Planning to go for FANG, I keep on hearing from the community about interview Kickstart and then there is leetcode. What do you guys suggest?
I don't know what interview Kickstart is but leetcode is incredibly useful if you put in the time
Help me quit
IK fan here. Leetcode is also great but it is a bottomless pit. So hard to know where to start and where to end. Plus the whole problem of maintaining solo motivation for such a long time. With leetcode my prep was so scattered over many months. IK helped me get much needed structure. I needed the same amount of motivation as leetcode, but it was so much easier to maintain it with their advice, structure and the group. I come from a noname company and noname school and start at G in a few weeks. More than half of my batch mates are now at top tier companies. That, without them taking any entrance test. Speaks volumes of the program.
How many years of experience do you have?
Did your entire batch have a CS background?
1. How is it better than just doing leetcode. 2. Do they cover more techniques than standard algorithms text book. 3. Does it work because you stick to their schedule after you pay the fees or that it work because of their teachers. 4. Can the same student achive similar results by just doing leetcode?
Leetcode will not tell you all approaches.. it doesn't explain concepts if you have never studied them. You need to work hard I n the course.. plus it is rigorous...I did leetcode a year before joining IK.. I had no avail inspiye of solving over 150+ problems
IK is damn expensive. If you already know your stuff and just want to practice Leetcode with other people try something else like Heapclub
Fwiw, I did crack into G with them and many other people in my group got into really good companies. I posted on Blind a few days ago. Super awesome course: https://us.teamblind.com/s/uD77BtGh .
I felt scammed by IK on some level. Did not meet my expectations. Some classmates liked it, others felt similar to me.
You are comparing apples and oranges. IK provides an interview prep package. Leetcode only provides a large question bank of questions. If you want to become fluent with Leetcode and need help, I would recommend joining IK and doing Omkar's series, in which he goes through lots of Leetcode problems by organizing them into a small number of patterns. You won't get those by reading solutions on Leetcode or youtube channels. Omkar has Ph.D from Stanford and has the ability to extract theoretical patterns from noise, and his content will help you actually become a better engineer, which is the tagline of IK. So it's not Leetcode or Interview Kickstart, it should be Leetcode VIA Interview Kickstart. And honestly, I joined IK only because the first class was taught by Omkar which gave me confidence that his content will help me actually become a better engineer.
Who is omkar
@warp when you say omkar’s series, what all topics does his series covers?
Same question here. Is interview kickstart legit...or are those just paid promoters posting in different threads? Btw OP you should do leetcode regardless to get a feel for the questions asked.
I don't think IK needs any promoters at this stage, they have difficulties with scale right now and waiting list is huge.
Interview Kickstart changed my life. Would be glad to talk about it in private, but I can't PM anymore because I can no longer confirm my Cisco blind account (I left Cisco)