Recently, I have noticed a very dangerous trend among people in their early years of engineering: wasting so much time on competitive programming and buying courses worth thousands of rupees from LinkedIn influencers in the hopes that it will get them jobs at companies like Google. Honestly, I don't blame the students; these people have brainwashed students into thinking that DSA/CP is all it takes to get into FAANG or other high-paying companies.
Here's the truth: your CP skills are mostly worthless (especially if you are not from Tier 1 colleges) unless you perform at the highest level, like at least reaching the ICPC Asia West finals. Recruiters don't care if you are an Expert or Specialist on Codeforces. Even someone with zero knowledge of CP can now become a Candidate Master using GPT. If you are smart enough to perform at that level (ICPC), you won't need anyone spoon-feeding you basic stuff like segment trees or binary lifting. You will be smart enough to learn it yourself by going through proper resources like USACO.
So, if your goal is to get a job, you are better off doing good original projects in your area of expertise and maintaining at least an 8.5+ CGPA instead of learning how segment trees work or how to do digit DP. Most recruiters don't care about that stuff.
This is especially true now. Online assessments can be passed using GPT. Competitive programming skills have lost much of their practical value. Face to face interviews will mostly be project related. Scammers on LinkedIn exaggerate the importance of DSA and CP to promote their low-quality courses. If you know anyone thinking of buying TUF+ membership or one of the courses from TLE Eliminators or anything from some bhaiya/didi trying to sell you something, please send them this post. They are not just scamming you. They are doing something worse. Misleading you and making you put time and effort in things that dont matter.
Oh yeah. The number faang employees on linkedin whose entire personality is dsa/cp is too damn high.
But most of the people do CP for Quant
damn I read this exact post the other day
give me the link to that post. i wanna thank him.
I'm trying to find it lol but I think some things were changed. It is actually kind of bugging me but I will tag you when I find it.
Okay batman765 I found it here. It looks like OP forgot to add the part about low-quality courses, but luckily your comment came to the rescue. Truly weird stuff.
They have removed my comment calling out striver. So I will say it again. Striver has made money making an entire generation delusional. He was recently flexing his range rover which he is probably not even tall enough to get in without the help of a stool.
Can I ask, do you feel like you have been duped by striver (or other Indian course sellers)?
Kind of. They make it seem like if you are 1600+ on codeforces u r gonna get a good job. Which is a lie to sell their useless courses/material. I was not smart enough to see through the BS when I was in 2nd year.
I sure hope you didn't pay them anything, because there is so much high-quality free stuff out there that it isn't even funny, even for the more advanced topics.
And if it makes you feel better, even if you didn't get into competitive programming, you would've found another way to waste your time.
Litteraly eliminating the competition. You do CP almost every day , so not even you follow that. Most companies test students via algorithmic problems, not only FAANG...
I just do it for fun now. I am just trying to warn juniors.
Feeling sad for u ...if ur good at algorithmic thinking and coding ...Bare minimum would be clearing TCs Codevita ,if u are not able to do that then CP is a waste for u ..."jobless" words suits u
Thanks man. Hopefully you will be able to get a job at TCS after doing almost 1000 questions on codeforces. I hear it's a great company to work for.
U wont get a perfect pedestal to start ur journey..Unless ur some genius
You dont have be a genuis to work in a much better company than fucking TCS. Lol.
Ig ur into top MNCs then :)
There are plenty of companies in between TCS and "Top MNCs".
Bro I started CP after i joined tcs , now i quit tcs and i am jobless again.
people like you remind me of this quote.“It's Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.” Take it from me. I am 1800+ rated on my alt and in my 8th semester. I have solved 1000+ questions. You get absolutely nothing doing codeforces unless u r top 50 in india and did something crazy in ICPC.
Ok maybe i am wrong but i know for sure that a lot of people that are good at algo usually perform well in their career because they developed some problem solving skills ( how to get through a problem, how to make logical stuff go around...). I would say 100% that seg tree/fenwick/dp etc are useless, but they teach how to work with tools , and also if you do cf just for rating it is wrong 100%. I am against going crazy 10 hours a day cp , but doing some problems from time to time it is a good practice.
Bruh the best way to get good at software engineering is to do software enginnering. Not made up problems on codeforces. These big money companies that these scammers talk about are not even gonna interview you unless you have some crazy good connections or you are from tier 1 college. For a normal dude doing engineering its better to do good projects and get good grades rather than do codeforces. I know it because I have done it. Make changes in your life before it gets too late instead of coping.
Then what are the "to do's" for a t3 guy with not so good connections to not end up working at 20k a month
why tf are you asking me. I wasted a lot of time doing cp, lol. I am unemployed mf. I am from tier 2. U r most likely cooked unless u get extremely lucky.
Advice for fellow Indians: Dont cheat, interviews are anyway going to be in-person mostly going forward. I have taken multiple interviews for new grads, and I grill them harder if they mention competitive programming. So if you cheat your way to a rank which gets you the opportunity, getting humiliated in the interview is something you dont want, trust me!
Enjoy the sport!
So let me get this straight. You go easy on people who dont do CP and grill people who worked hard and grinded cp for the same job? You do realise people grind cp so that they can pass the interviews easily right? People like you should not be allowed to conduct interviews.
bro relax, when did I say I go easy on anyone wtf? I just wanted to make a point that if you are going to flex your rank on your resume, you are going to be tested the same way. Im not asking div2Ds to everyone posting their ranks. But not gonna ask 2 sum to you if are rated Expert on Codeforces.
Talking about people like me shouldnt be allowed to take interviews. Calm down!
Anyway love!
By saying you grill a specific group of people you are by definition going easy on everyone else relatively. you should ask the same level of questions for the same job irrespective of what Their rating is. This is basic common sense. The fact that someone has to tell you this is sad.
If he asks the same level of problems to a Newbie and a GM either the newbie won't be able to understand either of the problems for the whole interview duration or the GM will AK them all in 5 mins. In neither of the cases it will be an "interview".
First of all the scenario you have proposed is stupid. If a legit GM applied for a role, a newbie wont be shortlisted for that role. In an interview candidates shortlisted will have similar skill level. An interviewer should use the same level of questions to judge candidates.
Cheating low IQ fake experts like you should not be commenting under blogs. You have more skipped code than accepted code.
What!!! I got 730+ codes skipped? When did that happen o_o
(BTW who knows how many skips you got on your main which made you make a seperate if just for comments xd)
Feel free to google sarcasm when you get free time. The fact is, you are a cheater with a lot of skipped code.
Well I have already given enough justifications for those so no point giving them again. If I cheat I suck and am just wasting my time here which could be utilized in other stuff like dev/grades etc and will most likely end up being a jobless bankrupt for doing nothing all day other than copy pasting submissions for more than 300 days straight without a single day missed (which is also kinda boring to commint that long to so even more effort doing a boring thing that long for hours). If I don't then it'll improve my problem solving ability which will be transferable to other skills outside cf like ML/math/identifying and solving real world problems rather than whinning about not getting a job. Either of these will end with their respective results which I am fully aware of.
Wasted your time typing all that crap. With the amount of skipped code you have, you have literally zero credibility. Go yap in front of someone else.
Well... what use is the "credibility" if you enjoy what you do? Even if you don't what's the use of being "credible" about a sport/system which is dying anyways and won't be considered for resume/shortlistings anymore (if it is right now which i doubt)?
And no I didn't waste time writing it coz I enjoyed it :) Time is only wasted if you do an unproductive work without fun. If it's either fun or productivity it ain't wasted.
For example you fighting here isn't productive but is a way to release your frustration of "joblessness after being an 1800" (which is hard to digest if legit like at that rating you should have enough ideas to solve problems build stuff of your own) so in a way you had fun (upvoting you for this). Else why would you do it?
Well I have already given enough justifications for those so no point giving them again.and starts giving justification again XDXD
If you read through it I didn't give any justification but considered both the possibilities of me cheating and me playing fair and gave the possible outcomes for both the scenarios to the best of my knowledge and reasoning ability. If someone reading that thinks I cheat they'll be happier with knowing about my fate (or that of all cheaters for that matter who spend all day on this site). If they think otherwise they might be motivated to not give up on it because there is still hope in an indirect manner as these skills are transferable to other domains (like my ability to pick up a new language increased drastically coz of cf and that's just one example) and won't quit. It's for the reader not for me/my image (and honestly what's the point of having an image of a high rated/low rated coder when the ratings will soon stop mattering. Other than that my rating isn't really that impressive to matter either ways.) And who knows someone cheating reads this and decides to drop it and play fair after seeing the pros of it? It's a win-win-win from all sides no matter what you decide to choose.
I don't see how that's an issue. If the job requires you to solve some kind of problem and one person being a newbie doesn't even understand it in 2 hrs, that simply means he is not qualified for the job. Same goes for other scenarios. What's your point, if any?
I still remember you getting caught for cheating lol
Sir, I saw your linkedin profile. It was very inspiring for me. After a long time, I visited codeforces. Why is it showing that you are a cheater? I am ashamed, because your story inspired me, only to find out the bitter truth, sir.
Because many of his submissions were skipped, I'm not sure whether he copied from someone else or if it was just a coincidence where his code matched another person's solution. That might be why he was marked as a cheater on his profile.
This is the stupidest thing I have seen on codeforces. Whats your IQ? 65?
It happened opposite to me in the Codechef SDE backend intern interview. After seeing my profile, the interviewer did not ask me any DSA questions; instead started asking system design questions.
get downvoted lul
100% true.(I just do it as chess, evening workout + like math)
Just starting out and I'm finding this damn fun
But knowing it might be useless is a bit disheartening
Don't be disheartened; yes, the subject itself is not very useful (esp in swe). What's important is the problem solving skills you build by getting good at cp.
In my college i have seen placements of those students who dont know a single thing who just waster their whole year of college and still got placed and i am still struggling.This is so frustrating to watch.
is this why you cheat in your second codeforces contest and got all of the submission skipped..
you one hell of a hypocrite..
This is the reason you are struggling,people like you don't deserve to get a job
for your whole life you will always just put blame on others rather than be a man to take it upon yourself.. you little piece of filth just change your password and forget it
Yeah, I made a mistake and unlike you, I’m not hiding behind arrogance to justify it. But the way you’re frothing at the mouth over someone else's failure says a lot more about you than it does about me. People grow. People fall and get back up. But people like you? You just sit and spit on others, pretending it makes you better. I’d rather be someone who made a mistake and learned than someone who uses someone else’s low point as an ego boost.
Yeah, I cheated — once, and I won’t deny it. It was stupid, and it’s not something I’m proud of. But unlike you, I don’t wear someone else’s mistake as a badge to feel better about myself.From now on, I’m grinding the right way. No shortcuts. No cheating. Just hard work.Everyone makes mistakes — but real growth is owning them and fixing them. Cheating in one contest doesn’t define me; staying stuck in that mistake would.And no, I’m not the kind of person who’ll blame the world forever. But I am the kind who won’t tolerate arrogant nobodies trying to drag me down while I’m rebuilding.So go ahead, enjoy your fake moral high ground. I’ll enjoy my progress one honest line of code at a time.
chatgtp ass response lol. How isnt this guy banned after having a whole contest skipped?
.
bro said all that crap just to cheat again in the recent contest, atleast your profile picture is honest that you are a massive L
i don't think that it is completely useless as you have said — As most of the companies ask question related to it.. i don't see a reason why should a person not do cp..
CP also increases individual problem solving skill which is useful in making projects
Doing basic dsa is more than enough for almost all interviews, You dont have to do cp. Doing cp will not make you do better projects. Doing projects will help you get better at doing projects. By grinding on cf u r wasting your time.
Avg thinking. Saying that doing cp is waste.
I have done various database designs for many projects, and in most of them, I treat them as competitive programming problems. This approach often leads to really good designs. The same goes for API design, where I think of APIs as functions that return intermediate values to get the final answer. I apply this thinking when integrating backend APIs into frontend code.
This thinking will not come from doing just basic dsa , I'm speaking from experience.
what about OA's?
even if you cheat in OA the interviewer will ask you question and then what will you do
pull out chatgpt from your pocket
It's honestly wild how cheating is just normal in almost all Indian colleges. These OA cheaters even end up clearing interviews and landing offers. I seriously think it's just a skill issue on the interviewers' part.
It's really not that hard to spot a cheater — their behavior gives it away in like under 5 minutes.
well what can we do, just grind on cf and hope that our grind pays off..
From far away it looks like she is half beetle. Is that intentional?
Malicious Dumasses charging Gullible Dumasses for stuff that has been present online for free for years
I wish the descendants of Alexandre would stop misbehaving.
But what about my wish to reach candidate master or be one of the best in India? I dont think I do CP because of the interviews or any other reasons..... I just love CP !
Yeah then don't buy stupid courses and don't think becoming cm on cf will get you into Google?
I agree. I think it's sad that most people (from mine and similar colleges in India) do competitive programming just because they think it's mandatory to get a job. If someone really likes competitive programming, they'll be able to get better over time without going for "coaching" or mentorship.
Regarding your last paragraph — I have seen people get jobs without touching competitive programming, and I have also seen Asia West finalist level people get jobs with <6 CGPA. So agreed, doing projects or getting experience in one area you're passionate about is probably better.
Oh yeah finally someone said it. Don't pay anyone a single penny to teach you CP/DSA. TLE Eliminators, striver, Ask Senior doesn't matter who it is, Whatever they are providing is already available online. If you cant self study from those resources then you shouldn't be doing CP.
People like striver has made an entire generation delusional by making them think all you need is good cp/dsa skills and you will get a high paying job. I wish more people who spend hours and hours on cp for nothing come out and share their story so that these scammers who mislead gullible students gets exposed.
Competitive programming is most fun when you solve problems yourself. One shouldn't chase ratings—just enjoy the process, and the growth (and dopamine) will follow.
It maybe fun, but its not gonna help you get a job. Thats the point. No one here is saying you shouldnt do it if you are doing it just for fun.
Mike please pin this post. Every indian entering codeforces should read this. The amount of brainwashing thats going on is insane. People are making money destroying the lives of innocent students.
I don't believe any influencer is trying to brainwash anyone (excluding exceptions). You need to understand that everybody's way to success is different which sub consciously makes them biased towards what led them to it. It is natural for people to credit "what they did" to achieve what they have right now which may be different for different people. If someone has an expertise in the domain of CP/DSA while others in development related domains and both of them end up well, they will naturally preach/spread what led them there.
But CP should never even be a topic of this discussion in the first place. CP has never been a ticket to get a job but rather a sport to enjoy. It is also understandable for naive Indian people to believe that CP is mandatory. Influencers are only doing half of their job when preaching about CP/DSA while they simply miss to convey the true essence of CP (what it is originally meant to be) to people.
False. Almost everyone who is selling a course for cp/dsa is overhyping it way out proportion.
Well the best companies do conduct OA's in a physically monitored lab setup, in my college and this would become a trend across all colleges,so idts it is losing value. But obviously only doing CP and not anything else: wont even get you a 6lpa job. Do good amount of development and also study CS core.
Besides it takes much more time to reach TOP G levels, and most people just can't.I've watched a lot of interviews with FAANG crackers, and most of them didn’t do CP. They suggested focusing on LeetCode for DSA and preparing for interviews by working on other important areas like projects,system designs and stuffs.
CP is great for brainstorming and fun.otherwise,it loses its purpose.
Mike please pin this post. The number of cheaters will go down significantly.
This is the most upvoted post on codeforces subreddit. Lol. Mike should really pin this. Number of people cheating would reduce massively and people would focus on things that are actually relevant for software engineering.
what if you are from tier 1 college
Still nothing happens, for example in my case. They actually don't care about DSA unless you are applying on campus. On top of that CGPA matters a lot in on campus. But again in Interviews they simply ask lc medium which most of the people who do cp can solve.
I sometimes give contests on my main account (expert-cm) and started solving on alt for fun. Now I just solve problems to cure my dempression :(
I work at FAANG in India. If I see candidates flaunting their cf ratings, I tend to get more strict in my interviews.
so the points of the whole discussion: 1.DO CP IF YOU REALLY ENJOY PROBLEM SOLVING 2.IF SOMEONE WANTS TO CRACK SOME "FAANG" INTERVIEW THEN IF HE/SHE MENTIONS A GOOD RANK AT CF IN RESUME YOU ARE KNOWINGLY RAISING THE BAR OF INTERVIEW ,SO DON'T MENTION IT .THIS WILL MAKE THE INTERVIEW SOMEWHAT GENERAL WHERE THE PROBABLITY OF CRACKING IT WILL BE HIGHER. 3.MAKING REAL PROJECTS HELP IN GETTING SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERVIEW FOR FRESHERS FROM T3/T2 COLLEGES. SO MORAL OF THE STORY IS MAKE GOOD PROJECTS FIRST.THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT AS YOU ARE SOLVING REAL WORLD PROBLEMS OR TRYING TO SOLVE.IF YOU LIKE PROBLEM SOLVING IN GENERAL (SAY YOU LOVE PUZZELS OR MATHS FROM EARLY DAYS) YOU DO CF AND YOU GONNA ENJOY IT A LOT.BUT SPENDING TIME SOLELY ON CF ISNT WORTH IT UNTIL AND UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY EMPLOYED OR IN SCHOOLS OR EARLY YEAR OF COLLEGE.
It seems that most (college Indians doing CP for jobs) don't understand cheating does not have any use either.