Hi all, I need feedback/review on interview kickstart program. I am starting to explore new opportunities and want to be prepared as much as I can to land at least one offer from top tier companies in Bay area. I have not interviewed for a long time, almost 6 years. So I know it's going to be tough and will need lot of preparation and motivation to land offers. There are lots of free resources everywhere including leet code, geeks for geeks, grilling design interviews, CCI, EPI etc. However I am trying to understand what's would work better and what are obvious advantages of programs like interview kickstart. This program also seem to be expensive compared to others like interview camp, outco etc. Any feedback on interview kickstart and would love to here thoughts on comparison to other programs and what works better to coach you to nail the interviews. Cheers
I took it. If you haven’t studied for 6 yrs, it’s definitely worth it and save your time. However, they don’t spoon feeding you. You still have to grind a lot with other free resources you already know
Thanks. I thought the course is already intense for first 2 months. So I understand that you would still have to grind it after 2 months outside the course to be on the zone for the interview any time. I was looking for feedback on their efforts to focus on individuals in case one falls behind and steps to improve and help one succeed even after the course.
@stonks, did you get fang offer ?
They are very good about not just Leetcode interviews, but resume prep, behavioral prep, offer negotiations, etc. I feel their system design is a bit weak as I had to combine some external resources to really understand their class work. It was all examples but not much pattern recognition like the coding segments which are very good. The biggest advantage is the mock interviews that actually give you detailed and helpful feedback that you wouldn't get from live interviews. Actually what straightened me out for system design was taking a few mock interviews and finding out what the interviewers are looking for. Resume prep gets you in the door, leetcode keeps you in the race, systems design and behavioral skills separate you from the pack, and then you have leverage to negotiate TC.
Thanks for detailed feedback, appreciate it. I am not sure how frequently they update the contents based on feedback like yours. I understand that I still have to grind it on my own after the course but I was hoping their system design course would be really good as that's where you probably can get most inputs from experienced/skilled professionals they have.
Don't get me wrong, it's completely worth the $6k. You'll more than make that up when you look for your next job. The systems design was just a bit weaker than the rest, but it could have just been the instructors I happened to have. Another difference is that they use live instructors in addition to video classes so you can get all your questions answered each week. I had a very good instructor for week 1 programming and looked up his past class videos whenever I could to get extra understanding.
I got coached by a private tutor who has cracked many FANG++ companies. Wasn’t as many hours as IK, so you’d have to put in hours on your own, but I didn’t want to spend $6k. Costed me less than $1000. And was good coaching for the money. In hindsight I think one can self prepare without any coaching, just that I was a bit rusty back then and it was taking me too long to self prepare (plus added distraction of kids).
I would be interested. Can you please let me know the name/details.
Please let me know the details as well
IK is better than other options, largely because Omkar's classes and videos are high quality. As long as you know how to see past the founders sales pitch and turn the knobs to get access to all of Omkar's content, I would recommend IK.
Does Omkar cover graph, greedy, dynamic prog ? can we solve LC hard in 20min after going over that content ?
I was able to solve LC hards in 12-17 mins after his DP/graph/trees class
May be another way to explore .. Is there any other course/program out there which has similar structure as IK but it's one on one and not like batch of 30. That would be the best to have personal coach/mentor and it would be well worth 6k
Don't think there is. I don't know if Omkar teaches privately. If he does then that might be a cheaper route. They used to have another good instructor Geeta but heard that they didn't treat her well and she left. She has her private coaching but it is not interview prep but more motivational life coaching for engineers.
Geetha was not that great instructor during my times!.
I did attend IK back in those days. It’s helpful for those who haven’t touched algorithms and data structures in their life. If you are already leetcoding and able to solve easy ones I would say focus on leetcoding! I don’t anyone will be interview ready after finishing the course. It’s just a starting point. It depends on what level you are in.
I also attended IK last year and I was able to get two FAANG offers. However the only person of worth there is Omkar Deshpande . If I could just get personal sessions with Omkar alone I would do that instead of giving it to IK. IK is just a middleman main value is in Omkar.
I attended IK during 2016! Most of the instructors were subpar that time and I had to grind hard leetcode after the course. Do you think omkar course helps getting faang without grinding leetcode very hard?
You don't need to grind leetcode if you can push the buttons to get hold of Omkar's long series. Those are 15 classes beyond the 5 you get in which he covers more than 100 Leetcode problems using solid CS patterns. Add his regular classes on algos and you hit 150+ Leetcode problems with very little struggle.
How is IK compared to byte-by-byte ($1600 6week course) and educative.io ( less then $200 yearly subscription ) ?
We took byte by byte also (not the six week but the shorter courses on recursion and dynamic programming and was surprised that he sells that junk for hundreds of dollars. Systems design was even worse. He made bombastic claims to tempt us to sign up but the videos were worse than the free ones on youtube. He asks you to go to those free videos for more details. Felt like daylight robbery. Educative is decent for the price, but I would compare it to books rather than video or live courses. Not an alternative to IK. For all it's faults, IK is still the best course out there.
Thanks for the feedback!
Could anyone who has taken the course, share the topics being covered in the course ? How’s the content structured etc., ?
they have Coding: trees, graphs, recursion, dp, sorting Sys design: 5ish Behavioral/soft skills: (how to search for jobs to Leadership principles/salary negotiations) - around 8 sessions
@usethatsh- do Omkar’s videos cover other coding topics like Strings, LinkedList and Queue?
I took IK. It was definitely helpful. Got 2 offers from FAAMG + other offers My pay bumped up 3 times, so it had a high ROI (as compared to their 6k price)
DM me if you're looking for more info on them
Thanks. Will reach out to you.