Feeling discouraged: leetcode medium
Hello everyone, I've got an on-site interview with Microsoft in about a week. I've been finishing up my MS in Computer Science degree, so I haven't had a lot of opportunity to do coding interview practice. Here on Blind I've received the helpful advice that I should be focusing on LeetCode's medium-level questions. But I've gone through several of them, and I've been able to solve a couple, but for most of them the answers have eluded me. In some cases, even the solutions/explanations have left me clueless. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of basic data structures, and don't have too much of a problem with the Easy questions, even if they take me a little while. But clearly I'm missing the knowledge to get to the next level, and unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to get there. I've noticed a couple themes: dynamic programming seems to come up somewhat regularly, and graphs also seem to figure in several solutions. So I know I need to work on these areas. But any advice on things I can read/watch/learn from in the next few days would be helpful. Unfortunately I know this stuff can take time, so I know I might not be at the level I need to be before my interview, but I'm sure gonna try. I also have a mock interview scheduled through GainLo with an MS employee, so I'm hoping that'll help. Thanks!
Do a bunch of DP, DFS, sliding window substring algorithms, learn dijkstras , and you should be set
Thanks! I did learn Dijkstra's in my networking course, but it's been a while--just need to review it. Super helpful.
Do not just review it. You need to practice understanding it and implementing it from scratch. First, just read through these solutions. Then, given the description of the solution, see if you can implement it right. You’ll find lots of “off by one” errors or little things you didn’t quite understand about the solution while you do this. Then, come back in a week and try to re-do those questions without any aid. The idea is to help you remember the “essence” of the technique so that it actually sticks and not quite rote memorization.
Did you not take an algorithms course?
I've seen these posts once every few weeks, seems like a lot of people are in that boat. They seem to disappear after a bit so either figure it out or maybe they die idk :3 good luck
Postpone the interview, do a couple rounds of mocks with Gainlo or PracticeCodingInterview, and when you feel like you’ve reached a place where you’re no longer seeing improvement ( before burn out), reschedule your interviews. Most recruiters are completely open to “it’s been a while since I interviewed. I’d like to take n weeks to refresh”
Postpone the interview