, DDoS protection, maximum performance, 1 account multiple connections - which btw I already have and use. But leetcode? Yeah great, I'd sure struggle as I compete with freshlings who require 2+ years to become productive.

[@double_courage57]

"I was able to solve every problem I encountered" - do you mean DSA interview questions?

[@MaxFung]

yep, my biggest gripe is the disconnect between theoretical "perfect" algorithms and the actual application of DSA in real, practical production systems

[@brianviktor8212]

@@double_courage57 I mean for my space combat/exploration game I have layers of algorithms to procedurally generate solar systems, to populate them and unload them, as the player is able to traverse in free flight. For that I use a RNG which I created with a tool to create RNGs using random bit operations, with the emphasis of input values (seeds) being possibly close to each other, meaning I had to watch out for both, horizontal and vertical quality. Over many adjustments I picked RNGs for specific purposes: A strong one, a fast one, a value scrambler. Galaxy generation will follow too, but I have special plans for those. Currently I work on a game server with maximum possible performance plus scalability, so that it becomes a global MMO environment (aka 1 big realm only). I intend to use the discrepancy of letting clients run generative algorithms and the server checking for validity only, so considering cheating also matters. It is based on my communication library I mentioned. This is quite a difficult task, and I am sure big companies have armies of dedicated network specialists to do that... I do this alone, as one of many things, and I aim for maximum quality. This may take ~2-3 more weeks. For nebulae I use layers of algorithms to create clusters of spheres with varying sizes in various shapes, whereas spheres can be attached to up to 3 other spheres. I even had to calculate the math on paper - you know, simplifying equations. The tasks come up naturally as I work to manifest my vision. There are way more parts to it, for example the item/stat system, which I consider a symphony of math. It is both understandable for users, but with complex math behind the hood. As far as I see, I can finish the entire project alone. I may have some difficulty with the artistic part though, but I found a solution for the hardest task too... it will just take work. All the while I worked for a company full-time. Nothing I did there comes even close to the difficulty of my private projects. So doing interview code tasks freshlings learn like mad is still difficult for me. I don't know all the terminologies, or these trivial sorting algorithms. I can handle tasks of any difficulty (objectively and subjectively), but all these things "everybody should know" but have no actual use case are beyond me.

[@fenkusingh]

stop treating yourself as a superman coder.

[@brianviktor8212]

@@fenkusingh I am a regular programmer. I can start and finish projects in relatively short time, doing high quality work. That's all.

[@IvanRandomDude]

Yes. And they will only get harder and harder as number of developers goes up.

[@user-j5ja95]

Hahaha I saw a Blind post about how we need to gatekeep people from going to bootcamps and becoming a software engineer since there's more supply of software engineers nowadays and our salary might not be as competitive in few years. Tell people coding is really hard and it's not worth it lol

[@IvanRandomDude]

@@user-j5ja95 Some might get scared away by posts like that. But if they do they are most likely not excited about the field anyway and were only thinking about it because they heard they can make money fast if they finish a 3 month course. Also, many people who sell courses and bootcamps are not better than those who sell "get rich quick" schemes.

[@himanshusingh5214]

Many people come to this field whose maths is weak or they have not worked on other basics. They are not your competitors.

[@utkarsh1874]

you are ngmi @@himanshusingh5214

[@IvanRandomDude]

@@himanshusingh5214 But they clog the hiring process.

[@infiniteloop5449]

How can we make this video go viral in order to have some industry reform of the interview process? Like a #metoo for software engineers, because it is straight up hazing and also a waste of time for most people. At least test on things that are actually useful in the job. It is insane when even engineers who worked there way up in FAANG type companies can’t even quit there job to look for a new one without spending 3-6 months of after work free time just studying, when it has very little correlation to how well of an engineer you are on actual production services. I have literally had engineers on my team in FAANG quit their job because workload is 60-70 hours a week, so they can have a dedicated 1-2 months to prepare for interviews 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️

[@buttofthejoke]

I swear. I'm doing leetcode now, and I see some leetcode geeks claiming they solved 500 questions. Are you really saying that this person knows how to code real world problems better than others because they know how to find the subset of an island linked by trees named as a palindrome in O(1) ?

[@3_smh_3]

Didn't Ben's video from a few years ago go viral as well?

[@fark69]

It will not reform. Look at any white collar job that pays what SWE jobs pay and don't require a grad degree (basically only consulting). It has an equally grueling and difficult interview cycle and most fail. That's not going to get better going forward. These jobs are some of the most desired in the world, they have hundreds to thousands of applicants per position, and they can pick the guy who is the most insane at DSA if they want. There are not many existing signals as strong which also create a very sharp funnel.

[@infiniteloop5449]

@@fark69 yes but you are selecting against people who have worked on large scale systems at the top companies. All of my FAANG jobs have been 60 hour work weeks. The only thing DSA selects for is people straight out of school where it is fresh. You simply do not have the same dedicated time to review and refresh because you are busy doing actual work. After 5-10 years experience you aren’t going to remember like red-black trees or bloom filters and such because they are not useful for large scale systems in most of FAANG, whereas real life work experience is very useful. The truth is that the majority of engineers that have worked in FAANG for 3-5 years probably couldn’t pass the same interview for their job again. A lot of people are trapped in their jobs simply due to study time constraints, which is what the big companies want.

[@fark69]

@@infiniteloop5449 This isn't true. The majority of FAANG workers do like everyone else and take a few weeks to a month and study all these details again so they can pass such interviews. DSA does not select for only college grads (college grads are never interviewed for senior positions for example). It selects for people who can learn complicated topics like DSA quickly and are willing and able to grind out such studies. In short, it selects for people who would've done well in school. That's something FAANG workers tend to share in common (not all, but many)

[@crackfaang]

So true! The questions are just slowly creeping up to the point of insanity. Amazon's most frequent questions are some of the biggest bullshit I've ever seen to the point where I don't even try making solution videos for them on my channel. Luckily Meta seems to be the one company with a semblance of sanity and asks 2 mediums from the same pool of questions over and over again

[@thegt]

Nah. Couple of months ago I had a Meta onsite. One guy asked me a Medium and a Hard from the list during one round, the next guy asked 2 questions out of the list. Fuck them.

[@fark69]

Meta does not ask 2 mediums from the same pool of questions over and over again. There may have been a brief period where this was true but it's over

[@skinnykneega9511]

@@fark69 Leetcode discuss says otherwise

[@armagaan009]

So, essentially, it has turned into India's Joint Entrance Examination.

[@Lost1nTranslation]

In 2019, I was asked 2 mediums and 1 hard in 1.5 hours on the final round. 3 interviews totalling 5 different people as a new grad. This was at a medium sized not as well known company but you have probably used the product I was working on. Fast forward 1 and 2 years and my next two jobs interviews were much, much easier. 1 medium and 1 easy respectively. The easy was a F250 company - the medium was for a relative unknown company which had the highest caliber of SWEs out of the 3 I mentioned. I think it is getting more difficult but our individual experiences are dependant on many factors outside of FAANG.

[@jerrybao1934]

And a more ridiculous fact is that if you throw the hard problem at the interviewer, if he/she hasn't seen that problem before, it's likely he/she won't be able to solve it, either.

[@PankajKumar6493]

My Interviewer couldn't understand my code that was using recursion lol. It was a simple question of printing "abcdefgh" with all its permutations if we allow each character to be capitalized like "acCdefgh" is one such permutation. He has some iterative way to do it in mind. It took me 10 minutes to write the code and another 5 minutes to explain it even when it was running fine and giving the correct output.

[@Avo7bProject]

@@PankajKumar6493 I sat a few minutes and thought... I probably would have incremented a counter out to 2^(length string) and brute force found all the combinations from binary operations on the counter, 0 for uncapitalized and 1 for capitalized. But then the Leet interviewer would probably ask me to have them all saved in a B* tree, and I fail, LOL

[@PankajKumar6493]

@@Avo7bProject That's what he was expecting I guess lol. I just went the recursive route because it's easier to write code that way. He couldn't understand how it was working 🤣 even after me explaining it twice. If it was a whiteboard or google docs type of interview instead of a proper complier one, I am sure he would've failed me. I still am not sure about the result because I haven't heard from them back 😂. Ghosting is so common right now, it's brutal.

[@sukapow]

It's hard to find a job and it is harder to maintain a job

[@trappedcat3615]

We must become one with the job and find it within. 😅

[@sukapow]

@@trappedcat3615 you don't have to look for a job in tech. You can always make a product and make a profit with it. That's why I loved about tech. The best time to do it is when you are young and have a lot of energy

[@analtaccount2382]

not harder to maintain

[@sukapow]

@@analtaccount2382 depends on the company. Google gives a 6 months evaluation. If you're performance is badly within the 6 months. You will get the boot and be black list. Neetcode couldn't hold a job at Amazon 🙄

[@arturfil]

It sucks but unfortunately if you are not willing to do it, somebody will and you will get filtered out. And big companies want to filter out as much as they can. So yeah, it sucks, and it's getting harder, and positions are fewer, and job requirements are harder 🙃

[@infiniteloop5449]

You can filter with practical real world questions like system design or cloud architecture for a highly available cloud system. There is plenty of practical knowledge that is difficult enough to still filter people.

[@arturfil]

@@infiniteloop5449 Depends on the position. And if you haven't designed a system yourself with such components like the ones asked to do "design a URL shortener", "design a netflix application" etc, it's also just theory learned (which is good btw). If you are applying for a junior position chances are you are going to be doing simpler stuff and don't have that hands-on experience. That doesn't mean people shouldn't study those just saying I don't think its practical read-world for the candidate or even for a small company at times.

[@davidhelman3045]

Im a senior backend dev with 15 years of experience and I am certain I would fail all LC hard questions and most medium ones as well, It really is just a lazy filtering mechanism so they don't have to spend time doing real interviews.

[@ohgin12345]

My bet is, they do not need people. And if they are going to hire, they most likely will hire someone they know

[@oanaghicajanucristina]

Thanks for this video. I needed to hear this. I am graduating computer science this year and i applied for jobs as .net developer (internships or entry level, mostly internships) . I find it frustrating that they are asking me about OOP, then coding with classes, then how well i know the B/E and F/E side, then how good I am at implementing algorithms and then how good I am at SQL and so on. It is really difficult to be asked all these stuff from a company.

[@deltapi8859]

I'm kind of actively avoiding LeetCode, because these are not going to be the complex algorithms that solve big problems, but rather low level tricky programs. It's purely for acing an interview. To be honest I think the way modern companies want you to learn and work is creating a skill bottleneck. It's like jumping through irrelevant hoops 40hrs a week. Most likely 60+ for the rest of your life. You need to decide if you want to let them do that to you.

[@darkwoodmovies]

Honestly, we should just go back to interviewing for the role that they want to hire you for. Google started this trend of "generalist" interviews that don't make sense for most companies. If you need to build a REST API, ask questions about that and have them code up some basic API and design your app on a whiteboard. Frontend, just have them do the same thing but implement one of your components or something.

[@fark69]

This isn't going to work. You'll have far too many applicants pass such interviews and make it very difficult to choose from 30-40 qualified candidates for each role after all the rounds are complete...

[@darkwoodmovies]

@@fark69 I mean I interview for my company, we waste so much time nit-picking on things that will either cost the company like 1 week of training time or are not relevant to the role. Sure, we'll find the "best candidate" but it will take a month longer and waste all the interviewers' times for no gain.

[@ultravioletiris6241]

@@fark69 The whole point is that “qualified candidates” being chosen for skills other than their job duties is an oxymoron.

[@angelg3642]

@@fark69 But its logical. No interview process should take so long and nor will that individual learn how to build REST API's if he hasn't done it recently. Nor is it that difficult to teach said individual to do it from scratch. Companies focus on Y while searching for X and the position you do does Z. That's the issue. You have to know XYZ(and most likely other letters) when your work requires just Z

[@ZachBaughn87]

Great insights given here. I totally agree that there is some use but you can't make it all about that either. Potential is often much more impactful than total knowledge or good testing skills.

[@woahblow4127]

Depends on the company. Been applying and some legit treat it like a test, they dont want to help you they want to test you. Other companies are old school and more about talk through together

[@karlostj4683]

The truth is: No coding test of any type is going to show you how someone is actually going to perform in your organization. Instead of asking someone to write new code to solve some arbitrary problem, it's better to present code that's failing and ask someone what they would do to figure out what's going wrong. Because most programmers spend most of their time fixing Other People's Code. Besides which, on the job every programmer is now just going to find an AI to code it for them since most coding for most problems has already been written multiple times somewhere else.

[@fark69]

The problem with doing this is that you will not narrow down your field of candidates much at all. Then how will you pick one to go with?

[@angelg3642]

@@fark69 Soft skills qualities. That's how. Many teamleads and seniors will tell you that it's easier to teach a junior/intern/mid a new stack than it is to to work freely with them. Companies don't focus enough on people who show clear communication skills, adaptability skills, creativity, critical thinking, conflict handling, collaboration etc. These soft skills are the essentials of working in the IT field yet none of them are brought up in the interviews. That should be the focus, not short team learned hard skills.

[@John-po9wz]

I was asked a LeetCode hard question at Spotify last year and i knew it was a Hard question because it was one of the question i had in my list of questions to prep for but i literally skipped it because i didn't anyone would be mean enough to ask it and yet here i was lmao. I came up with a working solution but it wasn't the most optimal so then at the end of the interview when they asked me if i had any question, I obviously only wanted to know what was the most optimal solution and i kid you not, she COULDN"T EXPLAIN IT!! there was another engineer shadowing her and the look of confusion and slight amusement on his face as she was fumbling through an answer was lowkey priceless

[@pablito2958]

what the fuck. jesus 💀

[@angelg3642]

Oh yeah 💀💀💀 Had that experience too 💀💀💀

[@turkyturky6274]

Yeah the bar is high. Companies also dont hire juniors anymore. So not only do you have to have leet code but tons of industry experience and lets not forget soft skills to land the job. Its a sad joke with tech but its crawling into other jobs too. I think blue collar jobs are the future, plumbing electrical work. An ai cannot automate you installing a pipe in a house.

[@DenysPanchenko-it3kl]

ai has nothing to do with it, it’t the market

[@svs9610]

people asking how to prepare for interviews. Meanwhile 90% students problem -> How to get interview even after applying to so many jobs.

[@tonnguyen1630]

i got 2 hard and 1 med leetcode questions for an intern position at a non faang comp. Thing is impossible to get an intern job nowadays

[@jcitizen7649]

You should try taking coding interviews with big tech or even just some of the companies that hire the most junior- mid level developers again to give us all some insight on how to do well/what to expect in 2024

[@NeetCodeIO]

You know, I thought about that, but I feel people would think I'm an ass if I did that, especially cause I'd be taking interview spots from other people

[@abdia-lb2yx]

very thoughtful of you @@NeetCodeIO

[@dasarimanoj3086]

It was Microsoft who started this DSA based interviews if I'm correct

[@sukapow]

Before Microsoft became huge, they just straight up gave cs students from Harvard jobs working on the Window os. You will find out some of them did dropped out of college like Gabe Newell did. Still happening today, I meant plenty kids who already got a job with no degree. I found that very scary and cool the sametime. Some kid parents already taught them how to code really early age 😒

[@Montywritespython]

Source?

[@dasarimanoj3086]

@@sukapow yeah I got that but the way interviews have changed from complete computer science questions to pure DSA based interviews and Microsoft is the one who started this trend

[@dasarimanoj3086]

@@Montywritespython Trust me bro🌝

[@sukapow]

@@dasarimanoj3086 we needs proof. They're were already tech companies before Microsoft exists who worked on stuffed based on dsa.

[@Agent_Six_]

If the position requires a 'Medium' question LeetCode level of coding proficiency and there is too many applicants who can easily solve Medium Leetcode questions then the applicant who most fits the role, culture, company and requirements should be chosen. There is no use asking someone a copy-paste LeetCode question about multi-threaded programming when the position is Junior React Engineer.

[@fark69]

The point is to find the candidate out of all applicants who is willing and able to study a difficult part of CS that's easily testable and verifiable and succeed at that part. That's what they want, so that no matter what project they put you on or how familiar or unfamiliar you are with it, you have a good chance of working hard and succeeding. A junior react engineer will eventually get promoted or change roles or become a staff or manager. At that point, React skills matter 0, but ability to work hard and learn effectively are still greatly important

[@jagicyooo2007]

we need the complete interview with konrad

[@anuragkhugshal4994]

The problem is that everyone has memorized the standard questions and are crowding over good problem solvers hence companies have to make it harder.

[@fark69]

You'd be surprised the ratio of candidates who fail even an easy LC problem to the ones who pass it

[@anuragkhugshal4994]

@@fark69 I know 50-60 percent would fail even an easy but we have millions in India and the situation I'm in currently, I can't get selected even being in the top 1% sometimes, because that's too many candidates.

[@user-yq5vk8yj4m]

It’s gonna lead to comp sci new grads taking IT jobs and if the company values you, they’ll hopefully let you work on the dev team. IT new grads are gonna have a harder time getting a job in their field

[@ShinAkuma]

Everytime I get the chance, I make sure to let the interviewers know, "cracking the interview and doing the job are two completely different skill sets."

[@1Maklak]

Make an array reachable bool[] and set to false, but true at index 0. For each element of the binary array, if an element is reachable, mark all indexes between i+minJump and i+maxJump as reachable. Check if the last element is marke unreachable. Simple, inefficient and "can you do better?".

[@pastori2672]

i heard interviewers are asking other type of questions like system design questions is that true ?

[@coherentpanda7115]

Leetcode is just one small part of the interview process. They go in detail about the systems you will be working on, understanding system design and the inner workings of software you probably have never thought about before.

[@fark69]

Yep. Once you're past an entry level job you are expected to do a system design for almost any mid / senior level dev job

[@IceGamerification]

i don’t think coding interviews are getting harder it’s the fact that getting an interview is harder.

[@isuckatthisgame]

Hard problem type is the one that some Dijsktra level genius solved 50 years ago and now we must learn them to stand out.

[@kingchair5537]

Perfect ending!!!

[@dinckelman]

Everyone's asking medium to heard leetcode questions during an interview, for a job where you'll be changing 2 symbols in a readme file, and editing a Jira entry after a zoom call. The ratio is completely out of control there

[@anuragkhugshal4994]

Companies should ask easier but newer questions because the problem is everyone has memorized those cliche medium questions. Making it hard won't help as it will favour those who've seen it before. Make it a new question and see most fail at mediums.

[@rskmahesh3531]

I guess the bar is only rised in top companies because companies exclusively look for people who are very good with algorithms and people who are good with algorithms look for top companies.

[@avinashkumar3340]

It's not just FAANG, even mid to smaller scale companies have started asking leetcode hard problems.

[@fark69]

Actually they always used to ask such problems. Leetcode was invented as a way to practice existing interview problems, it was not invented and then companies started borrowing problems from there

[@aretou774]

I remember talking to an ex amazon engineer who’d joined in the early 2010’s and said how he’d spent a month preparing, studying things like bubblesort 😂

[@anthonybrigante9087]

not having to drill leetcode was my favorite part about entering the games industry ngl

[@quocanhhbui8271]

Today OAs are even harder than the actual interviews. Companies are not hesitant throwing hard dp problems into OAs. However the questions' difficulty of phone/onsite interviews are limited to the interviewers.

[@alpotato6531]

got a flow network optimisation problem rip

[@ErickKengni-c5r]

Where can we find the interview with your tech lead

[@lavanya_m01]

The end part was so satisfying c'mon 😂

[@upsidedownChad]

Why are Neetcode solutions being posted on this channel instead of @neetcode?

[@andriibakhtiozin4477]

ehh, once in 2018 on interview on Senior QA Automation position I was asked to define jenkins pipeline using pipeline script on white paper. Another task was to reverse string, after that there were more like talks and some behaviour interview questions. I passed interview and accepted offer but of course company processes were pretty low

[@jopa19991]

I like how the YT throws me in this video right after I fucked up my Microsoft online assessment.

[@seinfan9]

This is a result of being lazy and not actually trying to find a job applicant that sufficiently meets your needs. I'm a principal level electronics design engineer and the technical questions I get asked are pretty basic: how does a MOSFET turn on, what are some general rules for PCB layout when dealing with high speed signals, what are the main trade-offs between using an LDO voltage regulator and a switching regulator... What is more important to the interviewers are how well I can see the big picture for pushing a project along, as well as my memory recall when telling stories about how I approached troubleshooting some very specific issues. If I can demonstrate I can convey the information well and that I have an understanding of what I was designing, that is pretty much all they need to know that I'm good enough for the job.

[@sriramkrishnan4855]

I mean this is the scenario everywhere right ? It self selects the people who find this type of pattern recognition fun, specifically math majors. If you look at the NBA it's the same thing, the number of positions are the same just that there are more people because its more lucrative to spend even a few years doing it.

[@obiwankenobi07]

I’ve been given hards that I haven’t seen before and solved them (Google and Meta onsites.) Depends how ur understanding of DSA is tbh. Also able to work with the hints of the interviewer (if necessary) is a great signal as well not just solving the problem.

[@PankajKumar6493]

Yeah but they take it as a negative if you need hints to solve the problem.

[@obiwankenobi07]

@@PankajKumar6493 that’s false ive also given interviews at Google and I never marked someone that asked for a hint negative for asking for the hint. It shows you can admit you don’t know stuff and you can collaborate and take advice from your teammates

[@hockeymikey]

I just refuse to do them. Other jobs don't have to, why should I?

[@AmolGautam]

Such an under rated video

[@adi96adi]

I never ask leetcode hards because even the mediums only have a like 10% success rate. Interviews are hard and yet we still hear about the hiring bar going down

[@kirillzlobin7135]

Thank you for your job

[@nestharus]

This'll sound terrible but I haven't done leetcode except for funzies for a few minutes. No books. I have never done prep for an interview. I just go in. Uhh... yeaa.. guess I got lucky : ). Maybe helped that I was coding as a hobby from the age of 11 for modding, maybe didn't /shrug. My most recent interview was around 1.5 years ago. Let's be real... a lot of the hardest leetcode questions are just about iterating over trees in different ways and many of them don't even have correct answers on the website kekw.

[@__________________________6910]

You have a great future. One day you will be a millionaire, maybe more than that . Keep it up

[@HieuNguyen-ty7vw]

Harder interview doesn’t mean engineers are better or smarter. It’s just people spend more time grinding these useless leetcode questions and more people remember the solutions. It’s a dead end and we are trapping ourself into this by too lazy to design a system honer experienced engineer. A principal eng with 10yrs+ in exp need to revamp their leetcode game for company switch is stupid.

[@sharptongue2972]

Life just keeps getting harder.

[@Avo7bProject]

This obsession with Leetcode sounds so strange to me. Because what I have experienced more in the real world are things like: "How do you write a query against a poorly-normalized database that you won't be allowed to change?" or "How do you fix this report, now that the company structure has reorganized - the mid level managers are now gone, with the higher level managers now overseeing different geographies then before?" Thinking back, I found my 300 level data structures courses in college quite interesting. But I've never needed to rebalance a tree, or create my own hash, or develop a file system. These things are already solved at a lower level by databases and the operating system.

[@chaoticmind-z]

hahahaha the ending though 10/10

[@shirish_yt]

you heard the man DONT BE A D... atleast companies that are not that reputed like MAANG or startups shouldn't really go for hard, having a good understanding of data structures and development is actually what really helps u

[@IannoOfAlgodoo]

Interviewers at larger companies are more interested in how you try to get to your solutions.

[@ibrahimalshubaily9520]

Nit: should we link the full video? (j.k.)

[@Kaviarasu_NS]

Big fan of your contents❤

[@ados256]

Can we also talk about how no one focuses on soft skills and we could use a lot more than just leetcode grinders. thanks

[@vijayramachandran3559]

These questions were started by Microsoft way back in the 90s at least

[@RocketPropelledWombat]

I just enjoy the challenge.

[@shubhamc183]

The ending! 😂

[@lostgoat]

2050 solves in and I still struggle with some of the hards

[@Lado93]

How? Are you just copying and pasting the discussion solutions without going trough them?

[@lostgoat]

@Lado93 no I actually do the opposite I will spend 1-3 hours per problem if needed while trying all possibilities I can think of. If the question is too hard I will give up after that time and work through the solution and see where I went wrong. Ive been doing this for 2 years now without missing any days, as ive gotten better i dont need to look up solutions as often so Im solving more problems with less time. My goal is to challenge myself so I generally dont do easys unless im working on a new category and just stick to medium and hards. Job wise 500 or less is probably more than enough but Ive never had a leetcode interview since Im an application architect currently

[@daruiraikage]

cap

[@thecancermen245]

How does Neetcode problems compare to leetcode's?

[@trueroughly1691]

more neat