Interview kickstart reviews
Failed onsites(AWS and OCI) even after solving 400ish leetcodes. Losing hope. Thinking of joining Interview Kickstart. You guys think its a good idea to invest around 5850 USD?
Why not, if u get in it's half a months salary
If you have solved around 400 questions, I believe you will have the capability to recognize common patterns and techniques to solve a given problem. From my experience most of the interview questions are a direct replica or a derivative of a previously solved one. So, self analyse and see at what point you would have failed. Whether going totally blank on seeing a question, or was able to come up a brute force/suboptimal solution and couldn't optimize. If possible get a interview feedback. This would definitely help you understand where you stand. Based on that, you can decide whether you want to enroll in interview prep program. In my opinion they would provide a well structured plan to study, and some guidance on how to improve your skills. But you have to ultimately put the effort to improve. There are tons of free resources out there which can potentially be a alternative for this. Ultimately it's you who have to decide whether you need an external guidance or you are capable of figuring things out and improve by yourself. Further, assuming you gave two interviews, I would suggest don't rush to make a decision instead analyse your skill level and make a decision.
Thanks for the detailed reply man. Yeah I am definitely gonna think before making that decision. However, the 15 mocks thing is looking good to me.
In the same boat — kinda want to enroll before my onsite but the price is a lot if you don’t get anything out of it
I am also kinda thinking man. So confusing.
This is common. Software engineers are the least social bunch. What that means is it is extremely hard to please these people. Besides, our job makes us to be detail oriented and picky as hell. That translates to interview and even the people with perfect preparation cannot pass all. No matter how many you solve, success rate will be somewhere 20-40%. You gotta interview more. I hate this and tend to give pass (I intentionally lower the leetcode bar). I focus more on experiences from resume but most people don’t bother. They focus on nitty little pointless details like variable names (are you kidding me in coding interview where you are busy solving the problem?), corrections (hello, everyone codes differently) and other bullshits. These are not something you can do perfectly unless you have solved the problem recently.
Thanks for the response man. Is microsoft hiring? Can you refer me? 😀
I left Microsoft as pay was too low. Microsoft will start hiring in September when they start having head counts (fiscal year starts in Sep unlike other companies).
I had a good experience with it. I was on the same boat last year ( failed interviews at google, facebook and amazon). This year, after using IK, got multiple offers and finally accepted offer at facebook. I felt it is worth investing. Note - just completing IK exercises is not sufficient. You need a LOT of self prep as well especially regarding system design interviews.
How many Leetcode and how long was the prep time. Thanks for the info
I have been solving leetcode for a while now (~2 years) on-and-off. The total count is around 370. In the hindsight the leetcode count doesn’t matter much. You need a structured approach to cover the breadth, which i found difficult to come up on my own. So i relied upon IK to help me with it and also did a lot of leetcode in my spare time.
A friend did it. The materials they give you to study are all available online (just read books and watch YouTube videos), and they essentially assign leetcode problems as homework problems. The only real value comes from having FANG engineers give you mock interviews, but there are tons of meetups where people get together and practice for free. IMO not worth it.
As someone who took it just to see if it would help me crack Google, it wasn't the most useful thing for someone who already knows the format, done tons of leetcode, etc though I did learn some extra tidbits and review. That said, if you are starting out and don't have a background like mine, it would be very useful to have a structured program like that.
Did you find the mocks useful?
Used to intern for them back in highschool doing operational stuff, dm if you want to chat
Everybody is different, just take it and decide for yourself. Either it will help or you will learn something helpful from the experience. All the best !
Following.