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I used to share the same sentiment about whiteboard interviews and the cs "fundamentals"(read: brainteasers) interviews. 2 years ago, I failed spectacularly in
by PublicEnemy111 12y ago
I used to share the same sentiment about whiteboard interviews and the cs "fundamentals"(read: brainteasers) interviews. 2 years ago, I failed spectacularly in an interview for a Pinterest internship -- I couldn't answer a single technical question.
Fast forward to this year and and I've breezed through every interview with Google and other companies. I spent months preparing for the interviews, but the preparation was one of the most rewarding things I could have done as a developer at my stage. I feel far more competent as a developer with a solid grasp of algorithms and data structures. I enjoyed the preparation so much, that I started reading white papers on the more cutting-edge cs theory :)
- ihireppl 12y agoI have hiring responsibility for a startup. Honest question...Over the period of time when you were preparing for interviews how much meaningful code did you ship? More? Less? Algorithms and data structures are dandy but I would have a hard time hiring somebody with this knowledge but no history of shipping production code.
- PublicEnemy111 12y agoWell, I'm still an undergraduate. I was pretty much coding 24/7, but it was hackerrank, leetcode, codechef problems. My side projects slowed down tremendously during this time; however, once I started them back up, I was working at a much faster pace, producing higher quality code, and using design patterns/algorithms/data structures that scaled. For instance, there was a problem on my senior project that had me stumped for weeks before I stopped the project to focus on studying for interviews. I immediately knew how to solve the problem once I resumed the project. On top of my personal projects, I've had great internships, which treated me like a full-time engineer. I shipped production code regularly during those.