I've been on the LC grind for quite few months. Please no "oh Google is not the only company out there etc", I just know that. Well, I've sharpened my coding/algorithmic/data structures skills with LC, no doubt. However, I suck at coming up with good solutions in a reasonable amount of time. Did you / do you know someone / is it possible to brute force the way into Google/Facebook by just blindly Leetcoding and retaining/memorizing as many questions as possible ?
Not for Google. I mean not if u purely memorize. If u memorize but still get the idea of how it is done, then u might be able to
Yes. It's highly dependent on your luck too. Just keep solving the questions and hope that you get something similar in the on-sites. If yes then congratulations else rinse and repeat after 6 months.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If you keep trying year over year, I am sure one day you will make it to facebook. For Google, probably not.
i have an incredibly strong will, but LC defeated me tbh
Just take it light. It's not expected that you solve every problem when u see first. But believe it or not, if u keep on doing more questions, u get better
One tip I can think of is to think in terms of complexity. Like if u see the problem,(even though u don't have much clue), you can mostly figure out what complexity would be good, and accordingly u can think of what data structures would fit in. Example, let's say u have an array problem and O(n) solution looks very trivial, u can almost assume it should be some variation of binary search for o logn solution. Same with O(n2) solution, it should be somehow solvable in O(nlogn) with sorting/priority queue or similar. It's not the approach u need to use directly, only use it if you are not able to find an optimal solution. Basically try to think what can be an answer, then choices are limited in most cases
nice ! you are absolutely right, this is eye-opening indeed
Very low chance for both. I am an interviewer at Google, was once an interviewee at Facebook (Yeah, I got the offer).
doesn't FB in particular ask questions straight out of LC ?
No, that’s why I said very low chance. Lol
There is a lot more to the interview than knowing the answers to the coding challenge. How you work as a member of a team, how you solve abstract problems (to which there may not be a straightforward answer), how you deal with conflict, say as much (if not more IMO) about you as your engineering skills.
Google no, Facebook yes
what's the difference ?
We design our questions to be unique. The second they get posted on Lc we ban them. Also because they are often made up by each engineer they are often very different styles and approaches than standard leetcode. In comparison in my fb interview I had seen 4/5 coding questions before and the one I hadn’t seen was also on leetcode when I looked after woods. Still had enough twists and turns you can’t just rote learn but it’s easier for sure
I got a google interviewer whom I could barely understand and who kept correcting the question because of which I couldn’t pass the google phone round. I was really well prepared. Lost a lot of respect for google. It can happen to you so keep your options open.
Its actually good that you cant brute force into these top companies, it filters out so many non critical thinkers effectively
so u think LC is critical thinking ? lol
He's saying it's *not* critical thinking, therefore you can't bruteforce this with only Leetcode
It is however probably not a good idea. Not that you'll actually be solving those kinds of problems in the job, but the ability to do them well is a real signal of your ability to succeed. I'm not sure gaming the interview process is a wise career move unless your goal is just to show such a company on your resume before moving elsewhere.
man I'm sick of LC, I understand solutions well but can't do most mediums on my own. i'm just feeling down
Maybe take a break and come back to it after a couple weeks, that can be better for the actual learning.