How do in-role Data Science performance and leetcode difficulties relate?

Sincere inquiry as to what these indicate outside the amount of time spent learning Leetcode

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Probably the majority of Data Scientists who work off notebooks and rely on importing high-level ML abstraction libraries (e.g sklearn) do not relate to leet code so much.

A minority of Data Scientists are also Applied Scientists. They are relied on to productionalize their own code (e.g. as web service), publish internal ML libraries with low level code (e.g. tensorflow, pytorch, numpy, etc.), and build efficient caching and logging for their deployed solutions (e.g. using arrays, dictionaries, linked-lists, queues, etc.). For those, leetcode type of questions are very relevant.

End of the day, leetcode problems are meant to screen those who are good programmers from those who aren’t, and those who are proficient in data structures and algorithms from those who aren’t. I personally would much rather hire the good ones even if the fay-to-day work doesn’t require much.

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separate the Leetcode practitioners from the non-practitioners. Good programmers and Leetcode practitioners are not the same.

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Good programmers and Leetcode practitioners are not the same.

The “leetcode” questions are the only factor that matters. I agree that these are “hard” questions, however there are clear disparities in programmer quality between those who are unable to complete the “easy” level problems and those who are not. The “easy” version of LeetCode is essentially a FizzBuzz-style exam.

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I agree, but from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly above medium-hard questions in tech interviews.

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it’s mostly above medium-hard questions in tech interviews.

This is for the SWE posititions at tech companies . For “DS” roles I have only seen “easy” with the occasional “medium”

I’m fine with easy to medium in DS. They get half the points if they are able to solve it, then the other half if they are able to do it very efficiently or at least communicate how would they do it if given more time.

Fact is a large number of people interviewed for DS can’t solve easy/medium leetcode.