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I have 6 weeks to prep for the 45 min meta interview...

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Senior Software Engineer at Taro Communitya month ago

In my 11 years in tech I have never needed to learn algorithms or data structures to the extreme for these interviews. I also have never needed to know off hand the time and space complexity.

Does anyone have any tips for a father of 3 ( little ones ) with limited time can prep for this thing? Context I am trying to fill the role of Senior Android Engineer.

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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    a month ago

    I highly recommend starting off with this course which will help you establish mindset and set up a preparation schedule: Master The Data Structures And Algorithms Interview

    After that, I recommend going through this course which explains the major data structures and algorithms concepts in-depth: Crash Course: Beginner Data Structures And Algorithms Concepts

    Since you have limited time, I have 2 bigs pieces of advice:

    1. Make studying a habit - As a parent, you will have a hard time finding huge focus blocks of 4+ hours. This means, you need to get value from random scattered 10-30 minute blocks throughout the day/week. Try to consume at least 1 course lesson or do 1 LeetCode problem every day, and it will add up incrementally over time.
    2. Parallelize - If you are doing a chore that doesn't require high cognitive load (e.g. washing the dishes), you can treat a course as a podcast and listen to it in the meantime (Taro has mobile apps too to make this easier).

    The good news is that 6 weeks is quite a lot of time. You mentioned 45 minutes, so I assume this is the initial round. I think this is very doable for you - A solid grasp of LeetCode Easy + Medium will give you a strong chance of passing this round.

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    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    a month ago

    Alex shared great practical tips to prep. Two suggestions I'd share about the whole interview process:

    • At a company like Meta, you can delay interviews. They'll still be hiring senior engineers in a few months, so you can ask the recruiter for more time.
    • Line up other interviews as well. I like to view interviewing in "seasons": one season is for networking, one is for getting all the recruiter screens done, and then another season to do all the interviews. You want to limit the amount of overlap between seasons.