I mean sure. But I’ve never once been rejected on a tech screen.
All the best people fail because they're doing stuff that's at the edge of their capability. They're pushing their limit, and sometimes they push too hard. If you've never failed it's much more likely to be because you've never strayed out of your comfort zone than because you're amazing and there's no challenge you can't meet. That's not necessarily a bad thing; we do some of our best work when we're not under pressure, but you shouldn't really criticise people who do fail at things. It might not be because they're 'worse'; it might be because they're trying to do harder things.
Personally I have a lot more respect for people who try and fail, especially if they get back up and try again, than for people who coast along never failing. Only failing and trying again shows you have character and grit.
Routinely failing a simple tech screen is not a symptom of stretching. It’s a symptom of probably not being in a place to be blogging interview lessons for others. Totally credit to this dude for putting himself out there, but I think he’s radically miscalibrated to be doing so in a way where he’s had this experience and is off handing out advice. To extend a more accessible analogy, in universities, the people who pass the course the first time are picked as tutors. Not the people who re-took it seven times because it was a stretch for them.
> it might be because they're trying to do harder things
I literally work on one of the, if not the, top team for what I do in the entire industry.
Well first off I think any company using leetcode as a screen for their candidates is out of the minds. (It seems to be a popular way to be out of their mind but that doesn’t make it a good idea. :))
But implementing a trivial unoptimized solution for the problem you linked is feasible enough in 45 minutes. Talking idly through how one might tweak the algorithm to optimize, or adopting an optimized algorithm if one occurs to you as you’re implementing the basic one also seems fine. If they want a tested, optimized, and implemented novel solution in that period, they are testing for people who grind leetcode and not people who are good engineers. I would have likely saved myself the time by not applying to a company like that in the first place!
Screens should generally focus on finding candidates worth talking more with. Leetcode exercises are low value for that.
If you want to learn anything, don’t work there. Work at a place that selects for better talent than mindlessly picking leetcode exercises as a screener. You will learn more, you will be at a company that does better, etc.
(I have never screened a candidate using leetcode. I have never been screened using leetcode. The one time someone tried to screen me using stupid questions like this I finished our session and promptly terminated the process when they called me back for a future round because while I may have passed their screen they emphatically did not pass my screen. I don’t study for interviews, nor do I expect people who I interview to study. Nothing I’m going to ask is something you can cram about the night before. This isn’t a college midterm.)
"Nah bro, interviewing is easy. Here's a link to a leetcode hard question, you don't think this is actually hard do you? Please answer so I can make you feel dumb."
I'd like to offer to do a phone screen with you. I'll pick a hard problem I've solved on leetcode, codingame, or google foobar and see how you do on it.
I’ve always been surprised at how hard people seem to work getting a job after the first one. If you live in a major metropolitan area in the US outside of the west coast, it always felt easy to get your yet another software as a service crud job. When I reset my career in 2008 and started down the path of “enterprise developer” leading to “dev lead” in 2016. After muddling my way through the recessions and switching jobs 4 times. It really felt easy. Send my resume to some local recruiters, pattern match my resume to available roles, phone screen, in person simple interview process, get job, make more money.
Even now the path from dev lead in 2017 to “working for a FAANG” was easier than most because I avoided studying algorithms and “leetcode” and went into cloud consulting which basically involved a bunch of soft skill “tell me about a time when...” questions.
All the best people fail because they're doing stuff that's at the edge of their capability. They're pushing their limit, and sometimes they push too hard. If you've never failed it's much more likely to be because you've never strayed out of your comfort zone than because you're amazing and there's no challenge you can't meet. That's not necessarily a bad thing; we do some of our best work when we're not under pressure, but you shouldn't really criticise people who do fail at things. It might not be because they're 'worse'; it might be because they're trying to do harder things.
Personally I have a lot more respect for people who try and fail, especially if they get back up and try again, than for people who coast along never failing. Only failing and trying again shows you have character and grit.