HackerTube.dev

Winning at programming competitions is a negative factor for being good on the job

pkrumins · 67.2K views · 2015-04-05 · 1:08

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

A one-minute clip of Peter Norvig saying that Google found programming contest success correlates negatively or poorly with job performance. The description links to a blog post discussing it.

On Hacker News

Used as the go-to citation in LeetCode and hiring debates that competitive programming skill is not a good signal for hiring.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2017–2023

Topics

Software practice, open source & careersAlgorithms & data structures
Search by tags
peter norviggooglehiringleetcodecompetitive programming

What people said

nitwit005 · 2023-04 · Reference

You did emphasize it was the best result, so it's hard to argue that you selected for it. Back in 2015 Peter Norvig discussed an analysis at Google that suggested doing well at coding contests was a negative indicator of job performance: [VIDEO] Presumably they do well at these sorts of questions, but that doesn't imply the same actual effectiveness.

Read the original HN comment ↗
nitwit005 · 2022-05 · Reference

There was a Google talk some years ago that brought up this same idea with regards to people who did programming contests: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
MichaelMoser123 · 2022-01 · Reference

>were hit with antitrust litigation starting around 2010 because they were all involved in colluding to reduce the ability of devs to switch jobs I didn't know that, really interesting detail. >no one wants to admit they don't know what they are doing. Interesting perspective, though I don't know about the vodoo part. They seem to be taking the matter quite seriously, at least google does. Take the matter of competitive programming: Peter Norvig says they were checking, if taking part in programming contests would correlate with good performance at the job [1]; I think having read somewhere that Norvig revised his negative judgement later on, as they had examined more data [2]. (actually that would mean that they didn't act on the data to begin with, well well). These companies are good at data processing, any data that is, at least they seem to be taking it dead seriously (disclaimer: I never worked at google, though I have managed to fail at interviewing there, however i am not sure if i would have accepted an offer ;-) [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by pkrumins, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources