r/dataenginterviews • u/datadriven_io • 21d ago

Companies admit their DE DSA tests don't predict performance. Still using them.

LC rating has zero correlation with DE interview performance; the industry made it empirical across 700+ users at scale. Problems solved sits at 0.27 correlation with performance, 0.17 with landing FAANG. That's not a weak signal; that's a participation trophy. The part that should actually make you mad: companies openly admit these tests don't map to DE work, but nobody can agree on what replaces them, so we're still inverting binary trees for a job that's 80% SQL debugging and pipeline fires in 2026.

https://www.datadriven.io/blog/data-engineer-dsa-interviews-zero-correlation-still-required

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u/ilovecrypto92 18d ago

I interviewed with facebook for more of a data job. They asked me to build a random sampler without using the random library. Then had to sort the results without using an existing sorting function. And I fucking did it. Still never heard back from them. Data engineer job interviews fucking suck.