Yesterday's layoffs at Uber, and other ongoing layoffs have many preparing for job interviews. For those Blinders who struggle a lot with algorithmic interview questions and/or are rusty on their coding skills, I'd like to share a few interview tips that have helped me interview at FANG++ companies(Passed: Google, Fb, Apple, Amazon, Stripe, Lyft. Failed: Netflix). 1. Get a concrete idea of your algorithm and test it before you start coding. Test your algorithm to make sure it works for all cases and not just the example at hand. Specifically, come up with examples to try to break your logic, and make sure your algo still holds. Having to re-think your algorithm half way through your code doesn't end well. 2. If you're stuck, solve the problem a few times manually. If you aren'e able to come up with any algorithmic logic, ask yourself how you'd solve the problem manually, and pretend you are explaining the steps to solve it manually to a five year old. Explaining to a five year old isn't very different than instructions to a computer (algorithm)! 3. Write very modular code. Writing/debugging/dry-running a very modular code is a lot easier than one with several nested loops. Focus first on the high level logic with a lot of helper functions, and then fill the helper functions one by one. 4. If everything goes well, doesn't hurt to get a few bonus points. Feel free to drop a quick line or two about the time complexity of the code, what you'd do differently if you had to to do it for production code, or how you'd modify the algo to distribute it at across multiple nodes to handle large data. If you've other tips that have helped you, feel free to post below. I help prepare for SWE interviews. Feel free to DM/post a message below if you'd be interested in personal interview prep help.
Great share! Thank you
Could you please help how to approach and solve a system design problem in interviews. Is it ok to dm you?
Thank you