I've interviewed Harvard CS grads for SWE roles at big tech who couldn't write a working program for fizzbuzz, for defanging an IP address, or for reversing words in a sentence, in a language of their choice, with leetcode's provided instructions, in half an hour, with unlimited attempts, gentle coaching from me, and the ability to use the internet to search for anything that isn't a direct solution (e.g. syntax).

Yes, more than one.

Either the bar for getting into Harvard cannot possibly be as high as it's made out to be, someone's figured out how to completely defeat degree-validation service providers, or Harvard is happy to churn out a nonzero number of students wholly unprepared for meeting extremely basic expectations for the prototypical job of their chosen degree.

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seanmcdirmid an hour ago | parent [-]

If you don’t cram for leetcode, you won’t pass a leetcode interview. It takes some kids a few interviews to figure that out, even they are from elite school like MIT. You were just their learning experience.

	▲	anonymars 43 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I get the impression you latched on to the word leetcode and took away something very different FizzBuzz, reversing a sentence -- this is programming your way out of a wet paper bag, not elite and esoteric skills that need advanced study and cramming
	▲	anonym29 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you can't solve FizzBuzz in half an hour with a language of your choice while being able to look up syntax, your problem isn't that you failed to cram for leetcode, it's that you don't know how to write code. There's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to write code, but you probably shouldn't be applying for software engineering roles where the main responsibility of the job is ultimately to write working code.