I recall an interview I did in New York in about 2018. It was for a logistics company that was much earlier than the one I had started and had about 40 employees.
Given my experience, it seemed like I should basically just have a culture fit interview as I had already done alone a lot of what they were trying to do.
They gave me those Leetcode questions and fortunately it was one I remembered. I slowly said it outloud and did it and kept looking back to notice the two interviewers didn’t pay attention the entire time. They were staring at their computers and trying to code a work issue together. They actually looked kind of annoyed.
I debated asking them, “So you don’t want to be here either?” but held my tongue.
I finished correctly (as I already remembered the solution) but got swiftly rejected with no feedback so never got to see the culture fit. I’d like to believe these companies just want to know your final time and look at nothing else. It seemed like no one wanted to be there though. I’m not sure the point of wasting their engineers time.
Is there a reason we stopped asking for fizz buzz? Why do some optimization problem?
The best interview I ever had was just pure javascript and html. They said build a simple calculator. I did it at home in about 30 minutes and then they had me modify it on the live call. They still rejected me but it seemed very fair in my opinion.
A simple problem in pure javascript with no libraries. Either take home or live, ideally a mix of both.
I’m curious to know if any interviewers actually enjoy or believe in their current process. I know the developers already don’t.
Or better yet, why even continue this silly idea of constantly proving that we can do what we say we do. Why not do like they did in the old days and actually call those references we provide? I haven’t had someone use one of references in my entire career.