Honestly, I love coding but I haven’t been able to make the cut for these FAANG SWE interviews. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great coder and I’ve exceeding the hiring bar as an intern at Amazon. However, even though I’m just 22, I just can’t wrap my head around these difficult Leetcode problems involving DP, bit-wise, trees, etc. Maybe if I study for months, I would be good enough to pass the hiring bar at Nordstrom, Qualtrics, Gusto, Qualcomm, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, and other such companies. But I just can’t solve these FAANG problems. Even Microsoft recently asked me a Leetcode hard question for a New Grad position and I just blanked out. I honestly just don’t think I will ever meet the bar. Please don’t tell me to suck it up because I am a hard worker when I channel my productivity to something I’m actually interested in. Should I switch careers into a PM or a Solutions Architect? Salaries for PM go up as high as $400k or more with under 10 YOE. I just want to build my competence in one thing and SDE positions with these extremely difficult Leetcode problems at FAANG just doesn’t seem to be for me. #software #softwareadvice #SDE #leetcode #pm #productmanager #product #solutionarchitect
Off topic but I was surprised to see Qualcomm in that list. Why are you considering a semiconductor company, and why that one in particular?
For their SDE Intern interview, they asked me how to find the depth of a binary tree and to reverse a linked list and I got the offer. My friends also got basic questions. Also for a non-tech company, they pay like a tech company for interns at least.
Probably just going to write drivers and firmware there, you don’t need fancy algorithms for that.
"... asked LC hard for a new grad..." LC has nothing to do with seniority. You won't get better at solving LC hard by having industry experience. LC needs strong math/algebra knowledge to come up with the optimal solution (which even a high schooler can do). Try understanding the mathematical reasoning behind the solution first and then you'll see the pattern.
I do agree with this and do see basic patterns for LC easy/mediums (2-pointer, sliding window, etc). I’m usually able to solve almost all of these. But when I take my skills to new problem sets like 3Sum or LRU Cache, I end up just memorizing the solution due to the complexity and sophistication of solving the problem.
That means you're not totally familiar with the pattern of how to write optimised code at the first attempt, which could be risky when you gain seniority, as suboptimal code will be produced
You will be able to do a lot of questions if you understand the basic patterns https://leetcode.com/discuss/general-discussion/665604/Important-and-Useful-links-from-all-over-the-Leetcode
This is a great resource. Thanks! Maybe if I start right now to master the basics to the advanced patterns, I will be prepared to interview for other companies after I leave AWS haha.
First thing, change your username from "Hackerrank" to "Leetcode". Afterwards, ensure your name matches your personality and be a true son of your father. Thank me later.
Switch to PM , Solution Architect or Product Manager.
This is what I'm thinking as well. Maybe add an MBA in between after a few years.
Yes. Leetcode is useless way of assessing the skills. In addition to that down to the career you will move to up roles and that doesnt need coding where management skill is matter.
Not surprised if you're from Amazon
It's because I started as an intern. FB and Twitter also have pretty easy algorithm questions if you apply to their internships.
Agree with amazon. Twitter internship interviews are only hashmaps, arrays, sets and thats it.
You don’t need to work at those companies to do really interesting work and make a lot of money. There are a lot of great companies that have more engineering experience based interviews and pay engineers just as much. If you don’t want to be a software engineer, then switch to PM. But if you like doing the actual job, then stay, and go places that fit you better!
Do you have a few company names in mind that ask for more engineering experience-based interviews?
I’ve interviewed for both Apple and Netflix and didn’t get asked leetcode questions in either one. As far as other companies go, I haven’t got them memorized, but have read others posts when people ask them about their interviews for high TC positions and have actively noticed when the OP said it wasn’t leetcode based. You don’t need to have a list of companies that don’t use leetcode memorized for applying to. Apply to anything that seems like a good fit. Go into every interview thinking that it is a two way interview and the companies that are right for you will work out. Maybe sometimes you’ll get into companies you didn’t think you would have because they will ask questions that fit your experience!
Try systems engineering / devops
Good news is that you won't use any of that shit in your day to day job
How long have you been practicing? How's your knowledge about the concepts itself? Like do you understand what DP is and what a tree is etc.
I’ve been practicing for 5-6 months total. Definitely understand how DP works. I also understand how trees (BFS + DFS), hash maps, heaps, and other data structures work as well. But applying these algorithms to different Leetcode problems is what I can’t seem to do.
Everything can be learned. Takes time and patience. You need to know the all the concepts of programming as well, for loop, function, OOP. Start with easy problems. Don't even go to leetcode. See if you can write programs like fibonacci, palindrome, simple math (function to calculate area of a polygon), and so on. Once you feel comfortable, jump to next level. Also practice pseudo code. Like write down sentences on how you'd solve a certain problem.