Re:How to hire engineering talent without the BS
by roncesvalles on Monday March 06, 2023 @02:25AM
(#35038371)
That doesn't mean it's not testing for the right things. Pattern matching, memory, and understanding are all attributes that help be an effective software engineer.
It's also not as easy as you describe - just memorizing patterns. Maybe for the easy-medium questions that ChatGPT can solve, but Google stopped asking such questions a decade ago. The algorithm questions that all the tech companies ask today require real problem-solving.
Sure you need to understand some basic CS to pass a LC question, but it’s more about recognizing a pattern and having memorized the proper algo for that pattern.
If you were taking an algorithms interview 20 years ago, you’d have to truly know a huge breadth of CS knowledge. But now you can just memorize problems for a few months and never learn the true meaning of “why” a tree is the best data structure in x situation.
It was “gamed” when people learned that you could pass the interviews without truly understanding the material, if you just memorize the rules of the game and can recite them when asked.