Why do I suck at the easiest LC problems in an interview?

Nov 29, 2021 3 Comments

I’ve done serval phone screens and onsites and had success on the harder problems more often than what would typically be the simplest which has caused me to fail out of a few good job opportunities. This usually ends up happening when a company wants to do the FB approach of solve 2 problems fast.

Anyone else have this experience? I feel like I’m choking and it gives a horrible signal to companies as if I can’t code at all. I generally will get a solution sometimes with help but it takes too long.

Ex of trash problem solving:
1. 2 sum took - me like 25 minutes to do optimally and it wasn’t succinct like the LC solution
2. Count Binary Substrings
3. Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node

Ex of efficient solution to LC Hard:
1. Median of sorted array
2. Remove invalid parentheses
3. The Skyline Problem
4. Anything with graphs

TC: 220
YOE: 5

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TOP 3 Comments
  • GEOTAB / Eng
    zack66

    Go to company page GEOTAB Eng

    zack66
    This happens to me too sometimes. Breezing through mediums and struggling on easys. I think it's because in an interview setting you can fall into a trap of overthinking things and not realizing a very simple solution might suffice. And sometimes it's literally because you've seen the patterns before for the harder questions but not the easy ones.
    Nov 29, 2021 0
  • Amazon
    i24rrwy00h

    Go to company page Amazon

    i24rrwy00h
    Then practice more on the easy problems. Treating each problem like a real interview is more important than covering every problem IMHO, especially for easy problems.
    Nov 29, 2021 0
  • NVIDIA
    happy man

    Go to company page NVIDIA

    happy man
    Maybe you knew the pattern for the hard ones, and you must have not seen the patterns for the easy ones before. And sometimes easy questions have some unique approaches
    Nov 29, 2021 0