Thank you for writing this. It bothers me that the genealogy of leetcode has been completely obscured as it comes from competitive programming competitions whose primary demographic were who? Those smart people from Stanford or MIT. Once you realize the "who", it becomes even more clear for me why we're dealing with 'i have my social life at work, so I want people I can hang out with'-type people when we're preparing for interviewing. Not to mention that crowd is least likely to have any experience communicating with, say for example, Black folk, amongst other demos, as peers, you you get all these issues surrounding application of "culture fit".
> as it comes from competitive programming competitions whose primary demographic were who? Those smart people from Stanford or MIT.
I mean, it comes from every intro to algorithm and data structures classes at every serious CS program.
> Not to mention that crowd is least likely to have any experience communicating with, say for example, Black folk, amongst other demos, as peers
Not sure what you are insinuating here... That folks from these schools or who do good at algorithms don't see black folks as their equals? That sounds incredibly racist.
> I mean, it comes from every intro to algorithm and data structures classes at every serious CS program.
If you wanted to indicate the level of generality here you wouldn't have used the adjective "serious"
> Not sure what you are insinuating here... That folks from these schools or who do good at algorithms don't see black folks as their equals?
I said "least likely to have any experience communicating... as peers". Hard to talk about "culture fit" when you don't have experience gauging certain folk who're far from sharing your background. That's just simple empiricism, which is why the reciprocal notion is true for many Black folk as well. De facto segregation has ruinous effects.
> If you wanted to indicate the level of generality here you wouldn't have used the adjective "serious"
I've seen a lot of programs that have "IT" or other technical terms in their description but that would not prepare a student for a real Software Engineering position. Same thing with a lot of bootcamps.
Serious in this case means any accredited 4 year public or private university. So, not boot camps, not sketchy for-profit crap like Trump university. I went to an unremarkable 4 year public university and they focused quite hard on data structures and algorithms. I thought it was the same everywhere else...
Given how accepting techies (in the US and even Europe) have been of "Chinese folk" and "Indian folk", I don't really see why they would be any less accepting of "Black folk". This stereotype really needs to die.
