alt Hacker NewsThe LC interviews are like testing people how fast they can run 100m after practice, while the real job is a slow arduous never ending jog with multiple detours and stops along the way.
But yeah that's the game you have to play now if you want the top $$$ at one of the SMEGMA companies.
I wrote (for example) my 2D game engine from scratch (3rd party libs excluded)
https://github.com/ensisoft/detonator
but would not be able to pass a LC type interview that requires multiple LC hard solutions and a couple of backflips on top. But that's fine, I've accepted that.
Replies
>how fast they can run 100m after practice, while the real job is a slow arduous never ending jog with multiple detours and stops along the way
I've always explained it as demonstrating your ping pong skills to get on the basketball team.
>The LC interviews are like testing people how fast they can run 100m after practice
Ah, but, the road to becoming good at Leetcode/100m sprint is:
>a slow arduous never ending jog with multiple detours and stops along the way
Hence Leetcode is a reasonably good test for the job. If it didn't actually work, it would've been discarded by companies long ago.
Barring a few core library teams, companies don't really care if you're any good at algorithms. They care if you can learn something well enough to become world-class competitive. If you can show that you can become excellent at one thing, there's a good chance you can become excellent at another thing.
That's basically also the reason that many Law and Med programs don't care what your major in undergrad was, just that you had a very high GPA in whatever you studied. A decent number of Music majors become MDs, for example.
Mistakenly read this as you wrote that 2D game engine (which looks awesome btw) for a job interview to get the job: "I can't compete with this!!! HOW CAN I COMPETE WITH THESE TYPES OF SUBMISSIONS!?!?! OH GAWD!!!"
> SMEGMA companies
Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, I'm guessing... but, what are the other two?
"SMEGMA companies." :D
And nowadays people are blatantly using AI to answer questions like this (https://www.finalroundai.com/coding-copilot). Even trying to stumble through design questions using AI
5 years ago you'd have a project like that, talk to someone at a company for like 30m-1hr about it, and then get an offer.