Technical Interview Preparation

Sure, you should study a bit. That doesn't mean you have to 'grind leetcode' or anything. I usually go implement a couple data structures (a heap and a graph search, or something) and then feel pretty good. Typical interview questions just aren't that hard and if you aren't too nervous about it you can figure them out live if you know basic computer science.

Here is a tip for you - line up as many interviews as you can from companies you aren't necessarily super jazzed about. Take a full month and go through all the painful process. You will probably fail a lot, at least for the first month or so. It depends on your availability, if you can line-up 2 to 3 interviews per week that would be ideal. Then when you're done interviewing for a while with these "whatever" companies, start applying at your favorite ones.I found out that

It sounds like it may have been awhile since you've interviewed. The modern "good" interview is all data structure and algorithm white boarding nonsense. For me, who is not a competitive programmer, the standard interview prep is spending a couple of hours on Hacker Rank every day and making sure I can delete a node in a binary tree on a white board without so much a missing semicolon. For some reason that signals "good developer" more than a catalog of work on github, b

I'm in a VERY similar situation. Self taught 23 year old developer with a BS in business/marketing, Front End + Ruby experience, and interviewing for software engineering jobs.Prior to my first technical interview I spent tons of time studying algorithms and data structures. Looking back I feel that my time would have been better spent selecting several sample questions (such as the ones you included) and solving them on a whiteboard over and over again (and checking and improving them along

How do you game the interview system? Practice leetcode problems a lot? Sounds like a lot of work.

One thing people often don't realise about interviews at Google and other companies with similar interview standards. You can't casually apply for those. You have to prepare a lot. At least for a month (probably much more) before the interview you have to practice coding questions on Leetcode or similar resources.

Read either CTCI or Elements of Programming Interviews. The key is knowing that the problems you’ll be presented with aren’t as novel or random as they might seem. The same general topics and problem classes come up over and over, and once you can recognize them you can learn to solve them. It’s really hard, but it’s a matter of effort, not intellect (or at least not solely intellect).

You dont need to do any of those things. You just study algorithms obsessively. Forget about developing any kind of skillset. Go to leetcode.com and do 500 problems, then stroll into google

These companies (at least the couple of companies from that group that I've interacted with) are very upfront about the interview process and provide you with enough materials to prepare.The cost of a leetcode subscription is negligible.I would practice more problems and try to emulate an interview setting as much as possible - set yourself a fixed time to solve the problem, walk over your solution, think about it out loud if you get stuck etc. I don't think that going over basic

Technical interviews only test your data structures and algorithms skills and your actual work experience is mostly irrelevant. If you want to crack an interview, grind leetcode and practice writing code on a whiteboard. If you want to become a better developer, create software.