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Gosh, I don’t enjoy that there is so much competition in this space. I can’t compete against people who essentially seem to have no life or other interests than

Gosh, I don’t enjoy that there is so much competition in this space. I can’t compete against people who essentially seem to have no life or other interests than getting job at Big N (or enjoy competitive programming). It feels like this culture has ramped up in the last 5-10 years. When I started interviewing, the questions were easier. It feels like they’ve gotten more difficult - or at least the answer the interviewer wants is less attainable. And I feel like I know why - go look at the leetcode discussion forums. There’s almost always some post at the top saying, “I did 1000 problems and won’t stop. I got accepted/rejected and learned so much. Believe.” From the outside and inside, it looks like a cult. I feel like these folks are just making it worse for everyone. Maybe I am just bitter because I’ve passed every mock interview I’ve done but I can’t get an offer from Big N still. Startups are the worst as a non-founder/non-executive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I can’t compete against people who essentially seem to have no life or other interests than getting job at Big N (or enjoy competitive programming). Interview prep doesn't need to be a grind. One of the nice things about Leetcode is that the problems are bite-sized. You can do one or two per day on your lunch break and make a lot of progress in a matter of months, or even weeks. Don't approach it like a cram session before your interviews. That doesn't work unless maybe you're a new college grad with no other obligations. > go look at the leetcode discussion forums. There’s almost always some post at the top saying, “I did 1000 problems and won’t stop. Obviously the Leetcode forums are going to be a hotbed of discussion about Leetcode. You have to keep in mind that many of those people are entry-level developers treating this as an extension of their education. For them, it's basically a miracle that a mostly-free website lets them practice for interviews for $200K-300K+ career paths from the comfort of their web browser. Compare that to just about any other high-paying industry, where getting the right education, credentials, certifications, and test results will take years of your life and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of post-secondary education. We really have the easy end of this deal. Don't let the total number of Leetcode questions overwhelm or discourage you. It shouldn't be approached as a cram session before the interview. It should be approached as a consistent habit or practice over a longer period of time. If you just don't want to do any Leetcode or whiteboard interviews, that's fine too! There are plenty of jobs out there that won't require any of that. However, you can't have it both ways: Big N salaries come with a high barrier to entry. All things considered, spending 50-100 hours of your free time solving problems on a free website at your leisure is really a small price to pay.
- bradlys 6y ago
  > All things considered, spending 50-100 hours of your free time solving problems on a free website at your leisure is really a small price to pay. The problem is - it's not 50-100 hours for most candidates to pass. I've done well past 400 hours of interview prep and never received an offer from Big N. I tried the consistent 1-hour or so a day for months thing - it isn't guaranteed either. Want to emphasize this point to - it isn't like I can't do the problems. I've solved most any problem I'm given - it's that it just doesn't fucking matter. Whatever bias the person has is what they will evaluate on - the problem solving is merely a formality.
  - nulptr 6y ago
    I don't think it's just about solving the problem. It's also about: - how you convinced yourself and the interviewer that your solution was correct (essentially an informal proof of your code) - how you test your code after you finish coding - what clarifying questions you asked to tease out a concrete question - what edge cases you thought of and how you handled them - how you handle bugs if they appear in the code - what solutions you presented and what their tradeoffs were, and why you decided to use a particular solution - whether your code was idiomatic - whether you used clean abstractions - maybe also comments and variable naming ... and probably others I'm missing. I don't deny that interviewers have their biases, but I would hope that your interview performance is the major factor in whether you received an offer. There are plenty of people at Google and Facebook who haven't majored in CS at a top school.
    - noema 6y ago
      From talking to some people who give out these interviews, most of those points really don't matter at all. What matters is A) getting a correct solution and B) being able to explain how you arrived at the solution. Tests, idiomatic code, clean design, etc are not expected and will inevitably waste precious time. Besides, the very nature of the interview (using a walled-off in-browser pseudo-IDE) restricts you from actually writing best-practice code.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> I can’t compete against people who essentially seem to have no life or other interests than getting job at Big N (or enjoy competitive programming). Interview prep doesn't need to be a grind. One of the nice things about Leetcode is that the problems are bite-sized. You can do one or two per day on your lunch break and make a lot of progress in a matter of months, or even weeks. Don't approach it like a cram session before your interviews. That doesn't work unless maybe you're a new college grad with no other obligations. > go look at the leetcode discussion forums. There’s almost always some post at the top saying, “I did 1000 problems and won’t stop. Obviously the Leetcode forums are going to be a hotbed of discussion about Leetcode. You have to keep in mind that many of those people are entry-level developers treating this as an extension of their education. For them, it's basically a miracle that a mostly-free website lets them practice for interviews for $200K-300K+ career paths from the comfort of their web browser. Compare that to just about any other high-paying industry, where getting the right education, credentials, certifications, and test results will take years of your life and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of post-secondary education. We really have the easy end of this deal. Don't let the total number of Leetcode questions overwhelm or discourage you. It shouldn't be approached as a cram session before the interview. It should be approached as a consistent habit or practice over a longer period of time. If you just don't want to do any Leetcode or whiteboard interviews, that's fine too! There are plenty of jobs out there that won't require any of that. However, you can't have it both ways: Big N salaries come with a high barrier to entry. All things considered, spending 50-100 hours of your free time solving problems on a free website at your leisure is really a small price to pay.

bradlys 6y ago
> All things considered, spending 50-100 hours of your free time solving problems on a free website at your leisure is really a small price to pay. The problem is - it's not 50-100 hours for most candidates to pass. I've done well past 400 hours of interview prep and never received an offer from Big N. I tried the consistent 1-hour or so a day for months thing - it isn't guaranteed either. Want to emphasize this point to - it isn't like I can't do the problems. I've solved most any problem I'm given - it's that it just doesn't fucking matter. Whatever bias the person has is what they will evaluate on - the problem solving is merely a formality.
- nulptr 6y ago
  I don't think it's just about solving the problem. It's also about: - how you convinced yourself and the interviewer that your solution was correct (essentially an informal proof of your code) - how you test your code after you finish coding - what clarifying questions you asked to tease out a concrete question - what edge cases you thought of and how you handled them - how you handle bugs if they appear in the code - what solutions you presented and what their tradeoffs were, and why you decided to use a particular solution - whether your code was idiomatic - whether you used clean abstractions - maybe also comments and variable naming ... and probably others I'm missing. I don't deny that interviewers have their biases, but I would hope that your interview performance is the major factor in whether you received an offer. There are plenty of people at Google and Facebook who haven't majored in CS at a top school.
  - noema 6y ago
    From talking to some people who give out these interviews, most of those points really don't matter at all. What matters is A) getting a correct solution and B) being able to explain how you arrived at the solution. Tests, idiomatic code, clean design, etc are not expected and will inevitably waste precious time. Besides, the very nature of the interview (using a walled-off in-browser pseudo-IDE) restricts you from actually writing best-practice code.