How many other fields require a 4 year degree, and then have you learn everything you really need to know to get a job after graduation?

Speaking to you struggling to solve fizzbuzz on your first interview, I really feel like one of the worst problems with technical interviews to assess skill is that if being interviewed is anxiety inducing for you that will dramatically reduce your critical thinking abilities. Its just not a good environment for assessing someone’s abilities under normal conditions. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if you would have been able to figure out fizzbuzz just fine if you hadn’t been so stressed out by being in your first interview.

I don’t comment on videos often, but KC you have no idea how much this video reassures me of my lack of leetcode practice. I’m a 4th year student in software engineering and I’ve felt so behind on all my other peers because I didn’t know how to solve even the simplest leetcode questions (and still somewhat do now). I’ve been doing a bit of leetcode here and there the past month or so with one of my friends also in software, but after struggling a whole lot, I kept telling myself that I should have started way earlier, that I was dumb for not knowing how to code two pointers even after 3 years of studying software. It reassures me that not everyone is comfortable with leetcode at first and that you showed your struggles with it too like procrastination and the fizzbuzz question (which pretty much the same thing happened to me when I was interviewing for my first internship). Honestly this is giving me the validation I much needed to keep pushing myself through the grind, because I do want to land a software job at a decently big company (so leetcode is inevitable), so thank you for putting it out. This is definitely a video I’m going to rewatch when I feel down.

You are exactly the kind of engineer I'd want on my team. There's no flex BS, just good-natured self-awareness, talking to your experience, EQ off the charts, and yes, from your conversations, you do have the tech chops. I wish you continued success. Keep moving forward.

Companies are not allowed to do IQ tests, so they do l33tcode instead. It is just an excuse to test your compliance (how willing are you to grind) and your general intelligence (puzzle solving).

I think being ok with just a middle of the road job and not desperately seeking FAANG can help. There's lots of great companies out there. If you're struggling that means it's hard and you're learning. Growth can be painful. How we talk to ourselves about it doesn't have to be unkind tho.

Spot on. Leetcode is the barrier to entry. Yes I and many hate it, but at least they aren't testing our real skills haha. Also, don't let your hate for leetcode keep you out of the game, accept that it is just a part of the game.

Good advice like always. You are wondrous.

Learning leetcode for the first time and struggling just like you said in this video, hopefully it gets easier with practice

I really enjoyed this video man! I just got my first developer gig, and have made the commitment to "improve my craft", and I think just hearing about similar experiences and feelings is super helpful. This video brings good into the world.

Dude you are doing just what you set out to do. "Making Software Engineers feel less alone!"

Ugh I just bombed my OA for datadog. I needed to hear this video.

I was worrying my ass off about my sufficiency to land a job during my a few months old self-taught journey into programming, this was a relief and reminded me to lean back and calmly study more lc and fundamentals ngl. Thank you for sharing the experience bro.

Helpful and motivating

hey really nice video, thanks!

sometimes it is not just coding, it is lack of math background. I think a CS program without a strong math component is to be avoided.

at my job, everyday problems seem like harder version of leetcode..

I think Leet code is great if you don't have any experience because you are writing code and learning concepts. If you don't have a degree, this is a guaranteed method to get into the industry.

All young coders must see this 🙏

So much this. If you don't know how to do something, even the most basic of things will feel outright impossible. There was a time in my life where programming a PID control loop felt impossible. Now well... AI can do that for you so... Hmm. Maybe things have changed more than I thought in 15 years. I remember way back doing exactly what you were doing and "getting lucky" (more than once) because quite literally the day before I had spent over an hour on a problem that ended up being basically the exact same question they asked me. I flew through the question in under 10 mins impressing the interviewers. This was back before "grinding leetcode" was common place. Less demand for said jobs and all. I then admitted I had just done this exact same problem and they gave me another one and... Yeah I couldn't quite figure it out in the remaining ~30 mins. Interviews are 100% their own separate thing. Passing them require diligent practice and patience. There is a heavy degree of randomness yes, but through consistent effort over time you can minimize the variance a considerable amount. IE it's not impossible. You can do it if you try hard enough. It's not impossible. It will take hundreds upon hundreds of hours if not thousands of hours. Yes, that's about how long these skills take to learn. People that seem to "naturally" be able to get them with only a few hours of practice aren't being 100% transparent. They got those skills usually doing something loosely comparable earlier in their life. No exceptions. Let me repeat, NO EXCEPTIONS. The only exception is the amount of time it took to acquire that skill level. That can and does vary wildly. Talent exists.

1:48 output numbers 1-100 multiples of 3: print fizz multiples of 5: print buzz for multiples of 3 and 5 : print fizzbuzz

I liked the "hold the edge cases in your head". Functions should be relatively short and you should offload work to other functions if they do their own work, ESPECIALLY if that work might get repeated. This makes it easier to alter or update the process later on. Trying to go through authentication for example, you have to walk through the process, redirects, database hits, and you have to basically hold the current state in your head as you're reading/writing the next line. Ever wonder why some developers are so edgy, you just made them lose their place!

if they ask you to code a lined list, or do a search in a tree... ask them to try to arrive in the new millenium. when you get the job you will never do such things, they are coded already gazillion of times in all possible languages ready to use. same with algorithms. you need to know when to use them, not code them by yourself. if you want a job as a cook, you don't need to know how to grow vegetables. better try to do freelance work if possible, then you have more time for coding, not sitting most of the day in useless scrum/sprint/marketing/management-ego-polishing meetings.

What are your thoughts on there only being a net gain of 700 jobs in 2023? As opposed to over 200k+ in 2022?

6 years into my career and I've never one done a leetcode interview... hell I'm not sure I've logged in since I did two for fun in undergrad. I've done other similar websites but they were such BS that I winged it. Basic understanding not leetcode DSA bs.

what leetcode teaches you, is like talking through the problem rather than solving a specific problem

I still don’t understand why LeetCode is still being tagged as the Holy Grail of all things coding questions.

this is my history...

Chicken Soup for the People Who Can't Code Good Soul

I see a lot of people complaining about DSA interviews here, but it actually makes sense. To be a good software engineer takes 2 things: - a strong understanding of at least 1 coding language - the ability to effectively problem solve through research and analysis If you have those 2 qualities, you can pick up any software engineering job, in any field, in any tech stack/language. FAANG companies understand that if they can assure their new hires have those 2 skills, then they can learn everything they don’t know in the job. DSA questions happen affectively test both of those skills in a standardized way. Why test someone on domain knowledge and lose good candidates just because their experience is in a different field or tech stack?

Before watching - doing stuff like making video games, websites, apps, and web servers will give you a much better idea of practical skills required. Leetcode problems are designed to be puzzles basically, but for what it’s worth, the skills learned doing leetcode can help when designing algorithms in other domains. However, most of the time such algorithms are not used. Most of programming is moving and transforming data, and managing complexity/software engineering principles

I haven't done any Leetcode for 3 years. Purely just been building apps and UI designing fulltime, happy with my job. None of the jobs I interviewed did Leetcode BS with me. Rather React questions and just general web-based app building questions like Authentication etc...

Isn't a well-built Github portfolio more valuable than Leetcode? What about getting sharp at Kubernetes, Redis, Elastic stack, Airflow, etc.?

I still don’t get how you overcame the gap from “can’t solve anything” to become “very cool” in leet code and how long does it take. I’m doing leet code about 2 weeks already, I did 50+ problems but problems usually with arrays, strings and maths, real algorithms such as binary trees, graphs, dynamic programming I don’t understand, I reading web sites watching videos about that but I don’t get them, I even barely doing two pointers and sliding windows because don’t understand. So I need to watch videos and read articles over and over again until I understand them ? Some days I read 2 hours an article and still don’t get it So how long does it take from you to master the leet code ?

Never been on leetcode. Senior software engineer. Leetcode can kiss my arse. If they ask me leetcode style questions I'll say: this is completely irrelevant to the job, ask me something that is applicable to your actual work environment.

You do not need any leetcode to land a job. I have 7 total completed leetcode questions. Interviewers value your real-world experience, and most companies do not even do live coding interviews. Your day-to-day is not more challenging than basic CRUD operations or fixing code smells for your first year at 99/100 companies. -2023 grad at a non-faang F500.

Ive been in the games industry as a software engineer for 8 years, and Ive never solved a leet code problem. So, imho who cares?

I have to disagree on “leet code teaches you to be comfortable in situations where you don’t immediately know the answer”. The entire point of leet code is the opposite: you practice to IMMEDIATELY know the answer to the problem during the interview. And let’s be honest, if you don’t know it you are not going to pass. Leet code problems are constructed in a way that makes sure you can’t solve them unless you know the answer or you solved something very similar before. There is no way to creatively solve a leet code problem during the interview and you will always lose that way to someone who simply knows the answer as they trained that problem.

Lol my friend at Uni could do leetcode hard like it's nothing. I'm talking since compsci 101 he could do them. He got that Google job like it's nothing. Honestly most people working there never grinded leetcode, some never even heard of it. They just on another level.

be a it engineer and work for a it company its the same like be a cheff and work for mc donalds, absolutely bullshit.

Honest question: Cant AI solve most leet code problems fairly easily? Do you think this means the challenges will get substantially harder or will the field move on to other tools for gatekeeping?

Does Leetcode sponsor you?

also the leetcode UI and similar platforms are complete dog shit that adds to the frustration. Plus the wording of the questions aren't even correct most of the time just to trick you it seems. life sucks

Hmmm.....Leetcode.

driving is way easier

Lol only 3 hours?

Ha this was exactly me 2 years ago

If you want to get good in driving a car. You should actually drive one. You should not go deep into understanding how engine works or grasping the concepts of every car part It makes no sense. Though it might help you to understand how to drive it a bit efficient, you wont be using the knowledge in day to day driving. Leetcode is similar to that. some questions make sense, most problems asked in the big tech makes no sense.

Leetcode is becoming completely irrelevant with AI... mark my words. Soon, the only thing relevant in software engineering is design patterns, system design and so on... like architecture stuff and choosing certain technologies over others. The actual algorithms themselves, unless extremely complicated, will not be made by humans at all.

Leetcode questions are not around some "niche" knowledge (fundamental - yes, but if you're trying to write code without any fundamental knowledge, it's a you problem). Real world work requires constructing algorithms. Yet, real world problems are usually large and convoluted, while leetcode problems are small and easy to explain in a single paragraph. So how else will you test an ability to construct algorithms, if not on small and simple problems? Anyone who fail with those will fail with the real-world problems spectacularly. On the other hand, any real-world related question would have been unavoidably niche.

Dont do leetcode!

"LeetCode is a skillset entirely on its own". Yes, and it's such a useless one, as you said. But hopefully that goes by the wayside as ChatGPT destroys these interviews and the tower of nonsensical assumptions they were built on.

What are your thoughts on there only being a net gain of 700 jobs in 2023? As opposed to over 200k+ in 2022?