I had an interview for a software test engineer at an ML company in Palo Alto that I flunked hard on Monday. First I had to complete a series of leetcode questions on CodeSignal which I just about passed and then had an algorithms interview where I totally forgot how to implement a binary search tree (specifically inserting values), and just got the rejection letter. I got one working, just, but it was a cumbersome process of working it out from foggy memory. To be fair I’d had a four hour on-site just before that, and also had to fly to England two hours after, so my head wasn’t in the right space.

Anyway, my question is when did leetcode become appropriate for test engineers? Are there any hiring managers here who can explain a double leetcode interview process? I really don’t want to spend my free time learning these things by rote to prepare!

I’m a little stung by the whole ordeal because it sucked failing so hard.