LeetCode study says Goldman Sachs' developers better than JPMorgan's, worse than Google's
If you want to apply for an engineering job in a bank, you'll need to do a lot of coding tests. But before you do these coding tests, you'll need to do a lot of practice - typically on Leetcode. A new study* reveals just how good you'll need to get on there.
Click here to follow our new WhatsApp channel. Get our updates straight to your phone 📱
The study, by computer science students and academics at North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia, looked at over 300,000 profiles on LeetCode and their publicly available problem-solving scores.
It found that employees at some firms have far higher scores than others. Some of the most able problem solvers on LeetCode work for Google, followed Facebook, Bloomberg, LinkedIn and Nvidia, in that order. The global average problem solving score for employees at top firms on LeetCode is 1,513.
The researchers gave us some additional information (not included in their report), which shows that Goldman Sachs' engineers score an average of 1,602 on LeetCode, compared to JPMorgan's average of 1,500. This makes Goldman's engineers better at LeetCode problems than Microsoft's but worse than Bloomberg's.
Source: North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia
How do you achieve these high LeetCode scores in advance of your banking job application? The researchers also looked at points of commonality between the big-scorers. Predictably, they found that the highest LeetCode scores go to people solving "hard" problems on the site. They also discovered that the high scorers are more likely to code in C++ (followed by Python, Bash, MySQL, and Java) and to spend time solving a particular set of problems ('Greedy algorithms', 'Dynamic Programming,' 'Enumeration,' 'Graph,' 'Ordered Set,' 'Bitmask', 'Binary Indexed Tree' and 'Topological sort.') The table below shows the correlations.
Source: North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia
The study confirms that if you want to get through the technical interview for a banking job, you probably need to spend a lot of time practising coding challenges. This can be time-consuming: even the typical LeetCode user has practised 248 problems, say the researchers.
They suggest that universities incorporate LeetCode practice into computer science courses. They also suggest that anyone embarking on a coding test understands how to solve greedy algorithm problems in particular. Struggling with greedy algorithms, "often leads to the failure of the technical interview." You have been warned.
*How Much Effort Do You Need to Expend on a Technical Interview? A Study of LeetCode Problem Solving Statistics
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)
