There are so many YouTube videos about
how to learn LeetCode, how to get good at LeetCode, LeetCode solutions,
but how come there aren't any videos about how absolutely **terrible** LeetCode is? Side note, if you do like LeetCode,
this video is probably not for you.

However, if you have been spending hours
grinding LeetCode and you are sick of it, well, grab a chair because this
video is going to be one big fat rant on how much LeetCode sucks. If you don't know what LeetCode
is, congratulations, you

have lived a good life. I sound so bitter. I should maybe edit that out. LeetCode is a site that posts
thousands of small coding problems at different levels of difficulty. And all it does is that
it asks you to solve them.

It also does have various tests it
does on your solution in order for you to actually pass the question. People practicing LeetCode aren't
practicing LeetCode to get better at software engineering or coding. They are practicing
LeetCode to get a job.

A job specifically at FAANG. And now there is this culture of grinding
LeetCode day and night, solving hundreds of problems just so that you can get
employed at FAANG or a big tech company. And it really is a culture. There are videos of people solving 500
LeetCode problems and giving strategies.

This guy solved a thousand,
five hundred problems. This person spent three
months on LeetCode. Now people are spending a lot of time
learning LeetCode because, well, companies want LeetCode in their
software engineering interviews.

But does LeetCode even make
you a good software engineer? No. And will practicing LeetCode like
that actually make you interview well? No. Here's why. Here are some LeetCode problems. And as you can see, it does
rely heavily on algorithmic

and data structure problems. What is happening is that coders
will practice these problems and similar problems over and over
again, until they have it memorized. And that is how they will
prep for an interview. And what happens in a LeetCode interview?

Well, the coder gets a problem
from an interviewer, such as given a collection of words, return the
most frequently occurring word, and usually the coder who has probably
done this problem or a similar problem will just start coding immediately. Because they know exactly what to do.

So they will probably jump straight
into the coding, output the answer and then explain the steps. This does not happen in real life. I mean, I do wish I could know an answer
immediately after looking at a problem, but most of the time that doesn't happen.

If I am a software engineer at work and I
come across a problem, I don't immediately jump straight into it and start coding. I usually spend a few minutes figuring out
some questions or even some edge cases. So if my question is given a collection
of words, return the most frequently

used word, I would ask questions like: how will my input be given? Will it be a list? Will it be a file? What should I return if there were
multiple words of the same frequency? What should I return if
the collection is empty?

And that is a common process that
you would do as a software engineer. Unfortunately, that process of asking
questions and thinking through your solution briefly, before you just jump
to the coding, that process is falling away with the LeetCode interviews.

Now this is probably the coder's fault
or the person getting interviewed, but I do also think it is
the current LeetCode culture where you just need to code as fast
as you can to get the solution. And look, practicing LeetCode is fine.

It's great. But the issue is, I think when you
practice solving so many similar problems, your brain almost loses
that ability to actually think through what the solution can be,
ask clarifying questions, et cetera. It wants to just jump to the solution
that you know and practiced, which for

an interview isn't the best answer. This person posted on Reddit, and
I'm going to have to censor myself here, but this is what they said. Beep LeetCode beep. Anyone who asks LeetCode questions at
99% of people can't solve in 30 minutes

unless they've done the problem before. Beep the people who've gamed
the interview system by grinding hundreds of hours of LeetCode. Beep the people who've let this
vicious cycle continue and spiral out of control because they're too
brain dead to ask relevant interview

questions for the specific role. I do love angry people on Reddit. This person responded. But they just want to see
how you problem solve. Just kidding. We just learn to pretend it's
the first time we see a problem. And I think that's a whole
issue with LeetCode.

I don't know why companies are
pushing this interview style, because it is quite unnatural. I mean, I can't even think of a situation
where someone has come to me and said, 'Hey, you solve this two-line problem.'

No, you don't need to think about
the input or the data or whatever the stakeholder wants to know. You do not need to think about that. You only have a few minutes. You just solve this problem
of adding two numbers.

I'll even draw you a picture. Like, what is that? I mean, have you ever seen
that situation before? It's actually pretty sad. I think interview candidates,
especially for software engineering, are pretty... It's treated pretty
badly and it's actually not funny.

Companies should be called out on it. I do think it is Big Tech's fault
because LeetCode itself isn't bad. I think they've always been a version
of the LeetCode test in the past where you would practice a few examples just
to understand what the company wants.

And it's an okay way to learn to
code, but the issue is that somewhere down the line, there's this culture
put forth that you have to grind and solve 500 LeetCode problems. Then you'll have a chance to be employed.

That is so bad. I do wish that tech companies
were a bit more understanding and open about the interview process. Take a look at this post from Reddit. It was titled 'Microsoft interviewer
told me LeetCode is bad.' I had my final interview for the
Microsoft SWE internship role today,

and something really struck out to me. We were wrapping up my last interview
after all the questions were done. And he literally told me, "You
aren't like other candidates." I asked him what he meant. And he said every candidate he had
interviewed so far, just grinds

LeetCode and he could tell. He said that apparently everyone comes
into the interviews and just codes out the solution, regardless of how difficult
the problem is that he gives them. But as an interviewer, he doesn't actually
know if they can code well or not.

They could literally be copying
and pasting the solution that they have memorized. And yes, I do wish big tech companies
were more open about what they wanted upfront, which would sort of stop this
toxic culture that you need to spend

three months prepping for LeetCode. If they were more forthcoming, we would
know what exactly they're looking for. Do they want someone who can
solve problems in seconds and just pump out solutions? Or do they want someone who

can talk through the solution, talk
through their thinking process. And yes, maybe somewhere down the line,
their solution may not be a hundred percent correct, but that is okay
because they care about the thinking process of the software engineer.

And then if they told candidates this
in advance, put out a blanket statement, give candidates proper learning
guides, which maybe just warrants a few hours of self-study, then they so
you won't have a situation like this where the rhetoric is, "Learn as much
LeetCode as you can, the more, the"

better, in fact, leetcode until you... and it's just useless. What does
months and months of leetcode actually prepare you in terms of
becoming an actual software engineer? At least if the candidate was building
an app for three months, they would

learn something that's beneficial. So that is my rant on why leetcode
is absolutely useless. Now, if you ever come across a problem in your
real job, where you have to add numbers backwards, and someone even
gave you a picture to understand

the concept, please let me know. Thank you so much for watching. If you like my content, please
like, comment, and subscribe. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

LeetCode: The Worst Thing to Happen to Software Engineering

LeetCode: The Worst Thing to Happen to Software Engineering

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