On: What is the engineering hiring bar?

[dominotw]

> I can usually spot the candidates who are leetcode junkies.

what are some of the tells ?

[_nckn → dominotw]

I can tell you how I spot: 1. Doing it in Python. "Can I do this with Python instead of X? because Python is really fast to write and I don't need to worry about small helper functions"

2. Know various approaches more than ordinary people. "Ah we can solve this in various approaches. We can sort this one, and the problem will be log N, or we can use Heap and make it log K. We can use stack but does it get counted as space in the space complexity? Oh I can use deque here but let me just use Python list because Python list is very versatile, it can be anything, it can be array, can be queue, can be stack"

3. Know the solution right away even the non obvious ones. One example is the problem of next permutation. Given a number 1, 3, 2, 4, 5. Find the next permutation in O(n) time and O(1) space. This solution is easy but if you have never done it before there is no way you can come up with a solution complete with code. Another problem, given preorder and inorder list, construct the binary tree. There are many non obvious problems like this.

[kentrado → _nckn]

No offense, but it looks like you are guessing and penalizing people for using python or solving a problem you gave them too fast.

Kind of like that math teacher accusing me of cheating because I did well on the exam.

[_nckn → kentrado]

I'm not penalizing them. I don't think it is bad if someone is a Leetcode junkies. Definitely not downing points if they use Python.

But to actually answer your question. Say the role is in JavaScript, say a Frontend role and the candidates want to answer it in Python instead of JavaScript. Then it is possible that the candidate is a Leetcode junkies.

Why I know? Because I do this myself. And definitely no points subtracted from knowing and using Python.

[dominotw → _nckn]

i am about 300 leets in java but i am always jealous of concise python solutions that people post in discuss.

Debating if would be worth taking the hit of switching to python now.

[_nckn → dominotw]

I think it is worth it. I did Leetcode in JS, then in Go, then in Python.

In Python you just need to focus on the actual algorithms than the actual minuteae details such as "let me create a function to copy this array". As long as you are aware of limitations such as Python int has no restriction like Java (int32, int64) etc, because some problems require you to look into that restrictions. Python string concatenation is also O(n^2) because there is no stringbuilder in Python. Just be aware of those and it should be fine.

[dominotw → _nckn]

thank you. what you said makes sense. job market seems to be down anyways. So might as well give this a shot.

[_nckn → dominotw]

also in Python you can literally not use a computer and just write down your algorithm in a piece of paper. makes it more fun to kill time during queueing in line, commuting etc lol.

[pmiller2 → _nckn]

FYI, a Python list is a very bad stack.

[pmiller2 → pmiller2]

Whoops. Correction: a Python list is a very bad queue.

[_nckn → pmiller2]

Yeah, but for the purpose of algorithm interview it doesn't matter.

[pmiller2 → _nckn]

It does if your interviewer knows that popping from the head of a list is O(n) and they feel like being picky about it.

[Apocryphon → pmiller2]

It's usually forgiven if you mention that you know that specific language idiosyncrasy and they'll handwave it for the purposes of the interview. If they don't, then that's what knowing alternatives is for.