Not exactly, but ageism is probably a welcome externality. The value of leetcode is mostly in helping hiring-people wash their hands of some responsibility.
Another externality - if not an intended effect - is that it selects for people who are willing to accept an abusive relationship with their employer.
Why do I call it abusive? "Study this stuff, that isn't actually related to your job, on your own time, for free, for months, and we might give you a job." Even if you do get a job, they still abused you.
Would you prefer a system of strict credentialism, a system of lotteries, or a system that optimizes for hiring the most eloquent bullshit artists, instead?
Those are your three alternatives to the whiteboard interview.
Which would you prefer? (I'm perfectly willing to admit I've missed one[1], but it's probably a subset of these three.)
[1] Life-long German apprenticeship/Japanese salaryman arrangements don't work in the fast rise/fast fall tech environment. Also, Japanese salaryman culture is horrific.
You can do a whiteboard interview without doing leet code. Do an actual coding interview (whether whiteboard or not). Don't do credentials-only. Don't do a lottery. And make sure you don't fall for a BS artist.
But in your coding interview, don't do leet code. Just give a regular coding problem. Not a big one, not a long one, not an especially tricky one. Then watch them code, and listen. (Ask them to think out loud - it's important to understand how they think.) That's all it takes.
How do you do that when you have 1000+ applications for each job posting? It has to be automated in some way so you can review a more sane 50 or so resumes. lol. Now if there's a less-dumb version of leetcode for hiring, I'm all for it.
> But in your coding interview, don't do leet code. Just give a regular coding problem. Not a big one, not a long one, not an especially tricky one.
This limits the signal of the skill ceiling that you can pick up from the interview. Give an easy whiteboard problem, and both a great candidate and a good candidate will be evaluated to be roughly the same. (No red flags, both solved the question)
It's a bit like hiring a plumber, by giving each prospective contractor a two question quiz: "Which way does crap flow?" [1] and "When is payday?" [2]
At that point, you are just going with a lottery system.
We in general don't need great. Good is OK. We just need to avoid bad or terrible.
But we still knew when great showed up. I was one of the interviewers. I remember that the interview switched, from us asking questions to find out how much the candidate knew, to us asking questions so we could learn stuff.
Now she's a principal engineer. In her spare time, she's also my boss.
Actually credentialism could make sense in this case. Let someone study all of the Leetcode once, on their own terms, and use the same results for every company for the next 5-10 years. A credential has issues of access and privilege, but I think it’s clear at this point the lack of a credential is also posing serious problems.
Doctors don’t have to relearn everything on the boards every time they talk to a new job, and that definitely helps combat ageism in that field.
Isn't that "abuse" fundamentally how the whole job selection labor market works? You must attempt to ferret out vocational demands to fuffill to get paid and junp through all "selling" hoops. I can see only a few otber broad alternatives.
1. Gatekeeping "Do you have the credential for X from the system? If so first come first served for defined pay bracket.". While lower friction once done it is an informational organizing nightmare even before dealing with perverse incentives in who can work as what. Choice of credentials vs demand would still be an issue.
2. Defacto Corveé system of "You work at X and live at Y or else." Obvious issues with lack of freedom and inefficient use of human potential.
3. Agent Dynastic: Less formalized gatekeeping where the sales must be handled by an intermediary to seperate non-job relevant skills. If you can sell your own labor then it is just labor market capitalism essentially as the non-relevant skills are tautologically now job related.
I get how it sucks but I am not sure how to improve upon it without leading to the problems of the other approaches.
