Do I really need to prepare LeetCode?

Short answer is yes. Even though current trend is shifting to something else, so you feel this is not necessary. However, it still is required.

Here are why you still need to prepare Coding Test.

Coding Test is the most cheapest and instinct way to figure out employee’s coding ability.

I won’t say coding test is a good way to evaluate the candidate. There are number of ways to truly assess such as pair programming and assignment. The problem is that those items are time consuming and difficult to evaluate. At the end of the day, HR and interviewer need to put grade for each candidate and decide whether they hire or not.

In this context, coding test is very economic. All candidates will resolve same or similar question during/prior actual on site interview. This will let the company quickly decide a candidate is able to put their thought into code and decide this candidate is qualifiable.

It is still standard.

Once upon a time (oh man..), Silicon valley is still one of the dream place for almost all developers. Most companies (a.k.a Big Tech) thought about what is the best way to do batch evaluation with minimal cost. They devise coding test is enough to assess coding ability and they push the bar further and further.

That legacy is still valid. Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple those big giants still use coding test as one of the crucial pillar of the interview. Until they move to something else more intuitive and easy to judge. Medium size company will follow until that time.

It does not mean you should be able to solve Hard category.

(Remember, this is my personal opinion) i don’t like give something graded as Hard in Leetcode for coding interview question during interview session. Resolving hard question easily does not mean you are good at coding and solve business problem easily as well.

Candidate may face hard problem they faced just the day before the interview day. Maybe that was the only problem the candidate memorize as s secret weapon. Think about why they use this for assessment.

Don’t even think about using Gen AI for the interview.

Some candidate thought that they can use Gen AI for their coding test. They just copy the description and paste it to ask the solution.

Believe me. You will pass maybe online assessment but you will be challenged during AI scanner or something because it is usually scanned by another Gen AI scanner. Don’t put your future to handy Gen AI service.

Good thing is that this is not the only factor for the interview.

After some retrospections of coding test, there are arguments that this is not the only decision factor whether the company hires one or not.

Just double check that why the company puts people coding test platform. They want to know whether you are able to understand the problem and abstract it into proper data structure and algorithm. That’s it. You don’t need to solve all test cases (if you can, it would be great though) and it does not need to be super complicated. Always keep it mind that why you are doing this.