4 ms·

I have over a decade of programming experience. I've completed almost 10% of Leetcode's problem set. I've done dozens of technical interviews. I prep for days,

I have over a decade of programming experience. I've completed almost 10% of Leetcode's problem set. I've done dozens of technical interviews. I prep for days, specifically for every interview, and they invariably go about as bad as the first one.

joelbluminator 5y ago
I can empathize. The only interviews where I think "huh, this went reasonably well" are basically online tests. Almost never when I interview in front of a person / live screen and do white boarding. The bad news is my chances of getting into FAANG are very slim. The good news there are tons of companies who aren't FAANG.
- WalterSear 5y ago
  The only interviews I have a reasonable chance of passing are take home tests. I'm a good coder, not a performing monkey.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    Take homes are probably the best way to test actual coding abilities. I had a pretty good online coding test done by Microsoft actually, it was 2 hours of building an API; no trick questions, no big-o, just write a bunch of code. It wasn't easy but it felt as if they're actually testing what I do for a living. I passed it and it didn't go to the follow up - which would have probably been a shitty whiteboard interview but I'm not sure. Now that I think about it maybe I should have gone to that interview ...
wombat-man 5y ago
I feel you man. I'd suggest Elements of Programming Interviews in your preferred language. It does a really good job in my opinion of walking you through a lot of common tricks. I'm not really grinding through a lot of problems but doing a problem wrong, and then reading a well written explanation of the solution is a lot better for me in terms of learning. The study guide picks a good selection of problems for you to optimize for time. Some of the mathy/low level problems are bullshit that nobody would ever actually ask though. I felt like I got a good run through of some of the data structures that I just don't typically use in Java, and how they can be extremely useful in a coding interview. LC problems are not always well written and a lot of times you just have to hope someone took the time to write out a good solution. A lot of times they just paste their code and expect you to get it.
oneepic 5y ago
Maybe I missed it, but what do you think is/are the reason(s) they go so bad? Time pressure? Having an interviewer watching and judging? Etc. For me personally, my brain goes completely blank at the problem statement, pretty much in the dark without a flashlight, and I have to work everything out by hand and hope that my code actually ends up being correct and reasonable. It's scary but I've ended up doing well.

joelbluminator 5y ago

I can empathize. The only interviews where I think "huh, this went reasonably well" are basically online tests. Almost never when I interview in front of a person / live screen and do white boarding. The bad news is my chances of getting into FAANG are very slim. The good news there are tons of companies who aren't FAANG.

WalterSear 5y ago
The only interviews I have a reasonable chance of passing are take home tests. I'm a good coder, not a performing monkey.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Take homes are probably the best way to test actual coding abilities. I had a pretty good online coding test done by Microsoft actually, it was 2 hours of building an API; no trick questions, no big-o, just write a bunch of code. It wasn't easy but it felt as if they're actually testing what I do for a living. I passed it and it didn't go to the follow up - which would have probably been a shitty whiteboard interview but I'm not sure. Now that I think about it maybe I should have gone to that interview ...

wombat-man 5y ago

I feel you man. I'd suggest Elements of Programming Interviews in your preferred language. It does a really good job in my opinion of walking you through a lot of common tricks. I'm not really grinding through a lot of problems but doing a problem wrong, and then reading a well written explanation of the solution is a lot better for me in terms of learning. The study guide picks a good selection of problems for you to optimize for time. Some of the mathy/low level problems are bullshit that nobody would ever actually ask though. I felt like I got a good run through of some of the data structures that I just don't typically use in Java, and how they can be extremely useful in a coding interview. LC problems are not always well written and a lot of times you just have to hope someone took the time to write out a good solution. A lot of times they just paste their code and expect you to get it.

oneepic 5y ago

Maybe I missed it, but what do you think is/are the reason(s) they go so bad? Time pressure? Having an interviewer watching and judging? Etc. For me personally, my brain goes completely blank at the problem statement, pretty much in the dark without a flashlight, and I have to work everything out by hand and hope that my code actually ends up being correct and reasonable. It's scary but I've ended up doing well.