ThrottleHead's comments

Had to use this to improve the speed of our admin user search after the table got fairly large (>1mil). The biggest problem was that it's a general search that searched display_name as well as email. We ended up cleverly omitting the email search unless '@' was included in the search string.

No one wants to address the elephant in the room, and that's that "leetcode" or "codefight" tests have nothing to do with your ability to design and build complex systems of interacting parts.

Why anyone puts a high degree of credence into these tests and whether someone can solve one in a high-pressure interview is beyond me.

Give them a take-home assignment where they can develop something similar to what they would be at the company, and decide if they wrote efficient, elegant code that's easy to follow.

Also, if you're self-taught and applying to a team of CS majors, may the force be with you. No one's more insecure than a CS major interviewing a guy who might have more development experience than he does.

I learned early in my career that in engineering things are really only ever varying degrees of brokenness.