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How much time are you spending specifically on interview question practice (HackerRank/Leetcode)? I've got close to 20 years of programming experience, includi

How much time are you spending specifically on interview question practice (HackerRank/Leetcode)? I've got close to 20 years of programming experience, including working at Google for several years and launching some very high-profile projects. I still fail interviews if I haven't studied for them. You could argue that it's a stupid system where they test 20-minute coding exercises with a trick answer, and you'd be right [1]. But it's a system that can be gamed, and can be gamed with relatively little time. Putting in a week full-time, or working a problem a day for 3 months, will put you way ahead of most of the rest of the competition. [1] But the interview bullshit serves another less-obvious purpose: it tests how much you actually want to work at the organization. It's relatively easy to bullshit enthusiasm in a calm chat with a hiring manager. It's pretty hard to do it when your brain is occupied by solving a hard problem and you're frustrated because you have 5 minutes left to solve a problem and there's still a sticky bug.

decafninja 7y ago
At the start of the process, I began with comp sci/DS&A fundamentals - including books like Algorithm Design Manual, Intro to Algorithms, etc. Took a few months break to get married, then resumed, eventually starting to 100% grind leetcode problems. As my wife can amusingly attest - I no longer have any hobbies or other personal entertainment since we got married. Studying for interviews consumes all the free time I have that I don't spend with her. Add to that, since last year, my day job got a lot less demanding, so I am actually studying/leetcoding during the afternoon at work too. One wrench thrown into the loop is that I am a mainly a frontend engineer by trade, and it seems frontend interviews at FAANG and many other top tech companies are focusing less on leetcode/DS&A and more on JavaScript trivia problems. So that has been a context shift, and I am focusing more on getting as many JavaScript tricks and patterns into my repertoire now, and less on leetcode. Pretty much my #1 personal goal in life at the moment is to get into a FAANG, or at least similar caliber, company. No, it's not a life or death matter, but whereas someone else might be content to watch TV/Netflix, or play games, or go golfing, I'm spending that time leetcoding... What I feel torpedoes me during the interview is that I can get often get 90%+ of a solution, even if it's a problem I haven't seen before. But some edge case or bug in my code kills me, or I miss some trick or pattern that is the key to getting it right. In a less competitive company, this might mean passing the interview, but for a FAANG or similarly highly competitive company, I feel not getting 100% technical perfection means dead on arrival.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Sounds like you're doing a lot of the right stuff. I started as a frontend engineer at Google, 11+ years ago, and you're right that there's a lot of Javascript/DOM/HTML trivia to understand. Google was also one of the few companies that insisted you know vanilla JS cold and don't use frameworks in the interview. It's worth studying up on MDN to make sure you really know JS corner cases. You need to know the leetcode-style problems too - when I applied (and I think this is still true), it was 2 interviews for algorithms & data structures, 2 for frontend, and 1 system design. It also may not be the right time to apply, since many FAANGs are dramatically slowing down hiring. Your odds get much better in boom times than bust times.
  - decafninja 7y ago
    I actually just got my rejection from FB today. Purely JavaScript questions, no leetcode at all. If I were to rewind, I'd have focused more on purely JavaScript tricks and less on other parts of the frontend repertoire. i.e. the time I spent on CSS seems to have been a waste. Also got rejected from AMZN back in December. Made the mistake grinding leetcode during the weeks leading up to the interview, when it turned out to be purely JS trivia. The hardest part of interviewing as FEE seems to be the lack of sample JS interview problems available, versus say, leetcode. I feel I am pretty well versed in using JS and have pretty in-depth knowledge of the arcane workings of the language far beyond a typical developer (certainly more so than my coworkers), but just like how leetcode interviews cover cases you'll never encounter in day to day work, frontend JS interview problems seem to do the same. That said, I don't know how much JS knowledge a typical FEE at a FAANG or similar company has. But that's one big reason I want to get into one of these companies - I'm assuming, and hoping, the level of knowledge and enthusiasm (I hate to use the word passion) is much higher at SV tech companies than outside. Most of the places I've worked (banks, finance), the JS engineers can barely explain how async stuff works in JS.
    - throwaway987978 7y ago
      Keep going. You only need to pass once. :) I'm kind of in the same boat. I failed all my interviews as well and I have about the same amount of experience as you. I agree that getting into these companies is easier as a junior engineer. You may want to look at an interview prep course like Outco.io or Interview Kickstart. I haven't attended one yet but will most likely do so once I'm ready to start interviewing again. I think the feedback they offer will be worth it rather than me constantly headscratching after failing another interview. (The fact that these courses exist just exemplifies the whole problem with software interviewing but I don't fault them for that)

decafninja 7y ago

At the start of the process, I began with comp sci/DS&A fundamentals - including books like Algorithm Design Manual, Intro to Algorithms, etc. Took a few months break to get married, then resumed, eventually starting to 100% grind leetcode problems. As my wife can amusingly attest - I no longer have any hobbies or other personal entertainment since we got married. Studying for interviews consumes all the free time I have that I don't spend with her. Add to that, since last year, my day job got a lot less demanding, so I am actually studying/leetcoding during the afternoon at work too. One wrench thrown into the loop is that I am a mainly a frontend engineer by trade, and it seems frontend interviews at FAANG and many other top tech companies are focusing less on leetcode/DS&A and more on JavaScript trivia problems. So that has been a context shift, and I am focusing more on getting as many JavaScript tricks and patterns into my repertoire now, and less on leetcode. Pretty much my #1 personal goal in life at the moment is to get into a FAANG, or at least similar caliber, company. No, it's not a life or death matter, but whereas someone else might be content to watch TV/Netflix, or play games, or go golfing, I'm spending that time leetcoding... What I feel torpedoes me during the interview is that I can get often get 90%+ of a solution, even if it's a problem I haven't seen before. But some edge case or bug in my code kills me, or I miss some trick or pattern that is the key to getting it right. In a less competitive company, this might mean passing the interview, but for a FAANG or similarly highly competitive company, I feel not getting 100% technical perfection means dead on arrival.

nostrademons 7y ago
Sounds like you're doing a lot of the right stuff. I started as a frontend engineer at Google, 11+ years ago, and you're right that there's a lot of Javascript/DOM/HTML trivia to understand. Google was also one of the few companies that insisted you know vanilla JS cold and don't use frameworks in the interview. It's worth studying up on MDN to make sure you really know JS corner cases. You need to know the leetcode-style problems too - when I applied (and I think this is still true), it was 2 interviews for algorithms & data structures, 2 for frontend, and 1 system design. It also may not be the right time to apply, since many FAANGs are dramatically slowing down hiring. Your odds get much better in boom times than bust times.
- decafninja 7y ago
  I actually just got my rejection from FB today. Purely JavaScript questions, no leetcode at all. If I were to rewind, I'd have focused more on purely JavaScript tricks and less on other parts of the frontend repertoire. i.e. the time I spent on CSS seems to have been a waste. Also got rejected from AMZN back in December. Made the mistake grinding leetcode during the weeks leading up to the interview, when it turned out to be purely JS trivia. The hardest part of interviewing as FEE seems to be the lack of sample JS interview problems available, versus say, leetcode. I feel I am pretty well versed in using JS and have pretty in-depth knowledge of the arcane workings of the language far beyond a typical developer (certainly more so than my coworkers), but just like how leetcode interviews cover cases you'll never encounter in day to day work, frontend JS interview problems seem to do the same. That said, I don't know how much JS knowledge a typical FEE at a FAANG or similar company has. But that's one big reason I want to get into one of these companies - I'm assuming, and hoping, the level of knowledge and enthusiasm (I hate to use the word passion) is much higher at SV tech companies than outside. Most of the places I've worked (banks, finance), the JS engineers can barely explain how async stuff works in JS.
  - throwaway987978 7y ago
    Keep going. You only need to pass once. :) I'm kind of in the same boat. I failed all my interviews as well and I have about the same amount of experience as you. I agree that getting into these companies is easier as a junior engineer. You may want to look at an interview prep course like Outco.io or Interview Kickstart. I haven't attended one yet but will most likely do so once I'm ready to start interviewing again. I think the feedback they offer will be worth it rather than me constantly headscratching after failing another interview. (The fact that these courses exist just exemplifies the whole problem with software interviewing but I don't fault them for that)