Leetcode hero binge
I need career advice from wise and experienced Blinders. Yesterday I leetcoded from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. I’m a new grad who graduated in August and I still have no job. I made it to background check phase with a company after 4 month long interview process. References called and all. Only to not get an offer. So now I have a formidable resume gap as I didn’t do much after getting confetti email with congratulations and background check link. Shit happens. I’m back at square one. My brother who is 3 years younger just got 160k offer in Bay Area on his first tech interview ever. He says I’m maybe not fit to become a software engineer (douche). I have three options. I’m still getting tons of interviews from low tier companies (think 80k in LCOL) AND decent tier companies (Audible, Amazon, Doordash, Capital One, Chewy, JPMChase). But my LC ability is easy level at best. Please select my best course of action. The bootcamp can help my skill set and close resume gap by 6 months. But at the same time rejection has turned me into a Leetcode animal/lover. I have the capacity/will to go 996 purely studying LC. Or I could simply get the first job willing to take a chance on me and work my way up. My instinct is to Leetcode as I’ll never have the opportunity to spend this much time on LC again if I get a basic job.
"formidable resume gap" Man the shit we worry about when we're young...
Thanks for making me smile :) guess I forgot “mo money mo problems”
Keep grinding man. These medium and hard problems may feel impossible right now, but in a month or so you’ll be killing them
I appreciate that. Ready to shut out the world for a month and try :)
Get a job and LC on the side. You’ll get farther with one hour of LC a day for a year than with 12 hours of LC for a month until you burn out. I think of Amazon and Doordash as high tier companies btw.
Focus on quality not quantity. You can probably only do 2 problems max a day and actually retain them
For explicitly memorizing stuff yes, but LC is more about muscle memory than anything else
You're gonna burn out. Get a job and get some IRL experience while LCing 7-8am or 8-9am before work. Keep evenings for having fun or you're gonna hate life.
I agree in general it’s a terribly unhealthy approach but if I 996 for a month and don’t make sufficient progress I’ll take a step back. I can trade time now for a more stable future.
Grinding LC without knowing about proper algorithms, data structures, and complexity analysis won't make you better. Learn about algorithms and data structures first, then use LC as a test/application of your skills/knowledge. If you're doing that and not *just* grinding LC with massive hours and little progress, then focusing on that full-time is a good use of time. I recommend Tim Roughgarden's books on algorithms.
This is good advice. I’m doing codecademy “learn DSA” followed by their “pass the technical interview in Python course”. Also pushing algoexpert, Leetcode, HackerRank, and plan on buying Grokking very soon. I’ll check out that book for sure and I appreciate you
@Apple What’s your opinion on MIT 6.006 Algos course?
Don't burn yourself. Don't LC too much in a day. It's not a sprint. It should be part of daily activities, but it cannot be the only daily activity. The key is to revise. Revise well 1-2 months before interview.
Yeah this. I find that if I don’t revise I forget even basic shit. Revision is as important as solving new problems
Grind LC, but find a job even with low TC if possible, LC all day is a burn out, also you will get demotivated. Follow patterns on LC, don't grind random, Google common patterns of coding questions, you will find a hackernoon blog post if I remember blog name. Surround yourself with people who encourage you.
I’m gonna try Grokking and a bunch of other resources. Trying to learn and master and not memorize
I’m curious if you studied computer science in college? If yes, you shouldn’t need that much leetcode to get a new grad job.
Your brother is a jerk but don’t worry he’s borderline poverty with that TC in the Bay Area
He literally admitted to failing both technical rounds and only got the interview through a strong referral from a non technical dude. Now is acting like 10x engineer or something lmfao