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unless you're interviewing at one of the big companies with a known interview process, you'd basically be wasting your time. I've done hundreds of tech intervi
by shados 10y ago
unless you're interviewing at one of the big companies with a known interview process, you'd basically be wasting your time.
I've done hundreds of tech interviews over my career, and especially in recent years (now that companies are trying new things), it's completely random.
Some will do "Cracking the coding interview" type shit, some will do code reviews, some will give you a take home thing you have to present, some will do pair coding. Some do algorithms only, some do design discussions only, and so on and so forth.
So any prep I do will be a shot in the dark and 99% of the time I'll have to do something I did not prep for. So I don't bother trying.
Notable exception is my current job, which is a big tech co with a semi well known interview process (not as infamous as google or facebook, but still), and they gave me a fair amount of info up front. I also -really really really- wanted to work there because the team I wanted to work for did things no one else does. So i bit the bullet and studied/practice.
That was literally the first time (and probably last) time I did.
- caconym_ 10y agoI guess I just think of it as limbering up the brain, even if what I "studied" isn't directly useful. I'm going to be a lot more effective at basically all the things you mentioned if I've been solving tricky problems in my spare time for a few weeks. I totally agree that it's a shot in the dark, though.
- lj3 10y agoJust out of curiosity, are you relatively young? Memorizing the same material for four months every time you switch jobs gets tedious after a 15 year long career.
- caconym_ 10y agoI've been in the industry for about 10 years. Like I said, it's more about limbering up my brain. I have a good time with it, and usually learn some new things. Memorization is pointless, so I try to solve new and interesting problems rather than re-implementing the same old data structures and algorithms every time. To be sure, some people take it too far. The "four months" figure does not come from me.
- dominotw 10y ago> so I try to solve new and interesting problems Curious if you have any examples. I have really hard time motivating myself to study same old ds and algorithms too .
- bquinlan 10y agoI wanted to learn Rust but didn't have a good project in mind. So I solved a bunch of interview problems: https://github.com/brianquinlan/learn-rust https://github.com/brianquinlan/learn-rust Solving those problems gave me a reason to touch lots of parts of the language and was also intellectually interesting. See, for example: https://github.com/brianquinlan/learn-rust/tree/master/i18n https://github.com/brianquinlan/learn-rust/tree/master/i18n
- dominotw 10y agoThis is awesome. Learning Rust is also one of my goals. This is pretty great for comparing my solutions.
- collyw 10y agoEspecially when you have hardly ever had to use it in your 15 years career.
- jkubicek 10y agoYou make a good point, but: > Some will do "Cracking the coding interview" type shit, some will do code reviews, some will give you a take home thing you have to present, some will do pair coding. Some do algorithms only, some do design discussions only, and so on and so forth. "Cracking the Coding Interview" and algorithms are the only things you mention that you don't spend all day doing at your day job. Spending time studying algorithm questions will be hugely beneficial for some interviews. For others, they'll quiz you on stuff you (should) already know.
- umanwizard 10y agoIn my life I have interviewed at Amazon, Facebook, Google, 1Energy, and Redfin. 100% of them did standard coding interviews, including the last two. Claiming that preparing for whitebord algorithms interviews is a waste of time outside the big N is a gross exaggeration at best.