I think we really need to face a reckoning in our profession. And the reckoning is this: requiring an overload of stuff that's simply not-important on-the-job just to get through the interviewing process and land a position.
Some of it is mildly useful for the actual job. But the rest of it is a bunch of hurdles that we don't need to put in the way of people.
And we need to do a much better job of building bridges into the profession that actually build people up into valuable devs.
The current approach of "leetcode" gatekeeping to the industry is a failure.
I think many developers and engineers hold this same sentiment. Most of us study really hard to figure out how to reverse a binary tree into a linked list blah blah blah(I hope you get thats a joke)....and then we get the job and....
We are just calling APIs of libraries developed by people before us. So what was the point. So yes, there are many of us that agree. But, since this is still the current way, I hope this list can be useful but would also like to see it deprecated :).
It's hard to demand change when you're interviewing for a new job. However, once you have the job, I think it's a lot easier to demand change. Be that person who asks, "Why are we doing interviewing like this?" Be that person who says, "This interview question provides no useful signal." Be that person who says, "We shouldn't use Leetcode / Hackerrank / etc. as a filtering step."
I'm very glad to see that this is the top comment on the article. Honestly, these hiring processes that start with some algorithm challenges straight out of that controversial "Cracking The Coding Interview" book benefit nobody, but hurt everyone.
It reinforces the "imposter syndrome" experienced by many perfectly competent candidates and companies basically rob themselves of valuable prospective employees by insisting on taking this approach to interviewing.
As someone looking for their first frontend job... Can I solve a bunch of advanced algorithm challenges? Nope, I don't have the computer science background for that. But can I build a reusable component library, consume REST/GraphQL API's to communicate with the server and display data in a sensible way on the client-side? I sure can.
Yet, people like me are being glossed over, even though we are perfectly able of solving real-world problems.
I suppose another way to look at it each time this happens is "the trash took itself out". As in, if this is their hiring practice and they see nothing wrong with it, would I like working for that company anyway? Though, that doesn't help me get my foot in the door.
Don't worry about it too much, it's now 3 years since I made that comment. I still suck at solving these "brainteasers" that are pointlessly used at interviews and I'm working for a nice company where I'm well respected, have been told I'm approaching senior level very quickly and am involved in training juniors. I don't bother practicing brain teasers at all, in fact. I instead put my effort into learning "advanced" React features, NextJS, some AWS basics and now looking into Svelte and judging by the salary increases, it was a good idea.
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I think we really need to face a reckoning in our profession. And the reckoning is this: requiring an overload of stuff that's simply not-important on-the-job just to get through the interviewing process and land a position.
Some of it is mildly useful for the actual job. But the rest of it is a bunch of hurdles that we don't need to put in the way of people.
And we need to do a much better job of building bridges into the profession that actually build people up into valuable devs.
The current approach of "leetcode" gatekeeping to the industry is a failure.
I think many developers and engineers hold this same sentiment. Most of us study really hard to figure out how to reverse a binary tree into a linked list blah blah blah(I hope you get thats a joke)....and then we get the job and....
We are just calling APIs of libraries developed by people before us. So what was the point. So yes, there are many of us that agree. But, since this is still the current way, I hope this list can be useful but would also like to see it deprecated :).
Very true! Still thanks for the great list of 'todo\'s'
It's hard to demand change when you're interviewing for a new job. However, once you have the job, I think it's a lot easier to demand change. Be that person who asks, "Why are we doing interviewing like this?" Be that person who says, "This interview question provides no useful signal." Be that person who says, "We shouldn't use Leetcode / Hackerrank / etc. as a filtering step."
I'm very glad to see that this is the top comment on the article. Honestly, these hiring processes that start with some algorithm challenges straight out of that controversial "Cracking The Coding Interview" book benefit nobody, but hurt everyone.
It reinforces the "imposter syndrome" experienced by many perfectly competent candidates and companies basically rob themselves of valuable prospective employees by insisting on taking this approach to interviewing.
As someone looking for their first frontend job... Can I solve a bunch of advanced algorithm challenges? Nope, I don't have the computer science background for that. But can I build a reusable component library, consume REST/GraphQL API's to communicate with the server and display data in a sensible way on the client-side? I sure can.
Yet, people like me are being glossed over, even though we are perfectly able of solving real-world problems.
I suppose another way to look at it each time this happens is "the trash took itself out". As in, if this is their hiring practice and they see nothing wrong with it, would I like working for that company anyway? Though, that doesn't help me get my foot in the door.
But they need to know your skills are above average as to effectively Google search the simple solution to their "super project" needs.
100% true, I'm learning frontend, and some of these examples overwhelm me, but I still find the challenge of learning it interesting
Don't worry about it too much, it's now 3 years since I made that comment. I still suck at solving these "brainteasers" that are pointlessly used at interviews and I'm working for a nice company where I'm well respected, have been told I'm approaching senior level very quickly and am involved in training juniors. I don't bother practicing brain teasers at all, in fact. I instead put my effort into learning "advanced" React features, NextJS, some AWS basics and now looking into Svelte and judging by the salary increases, it was a good idea.