Preparing software engineer interviews.
Hi my fellow bling friends. I recently interviewed with a few company and have gotten pretty good results. Would like to share my preparation with the community to help people. I have 5 years of experience and have been mostly working on cloud and distributed systems. For coding part: I went through Cracking coding interview book a couple years ago. Still recommend the book if you have not read it before. I solve 350 leetcode questions. The number does not matter, but you should at least solve 200 before go to an onsite. I have friends solve 600+, but I personally don't think that is necessary. I also went through Elements of Programming Interviews. For leetcode question I went through them 3 times. 1. I don't care if I know how to come up with the solution, my goal is I can implement the solution with clean and bug free code. If I cannot come up with a good algorithm after 10 mins, I look at the discussions and find the answers. This practice my ability to WRITE. 2. This round I don't actually implement the full version of solution. My goal is to see a problem I can come up with the optimum algorithm. I write pseudo code on paper, go though the implications on my head. This practice my ability to "SOLVE". 3. This round I should be able to see a problem and come up with a algorithm and then write the nice solution quickly. I would actually practice how would I "EXPLAIN" my thought process. The interviewer is looking how how you get to where you are. This is very important, do not skip this round. I also get asked about system design questions. I read this book https://dataintensive.net and think it is helpful. I went through"system design primer" and https://www.educative.io/collection/5668639101419520/5649050225344512. The system design is harder to practice but my day to day job is related to system design so I am practicing it on my job. Finally there is behavioral question. I would recommend you think through your experience, and come up with some examples of your work that can justify you answers. Amazon has some good leadership principles and I recommend go through those and come up with "EXAMPLE" to answer them. Good luck everyone and hopefully we all land to where we want.
Do you think it's worth paying for leetcode for Business analyst roles where mostly just SQL is used?
I only did CTCI, EPI and few very leetcode (50 or so max) and cracked Google, Facebook, Amazon
damn good dude teach me
how many years u in microsoft
Any other good books on system design. I don’t have system design experience
Here is another resource I used when I prepare. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/architecting-distributed-cloud-applications-free-video-course/ System design is very open ended type of question. My suggestion would be to prepare as much as you can, but during interviews try not to pretend you know something that you actually not know. Don't say too many buzz word without know what they really are. System design usually come with trade offs and it is important to know what the requirements are and explain the trade offs. Good luck!
Thanks OP and best of luck for your new role.
I got into Amazon after 5 leetcode questions ...did very well on all coding questions since I have prior interest in algorithms and prepared well for leadership questions and stories
How do you prepare for soft questions. I seem to struggle with those. Like last time in an interview, I was asked “describe a situation where you didn’t get along with a coworker”. I struggled quite a bit and I feel the response I gave made me seem like a troublemaker.
Just the STAR method....I only have two stories that I adapt to almost any question
So where you work now?
Still deciding.