I'm just tired of the whole tech interview process. I've prepped for days for interviews only to have them fall apart because they asked something I hadn't prepped for or some kind of gotchya riddle was asked. What I've found works best is to just convince myself I really don't care either way if I get the job or not - that's when I do my best. When I really want the job, that's when I do my worst.

While I'm currently not working (for money, anyway) I'm fortunate to be in a position to not have to look for work. That could change, of course (for example, if the SCOTUS strikes down the ACA I'll need to find a job with insurance). Just thinking about interviewing in this current environment makes my stomach tie up in knots. But for now, I'll be over here working on my own interesting problems.

A lot of the interview process is luck - the questions they ask, the person interviewing, and their mood/interest.

Especially when many people will never use them in prod. My organization asks questions about DS and algos in the interviews now.

Has complexity or efficiency ever come up in a team discussion? Nope. Do we have use for high efficiency solutions at scale? Not particularly. But we judge candidates on it.

> Has complexity or efficiency ever come up in a team discussion? Nope. Do we have use for high efficiency solutions at scale? Not particularly.

Not only that - I often see atrocious code. Stuff like comparing boolean expressions against true/false. Stuff that makes me question basic competence of the person writing it.

> Stuff like comparing boolean expressions against true/false

I do this sometimes if it makes the code clearer. Sometimes it's not 100% clear if you're just coming in that a function returns a boolean. Sometimes you just want to remind yourself and it sneaks past a code review. I've been coding for 20 years across a dozen plus languages, and some just handle truthiness differently and it's easier to just make sure (looking at you, Javascript). Sometimes null is false, sometimes it's not, sometimes an empty string is false, sometimes it's not.

Any compiler, JIT, optimizer etc. will completely ignore the comparison anyways so there's 0 runtime issue with it.

> do this sometimes if it makes the code clearer.

As do I, the above poster is just super judgemental and probably not a lot of fun to work with.

An observation I've had over the years is that often times developers will come to conclusions that they ought not to. The idea that typing out "== false" indicates you don't understand bools is a non-sequitur.

When could an extra "== true" or "== false" possibly make anything clearer?

  if not (x > 5)

looks normal,

  if (x > 5) == false { .. ]

is just confusing.

Why would it matter if a function returned a boolean? It's either compared for truthiness, or the comparison for truthiness or compared for truthiness, even in the most dynamic languages.

> Sometimes it's not 100% clear if you're just coming in that a function returns a boolean

I'd argue the function isn't named appropriately, then.

> Sometimes you just want to remind yourself and it sneaks past a code review

Remind yourself what, exactly?

> dozen plus languages, and some just handle truthiness differently and it's easier to just make sure (looking at you, Javascript)

I'd argue that it's on the developer to know and work with the language's semantics (and I say this as someone who's not a fan of JS). Trying to write code that is nearly language agnostic in semantics will leave out a whole lot of language-specific value.

> I'd argue the function isn't named appropriately, then.

Maybe yes, maybe no. The point is that adding "== true" makes it more clear and should therefore be done.

For strongly type languages (like Java), how can ==true make it more clear?

Why is that so horrible? I prefer it because I am prone to missing the ! when tired (which is a problem as my project has complex conditionals).

Functions are not always consistent about returning a Boolean either. Bad design/naming, but you work with what you have got.

Well, for one case, I’ve seen people work really hard to test a == b, or alternatively a != b when a and b are Booleans.

I think some classes were not mandatory in school, or people hated that class.

this attitude is elitism and needs to stop.

I will sometimes compare against true/false, it doesn't mean I don't understand boolean logic, it means I feel like it's more clear.

It could also be that I'm in a language with truthy values and I specifically only want to compare to real boolean values.

You really need to stop and ask yourself why you're so judgemental about code. Because that's a you problem, not a them problem.

If I ever had a co-worker try and tell me I don't understand boolean logic because I felt like typing it out was more clear I'd laugh in their face.

No it’s not saying someone doesn’t understand Boolean logic.

It’s visual noise. This isn’t an issue with truthiness either. I’m talking normal java code. Where if I see an if-statement, clearly the thing inside doesn’t need comparison against true or false unless you want to add another comparison just for fun and mental gymnastics.

It’s the opposite of noise by making the logic more precise. Suppose you have unwrapped optionals or result types, or need to specifically handle a null type differently from a false. It’s also helpful when refactoring changes a function signature.

Are you young or early in your career? I think the extra verbosity is something you come to appreciate the “the hard way” over the years.

> It’s the opposite of noise by making the logic more precise

There's cases where this might make sense (when things like truthiness are unclear). But in any of the cases I've seen, it's where things are pretty obvious and even when things are explicitly boolean types.

Write the boolean expression and if it doesn't fit or has lots of parts, define them separately above the conditional with clear names.

People seem upset by this, but idk it seems like common sense.

I'm not sure I understand how `if (someCondition == true) {...}` is preferable to `if (someCondition) {...}`

> People seem upset by this

No one is upset, they simply disagree with you...

Maybe avoid trying to dismiss people and look at what they're actually saying? There are things you put in code that others are unfairly judging you for.

something something glass houses.

It's such an irrelevant surface-level thing to judge someone's intelligence and coding ability on. Just because they wrote that doesn't mean they don't understand that it could be simplified or that they aren't capable of handling much more complex boolean logic. Sometimes I write things like that just because I am typing my thoughts into code as they come to me, and that's just how I happened to vocalise it in my head.

This is usually in context of massive classes and functions that are regularly 100+ lines. It’s not organized or thoughtful and an absolute pain to work with.

Idk this is just my experience with disorganized code and unclear.

If a case like this pops up, how about asking them why they did it like that and then making your judgement based on response instead of questioning their competence right away?

Response 1: I thought it would be clearer with the explicit comparison. (fine, then you can bring in your own opinion and maybe have a nice discussion)

Response 2: You don't need == true? I never knew. (bad)

Another common scenario that is complained about: using `this` with instance variables when it's technically unnecessary.

The point is that "if" branches based on a boolean value. A comparison is just one way to produce a boolean value. There's nothing explicit by adding "==true". It just show a lack of understanding of "if".

If an extra "== true" can be considered more precise, would

  if ((conditional == true) == true)

be even more precise?

Precisely. Thank you.

Why do you have this disconnect between the development team and the hiring staff?

They are the same people :)

A lot of it is just them not really interviewing much so they Google how to interview developers and think about questions they were asked.

Well, at least it should be easy to fix the process :-)

Start with your observation.

Eh IDK. Leetcode type questions are starting to slip into many industries and types of companies. I recently interviewed at large finance (not trading firms, retail banking/investment) and insurance companies. They both asked LC medium/hard.

I was honestly taken a back. These companies aren’t known for “high” standards and make up for the lack of interesting work with WLB (or at least it comes across like that.

Just like how everyone copied google Qs a decade ago (how many toothpicks can a tree yield...). I’m fully expecting everyone to copy FAANG like interviews because someone in HR thinks it might signal better hires, and why wouldn’t you want better hires right?

Not at a FAANG company but I will ask stuff that might show up as “easy” on leet code.

Examples: run length encoding problem or a bit extracting/setting question. I want to see if the candidate can formulate a simple state machine and they understand bit manipulation. I target the bit manipulation questions for firmware/embedded software roles, which very much involves reading and setting bits from hardware registers all day long.

So if they ask the same questions at Google and same at BigInsuranceCo, why work for a lower salary at BigInsuranceCo.

If the interview is the same, you are better off working at some one who pays better. As a side effect eventually there could across the board better pay.

That's what I'm wondering myself. I've been taking more time to adequately prepare for faang, because as you said why not work for the company that pays more if the interview is nearly the same?

Yup, this. While I'm sure there is some corner of the US tech industry that doesn't leetcode you during interviews, it's getting smaller and smaller.

Companies that wouldn't have leetcoded you 5, 10, years ago are now doing so. The difficulty of leetcode questions is going up too.

Also, takehome problems are becoming more common - not instead of leetcode interviews, but in addition to.

I work for a government and have interviewed for other governments. They have Hacker Rank stuff too.

Agreed 100%.