Data Structures And Algorithms Q&A and Videos

How common is leetcode/hacker rank at FAANGMULA companies and startups for initial tech screen?

How common is it that there are companies that interview similar to Imbue (another YC backed company, whose technical interviewing process I posted below) and SourceGrap h where you actually instead are asked to code on the fly with your actual environment (this to me feels way more comfortable than having folks throw out random questions at me)?

Interview Process length - I've seen rounds go for 8 for some companies (for even Google non-technical a million years ago I've seen it followed a similar format without technical at least like 5 rounds. If someone can post how long their average interview rounds were (how many interviews, how many technical screens, easy to hard, and how long did it take until you got an offer / knew you were rejected - a month, 6 months etc.?). I've head so many stories ranging far and wide over the years and wonder what the average is during this market, which feels longer than a year some people, even those who were laid off at FAANGMULA companies.

Interview #1) Recruiter Reach Out, Resume Submission, and Behavioral

Interview #2) Tech Screen #1

Interview #3) Behavioral with Team Member 2 Years Your Senior / Tech Screen

Interview #4) Behavioral with Team Member that is your director/higher up manager by at least 2 levels or something / Tech Screen #2

Interview #5) Behavioral with Team Member that is your actual position (peer / Tech Screen #3)

Interview #6) Vote by Committee / Group Interview / Panel or something

Any insights into the interview process more in detail will be helpful! Thanks!

A meta recruiter reached out to me and I asked for study materials and he sent back materials for IC6. What level is this and is there anything special I should study for this role besides DSA?

I've noticed that many people can secure Google L4 interviews and solve complex data structure and algorithms problems. For example:

Despite my efforts, I often struggle to recognize patterns and solve these problems effectively. I realize that my preparation might be insufficient, or perhaps I'm not practicing enough every day. Sometimes, I learn topics in a shallow way and quickly move on to the next one. For example, I recently revisited an easy array problem and couldn't solve it.

In response, I've started deeply engaging with the basics, but I’m unsure if I can handle easy, medium, to hard problems consistently. I don't want to pay for a subscription course, but I aim to be diligent because mastering DSA is crucial for securing a good package.

I'm considering several strategies to improve: attempting to solve problems on my own before looking at solutions, reading explanations aloud and drawing diagrams to reinforce my understanding, or creating YouTube videos where I explain solutions. This approach could not only help me learn but also potentially generate income if the videos gain traction.

What is the best learning method to make reasonable progress and develop a habit that will be effective in interviews?

My bottle neck is debugging when you can't run code. When practicing I am able to run code and add prints and trace the code. But often in a real interview you have to debug through pure reasoning which is hard

My performance is getting hit because in DSA I often get an answer 95% correct but the interviewer tells me I have a bug and I find it really really hard to trace the bug especially in recursion problems

I've done about 25 ML interviews in the last 3 months. Here's my tips

1. HM interviews are super common. KNOW YOUR WORK IN DEPTH. This is the single biggest tip I can give
   1. Be able to talk for atleast 5-10 minutes about the ML models you choose. You cant just give a high level description
   2. Understand the tradeoffs with the ML model you choose
   3. I think depth is just everything. You need to understand deeply the frameworks you use, the models you choose, the evaluation methods, deployment strategy. How it works under the hood
2. DSA is a must. It's hard to cram DSA, but you get really really far with just a bit everyday. About 30% of interviews have a DSA round onsite. Another 30% might have DSA screening (hackerrank/codesignal). I'm not saying grind leetcode 6 hrs a day but even 1-2 problems consistently everyday adds up a lot! and you dont want to be caught unprepared if u get a DSA interview, you cant push back interviews for a month right now
3. Takehomes/timed take homes are common. Make sure you clearly document and your code is easily reproducible and no steps are missing. e.g. if you did some data preprocessing but its not documented/shown thats bad. The conversion rate on takehomes is pretty high for me so do well on them and treat them seriously. In this interview cycle I've gotten first round interviews for all 6 takehomes i submitted
4. Interviews are 80% luck and 20% skills in this market. Sometimes you just cant help it they might want a golang developer and even if youre a 200IQ java developer they dont care. Transferrable skills are not the same in this market. Sometimes theres just not a fit and dont beat yourself up. You can do everything right and still fail interviews
5. Lower Pay/Lower presitge != Easier Interview. They're just different interviews looking for different things. Don't think that just because an interview is for a less prestigious company it will be easier. I've passed first rounds for roles that pay 3x more and 2 levels higher than ones ive failed.
6. Make sure to go through the JD and note the skills theyre looking for and spend 30 mins being able to insert talking points to highlight those skills

Any other tips anyone would like to add?

I have about 10 years of experience and currently working as a Staff Engineer. Have worked only in small startup companies.

I consistently get above expectations in appraisals as I always display ownership and have been open to pick new skills and have understanding of the product.

Now coming to the issue, I get stuck with DSA questions and somehow not able to come up with intuitions and don't have the practice to solve any algorithmic problem in 40 minutes.

I seemed to have survived in tech with basic curiosity and common sense till this point LOL!

What about me the best way to pick the skills to crack interviews at big tech spending time to cover topics of DSA, LLD, system design and other rounds?

I'm currently studying for software engineering interviews, but I'm having a hard time deciding how to divide up my time between doing LC problems and going over system design concepts. It can feel overwhelming since both categories have so much to cover. I also have a family, so most of my studying gets done after my kid goes to sleep at around 7 PM. Since my team is in the west coast and I'm in the east coast, I do get some extra time in the morning to work out at the gym and go through some LC problems. I'm currently going through Neetcode's course as a refresher. For those of you who have aced your interviews, how did you divide up your time on different topics? Did you mostly spend your time on LeetCode? I'd be happy to hear any recommendations.

My main goal: I want to be interview-ready no matter what. I currently work at a big tech company and I've been there for 4 years now, but I haven't seen much growth and now I'm seeing that I could have negotiated more when I first got my offer. I was asked 2 LC-type problems, and I feel I got lucky with them because I hadn't extensively gone through all the different patterns and data structures. It was my first time getting RSUs and I wish I had known more about negotiation tactics as well. I feel that if I be ready for interviews, I can apply and definitely increase my comp by a lot. The motivation is for me to overcome the fear of DS&A problems and not stop myself from applying to positions just because I'd be asked LC-type questions. I also know that I can double my comp with the right negotiation tactics and with my years of experience.

• For early stage startups (< series A)
• Medium stage startups (B-D)
• Unicorns (pre-IPO - IPO'ed in < 2yrs ago)
• F500s
• Public Companies (e.g. adobe, wayfair, quora)
• FAANG

This is for strictly DSA not something like pair programming. This is also for Jr/Mid level interviews

Hello everyone,

I'm preparing for a potential career transition as I join the MS CS program at Georgia Tech this fall, while also working full-time. Given the uncertain job security at my current company, I am proactively looking to strengthen my position in the job market in the United States. Here is a brief overview of my background:

1. Current Role: 2 years in a distributed systems role utilizing TypeScript and Rust.
2. Education: Joining Georgia Tech for an MS in Computer Science; previous non-CS engineering degree in a tier 1 university in India.
3. Internships: Completed two internships with local town US companies ( didn't learn much there).
4. Publications: Co-authored an Android Dev (Kotlin) + AI/ML-based paper published in an ACM journal and presented at a conference.
5. Research: Collaborated with professors on projects related to security, networking, and HCI.
6. Side Projects:
   • Pet Marketplace and Grocery eCommerce Android App - Java
   • Multi-threaded mathematical solver and Sudoku helper in C/C++
   • DDQN-based AI game for an RL course project - Python
7. Programming Proficiency: TypeScript (Node.js), Rust (p2p Networking), C/C++ (Operating Systems & DSA), Java (Android Development)

I had earlier applied to lots of companies in 2022 & 2023 when I was looking for jobs in the States. I had applied to around 300 companies each for internships and jobs. Only 10 reached out, I could only convert one then which is my current job. I had a really poor profile then with a non-CS degree outside of the United States. I had cold applied then. I do not want to end up in that same situation again. I have tried my best to improve my profile since then.

I'm seeking advice on how best to approach internship applications now with an improved profile. Specifically, I am wondering:

• Is it more effective to reach out directly to hiring managers rather than recruiters, especially for internships?
• What strategies can I employ to increase my visibility and chances of getting hired, beyond cold-applying and asking for referrals on LinkedIn?
• What can I do beyond brushing up my DSA skills and Dev skills in the tech stack I am proficient in? [ My degree will also help me catch up on my basic CS foundation. ]

Any insights or advice beyond the scope of the questions would be greatly appreciated too!

I am a seasoned Mobile engineer(Staff+) and have been looking for a new job since this January.

After failing at several job interviews with big tech companies like Meta, Square, Airbnb, Uber, etc I finally received offers from Okx, Doordash and Reddit.

To be honest, I feel like the biggest gap was DS&A. Over time, I improved a lot in this area and through the help of mentors and referrals, I was able to land the above offers. I'm very grateful for Taro (especially Rahul) for his constant words of encouragement and his guidance when I needed his help.

To everyone out there, I know the market may seem crazy but if you weather the storm, you will find success. If I can do it, you can too! Good luck!

What I've noticed is that FAANG companies don't seem to look beyond Data Structure and Algorithms (DSA) or system design in interviews, whereas medium-sized companies also consider other skills. For example, for a Python web framework, they might look at Django, Flask, or FAST. For a data engineer role, Apache Airflow might be important. ATS may not even pickup your resume unless they see very specific word like Django or Apache Airflow in your resume. It seems like it might be easier to prepare for big tech companies since they focus only on DSA, System Design, and behavioral rounds. In contrast, other companies look for such a wide range of skills that it's hard to master and work on all of them.

Let me know your views.

I found monotonic stacks and queues to be quite difficult at first, but I felt like it would be worth the effort to become more familiar with them (seems like it would be virtually impossible to come up with them in the context of a DSA interview). My efforts led to me writing an about the monotonic stack/deque data structure.

The post linked above is all text-based, but I realize others sometime learn more effectively through other mediums (e.g., video-based instruction). Curious to know what other resources people have found to be of use!

How common is it that folks self-sabotage their interviews? I think I might have during one of them unintentionally. I had interviewed at a FAANGMULA company and mentioned a competitor. The pay was low compared to my level, but also, I felt like it was more junior and I tended to go very long winded (lack of practice) for various questions. It seems I am a bit out of practice for soft skill interview screens, though usually I kick butt on these and spend way more time on DSA than anything (my weakest area since I'm rusty and system design and behavioral interviews don't scare me at all).

Thoughts?

Interviews typically comprise two main elements: DSA and behavioral assessments. Both demand practice to excel. Reflecting on my own journey, I vividly recall struggling with initial DSA rounds during college (lol I failed to reverse a linked list). However, through some practice through the years, I've significantly improved (one recent interviewer said something like I used up their followups and that didn't happen so often). Nevertheless, I still notice a disparity in my head when solving technical problems in live coding scenarios compared to when I'm quietly practicing on leetcode. The pressure of performing in real-time often induces anxiety, brain fog and being stuck when there's a bug. I believe additional practice could mitigate these challenges.

Needless to say, behavior & system design need practice as well. I also tried to sign up to be a interviewer of my company to practice from the other side, but there's not a lot of hiring happening.

I think currently the biggest efforts is to find the companies that are giving interviews.

Which companies are hiring / best for practice? I also heard you can interview with multiple teams in TikTok, which make it a perfect practice land.

What thoughts do you have?

I have around 15 years experience with background mainly in Java, Restful, Springboot etc. I was impacted by layoffs and I am on a H1B. Hence I have limited time before which I should choose a job. I do not have extensive time for preparing LeetCode in this short time span. I would like to know if there are mid-level companies (not startups, not big tech) that do non-leetcode style interviews. Like, a take home assignment, or some other demo kind of interviews.

I recently got laid off working as a developer working within an agency. I currently have around 5 years of experience working in the agency setting utilizing React, Next js, Vue, Liquid, and the Shopify API to create custom eCommerce sites. During my time at these agencies, I also had the opportunity to act as a lead, interact with clients, set timelines, and cross collaborate with designers/projects managers to meet deadlines.

I have been looking for new opportunities since January and I've been able to secure a couple of interviews, technical challenges, and one onsite. Most of my interviews have been coming from agencies, but my preference is to join a tech startup or maybe more on the brand side of things within the Shopify niche. Below are a couple of questions:

1. Will working at another agency hurt my career in the long run? My ultimate end goal is to work for a bigger tech company if possible.
2. If an agency does want to hire me right now, should I take the job for now or just wait for one of my preferences?
3. I notice a lot of developers within the agency space freelance after their 9-5. Does studying for interviews or future jobs provide a higher ROI instead of freelancing?
4. Lastly, I just finished (super helpful!). It seems like the best course of action for me is to apply a lot, work on side projects instead of grinding leetcode, and study system design. Does this seem correct?

Thanks in advance!

I've been working as a software engineer for 9+ years. Even though graduated in CSE, I never put a great effort in learning DSA into deep. Nor did I found interest in solving problems in leetcode.

I mostly worked in startup jobs. The expectations are kind of clear here. Build apis and features and deploy.

I believe I know moderate amount of system design and build product from scratch using js tech.

Have hands on experience in Node, React and AWS. Lead ~4-5 members for a short time. Never had the opportunity to build product which needed a great scale. DB sharding, working in a system that had 100s of micrsoervices is something I have never experienced.

I'm making around $75k in UAE. How can I give myself a learning path which would lead me to a better paying job. Ideally ~120k+. Spending 2-3 hrs daily would be difficult because of personal commitment. Maybe 6-8hrs total in a week I can manage.

Thanks