4 ms·

Students, super high achievers / superstars, and people who are willing to "play the game" and re-study everything for 2 weeks or a month.

justinzollars 10y ago
this is a good point. Every successful interview I had was the result of about a month of study time. I think the only way I could make it through an interview is by quitting my job and studying for a month!
hackerblack1 10y ago
LMAO.2 weeks? HA! Currently a graduating student that goes to one of those top schools. Do you really wanna know how long many of my peers are studying for these interviews? Months!!!!! I have a few friends that spent all of last summer after their daily internships doing interview prep for fall recruiting season. I also have a cousin that spent 5-6 months unemployed(given he did a masters/bs in ee and not in cs but wanted to move into the field) doing interview prep and just landed offers from Google and Dropbox. The competition is absolutely ruthless.
- ad-hominem 10y ago
  Well, the people you interact with studying for interviews have never interviewed for a full-time position before in their field. They have no experience. They do not command a significant salary compared to the established professionals in their field. There are a lot of them, and they all want (the best job they can get || any decent job). They all just graduated and are unemployed (presumably). So yeah, of course they are all going to go crazy studying. A programmer with 5-10 years experience, who knows what they are doing professionally and has had a few jobs already (been through the process), and uses these skills on a daily basis is generally not going to spend months studying algorithmic questions. 2 weeks seems a lot more reasonable. Without studying, most worth their salt could probably still write a tree balancer or linked list from scratch even though it would be somewhat ugly. The studying is not to solidify and memorize all this stuff, it's just a refresher.

justinzollars 10y ago

this is a good point. Every successful interview I had was the result of about a month of study time. I think the only way I could make it through an interview is by quitting my job and studying for a month!

hackerblack1 10y ago

LMAO.2 weeks? HA! Currently a graduating student that goes to one of those top schools. Do you really wanna know how long many of my peers are studying for these interviews? Months!!!!! I have a few friends that spent all of last summer after their daily internships doing interview prep for fall recruiting season. I also have a cousin that spent 5-6 months unemployed(given he did a masters/bs in ee and not in cs but wanted to move into the field) doing interview prep and just landed offers from Google and Dropbox. The competition is absolutely ruthless.

ad-hominem 10y ago
Well, the people you interact with studying for interviews have never interviewed for a full-time position before in their field. They have no experience. They do not command a significant salary compared to the established professionals in their field. There are a lot of them, and they all want (the best job they can get || any decent job). They all just graduated and are unemployed (presumably). So yeah, of course they are all going to go crazy studying. A programmer with 5-10 years experience, who knows what they are doing professionally and has had a few jobs already (been through the process), and uses these skills on a daily basis is generally not going to spend months studying algorithmic questions. 2 weeks seems a lot more reasonable. Without studying, most worth their salt could probably still write a tree balancer or linked list from scratch even though it would be somewhat ugly. The studying is not to solidify and memorize all this stuff, it's just a refresher.