Hell No, Leetcode

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:30:00 -0700

I’ve been working with code for literal decades now, and I find that I’m still being presented with leetcode style problems in interviews. It’s a frustrating experience honestly… they rely entirely on algorithmic tricks which even the folks who are good at them will tell you they’re worthless and you’ll never really see/do those things in real life.

It’s a little like being asked to name all fifty states with their capitols… I know I could at one point, I remember having to learn and recite them all in seventh grade geography… but like any other knowledge that isn’t useful in my daily life I’m not sure I can recall them all accurately, at least not without taking a bit to think about it. Well, a senior developer who’s been writing code for years without seeing a single leetcode type problem is in a similar boat… they probably remember seeing the algorithmic trick years ago but can’t recall the details without having to tease it out of their memory.

So what’s the expectation then? That people with lives that don’t involve rereading 50+ year old computer science texts find time to study before an interview? What does that even prove for someone at that stage? It literally is not the job. My head is full of information involving building scalable, fault tolerant, and self-healing infrastructure. Or how you architect a system that can handle millions of requests per second with very tight p999 latency. Those are the problems a senior engineer actually handles. Not algorithmic tricks.

Hello, World

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

First post on the new site. I’ve been meaning for quite a while to set up a personal site/blog and finally got around to it. Mostly just want a space to rant about various topics of interest to me. Computers/technology, science/scifi, medicine, dogs, etc… it’ll probably all find its way here in varying amounts.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Ron. This is my personal site and blog — a place for me to yell into the void, primarily…

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Cloudswarm

Hell No, Leetcode

Hello, World

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