A lot of people asked for my preparation notes. Here they are: Total preparation time: ~ 3 months Resources used: 1) LC 2) Grokking the system design Coding: 1. There are two things here. One, how well do you know a data structure and how quickly you can implement it. For example, implementing a Trie, doing a BFS/DFS in a graph, iterative traversal of binary trees, etc. Coding speed and the ability to transform a logic into a clean code is probably the most important part of the interview. Lots of times, interviewers will offer you hints. If you can take that and translate it to clean code quickly, you are golden. Two, try to solve/go through as many problems/solutions as possible. Donât memorize, instead, try to find an easier answer in the forums. Over time, this taught me a lot of different techniques/solutions that helped when i was given an unknown problem. Design: Iâm a bit shallow here. My current work gave me the opportunity to design a few systems and that taught a lot. Grokking the system design taught me how to approach a design question from an interview perspective and what the interviewers are looking for. Few things to note: Itâs ok not to know how a particular thing works, just be honest about it. For example, i didnât know how long polling works and was vocal about it. At senior levels, it important to voice out if you donât know something. Donât try to throw fancy words like NoSQL, Distributed Hash Table, etc. Interviewers will definitely ask you rationale for choosing something. Practice in a white board designing the system. Think about it like your next project. Do this for all the questions you come across for design and this would open up a lot new ideas. Revision: Spaced revision helped a lot. Over time, the concepts/code became muscle memory Luck: Cannot stress this enough. There were interviews where I got a super hard question during phone screen and bombed it. On the other hard, I had an entire loop where I had practiced the question before hand. Before you interview for the actual companies, interview with at least 3-5 companies whom you are sure you wonât join. The confidence of clearing a phone screen initially was vital. Hope this helps. Good luck to all of you trying to do better!
How many problems have you done in LC?
Can someone link the Grokking the System Design resource the OP mentions? Googling returns various results and am wondering if there is one that stands out above the rest.
Is it this one: https://www.educative.io/collection/5668639101419520/5649050225344512
Thank you OP, you the real MVP!
How many LC problems did you do before you felt comfortable
Probably at least 200
Got it. Do you by any chance remember the breakdown of mediums/hards you did
Do you think your prior experience helped you to get senior roles?
Also, can u tell me how were the interviews?
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing
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