that's probably true, but if they are anywhere in the realm of leetcode, there are so many example in the training set that they can regurgitate, debug and explain them perfectly. I assembled an entire book of leetcode solutions, explanations, common pitballs etc using claude and send it to my kindle, and so far, it's bang on.
It's certainly a lot more satisfying than asking Reddit most of the time, whether you are getting the truth or not. I don't know how many times I've posted a question on reddit, not necessarily about something psychological or relationship related, even about things like mortgages or landscaping, come back to check the comments and ya, have my day totally de-railed by trolling strangers with an ax to grind.
This is a fun article. As a current Principal at MSFT I've never seen these type of questions being asked in interviews. I don't think it's fair or accurate to say "If you’re an experienced programmer, you already know how to do all of them". So many of the SWEs and candidates at Microsoft are just studying leetcode using python, joining the company and writing managed C# code.
I feel all of these things too. I'm 42 and started working right out of high school. Unfortunately I was dumb, didn't save money or pursue high earnings until 6 years ago when I joined big tech. I live in HCOL area, and realistically have 10 or maybe even 20 years left before I can even start thinking about retirement.
Trying to figure out how to make this sustainable.
Don't you need to spend 5-10 thousand USD to run these models that are "as good" as frontier models from 6-12 months ago? I haven't seen a convincing breakdown for ROI of running your own coding models. Especially against a $20 or even $200 plan
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