Advice on where/when to apply
So I have been a test engineer writing no code really (using crappy in house tools that don’t rely on anything complex, so I do not consider that code. We do not write algorithms) and have been practicing leetcode. I have a BS in Computer Science and my coding is getting back up there with reading CTCI, EPI and Coding on Leetcode/HackerRank and watching youtube. I still suck at Trees, Graphs and Tries though. I was wondering how I should gauge myself before I think of applying at a FAANG company. I currently make 70k a year before taxes and would like to make more. I know I am capable but have nobody to show Me anything remotely as a path. It feels like I am stuck on the deep end of a pool drowning with all the stuff I should do. Any advice for me? I can answer any questions in replies so if you do care about helping, I really do appreciate it.
Google asked me almost exclusively graph questions, Facebook asked tree/graph questions and Amazon had a tree question albeit a very common one. Most questions were string / stack / queue related at Amazon though. You should be able to easily recognize the type of question, so that means that you need to be very comfortable with graph and tree questions. Tries not so much since they are really a subset of graphs and you can come up with decent solutions without them. I'd recommend doing a side project in the language you plan on interviewing with, just to get used to the syntax and quirks of the language.
Any good resources for graphs and trees?
I learned mostly from leetcode, but check out other's answers after you have a working solution for good ideas on how to implement them faster. For instance, to represent a graph, instead of a map of Node classes you can simply do an<Integer, String> map or a 2d array. Also I read algo books to really solidify the formal definitions in my head.