alt Hacker NewsBut why stop there? Why not test candidates with problems they have never seen before? Or problems similar to the problems of the organization hiring? Leetcode mostly relies on memorizing patterns with a shallow understanding but shows the candidates have a gaming ability. Does that imply quality in any way? Some people argue that willing to study for leetcode shows some virtue. I very much disagree with that.
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To play the devils advocate, being able to memorize patterns and recognize which patterns apply to a given problem is extremely valuable. Tons of software dev is knowing the subset of algorithms, data structures, and architecture that apply to a similar problem and being able to adapt it.
> Leetcode mostly relies on memorizing patterns
Math is like that as well though. It's about learning all the prior axioms, laws, knowing allowed simplifications, and so on.
> Or problems similar to the problems of the organization hiring?
People complain, rightly so in some cases, that their "interview" is really doing some (unpaid) work for the company
I think you have a misunderstanding. Most companies that do LC-style interviews usually show unknown problems.
Memorizing the Top 100 list from Leetcode only works for a few companies (notably and perplexingly, Meta) but doesn't for the vast majority.
Also, just solving the problem isn't enough to perform well on the interview. Getting the optimal solution is just the table stakes. There's communication, tradeoffs between alternative solutions, coding style, follow-up questions, opportunities to show off language trivia etc.
Memorizing problems is wholly not the point of Leetcode grinding at all.
In terms of memorizing "patterns", in mathematics and computer science all new discovery is just a recombination of what was already known. There's virtually no information coming from outside the system like in, say, biology or physics. The whole field is just memorized patterns being recombined in different ways to solve different problems.