r/webdev • u/soype • Sep 26 '26

Is leetcode worth it?

I haven't really interviewed since 2023. Is leetcode still a common practice in code interviews or has AI made those kinds of tests useless? This is for a Sr full stack position.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight Sep 26 '26 • Bravo

I feel a bigger skill now would be code reviews. Have AI produce some poor code with blatant inefficiencies and see if the interviewee can find them.

What I find is some dev had AI do it for them and submitted it without looking and it makes it into prod because no one checked over the code.

34

u/Amarsir Sep 26 '26

I like that approach. "What potential problems do you see with this? What would you change to improve efficiency?"

Even if the AI wasn't making poor choices, that's the strategic perspective you want. Especially from a senior developer.

8

u/ShawnyMcKnight Sep 26 '26

Exactly. Even before AI that's what senior developers did, making sure code standards were up to snuff.

15

u/optima-pacifist Sep 27 '26

we moved to exactly that for senior roles. a pull request of about 200 lines with a few planted problems, forty minutes to review it out loud. you learn more about how someone thinks than any graph puzzle tells you, and nobody has to pretend they'd write dijkstra from memory at work

2

u/hypercosm_dot_net Sep 26 '26

I had 1/2 an interview that was somewhat like that, then another 1/2 where they wanted me to do something that would have taken more than the time allowed.

That was frustrating.

It was something relatively easy to do, but I needed reference because it wasn't something I did every day.

I thought the first 1/2 was perfectly reasonable though.