I agree with all of this. Leetcode questions are fine as long as they aren't actually difficult maths puzzles or brain teasers. We also used atoi/itoa loads and it was pretty much the perfect difficulty.
Though I still do start with a short fizzbuzz-level question because you would be surprised how many people fail that and it makes it way less awkward if you start with atoi and they can't write a loop.
If they fail fizzbuzz I generally just turn the interview into a chat or give them easy questions to practice, rather than say "yeah no thanks", because I feel like the latter is a bit mean, and everyone can benefit from interview practice.
> If they fail fizzbuzz I generally just turn the interview into a chat or give them easy questions to practice, rather than say "yeah no thanks", because I feel like the latter is a bit mean, and everyone can benefit from interview practice.
It’s kind to politely ramp the interview down in that case but I’ve learned to then cut off any later interviews. It’s a waste of the company’s time and the candidate’s too.
If we were going to have lunch the recruiter takes them to lunch anyway, unless the (now former) candidate doesn’t want to.
Do you mean the C function atoi() to convert a string to number? If yes, I also used the same technical interview question for year. It is a nice "fractally complex" (many levels of depth) question. Everyone can understand it in 10 seconds, but you can really show your experience when you get into the edge cases and unit tests. Plus, if the candidate is a bit junior, you can push their boundaries by asking about different edge case and watch how they react. Similarly: I had a teammate for a few years that asked people to program a very simple linked list class. He was shocked how many mid-level devs couldn't do it. As I recall, he never sent me a bad candidate, so it was good enough for us.
Though I still do start with a short fizzbuzz-level question because you would be surprised how many people fail that and it makes it way less awkward if you start with atoi and they can't write a loop.
If they fail fizzbuzz I generally just turn the interview into a chat or give them easy questions to practice, rather than say "yeah no thanks", because I feel like the latter is a bit mean, and everyone can benefit from interview practice.