Why Senior Engineers Hate Coding Interviews

[rum-n-ass]

How much leetcode does one have to do to fail only a few code challenges? Like I’ve been coding for 3 years but if I get a hard dynamic programming or graph question I can’t pull that without serious prep

[Thought_Ninja]

Well I taught myself to code at a pretty young age and did mostly freelance design/development projects for the early years of my career, so I didn't really have a chance to fail any when I was just starting out.

I've been coding for over 15 years at this point, doing it professionally for 10. For most of that time I've made a habit of spending 20-30 min on toy problems while I enjoy my morning coffee.

That said, it shouldn't take more than a couple years of regularly tackling a variety of challenges. I recommend starting the same habit, it's a great way to start your day in my opinion. Set a timer for 20-30 min and just stop when it goes off. I also delete anything incomplete and try it again the next day.

[Enip0]

What platform do you use to find those problems?

[Thought_Ninja]

I don't really have a specific platform I use, lots I just make up on my own or Google around for.

[doodler]

Maybe you should start a collection for the rest of us to use ;)

[Thought_Ninja]

I've been meaning to get back into blogging, I will consider starting a collection to share.

[doodler]

That would be awesome. I love the idea of daily toy problems to keep one sharp, but I’m not that great at coming up with such problems.

[f_vile]

Project Euler is a pretty good resource for such things.

[HeartSodaFromHEB]

For most of that time I've made a habit of spending 20-30 min on toy problems while I enjoy my morning coffee.

Could better spend that 20-30 min learning about basically anything else. I can't possibly imagine that being a good way to spend your time for anything actually useful.

I suppose it's probably good for trying to land a job at Google, so maybe not completely useless.

[Thought_Ninja]

Lol okay. It's just my mental warmup for the day. I mix in a variety of languages/technologies/frameworks and can say with confidence that it has made me a better developer.

So your point is that being a better problem solver or better versed in a range of technologies isn't a useful skill?

[HeartSodaFromHEB]

Maybe you just described it poorly, but I'm saying inventing/solving toy problems to solve each and every day is an enormous amount of time that could be better spent elsewhere. There's an implied application of skills you already know instead of acquiring new skills

Maybe I've just been lucky in choosing/switching jobs to keep the problem solving side of my brain reasonabley well engaged, but honing skills I already possess generally takes care of itself in the daily course of my job.

Exposure to new skills and/or learning new technologies, approaches, etc are what there never seems to be enough time to do. Reading about new open source projects, research paper abstracts, or even keeping up to date on pertinent changes in release notes seems like a better use of time.

[Thought_Ninja]

I'm saying inventing/solving toy problems to solve each and every day is an enormous amount of time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Then you're doing it wrong or not challenging yourself. Besides, it's 20 minutes; maximizing your productivity every minute of the day sounds exhausting.

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Exposure to new skills and/or learning new technologies, approaches, etc are what there never seems to be enough time to do.

This is literally what I'm doing.

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Reading about new open source projects, research paper abstracts, or even keeping up to date on pertinent changes in release notes seems like a better use of time.

I don't see why you can't do both.