Offering free SWE mock interviews/general interview guidance
Hey blind, I recently wrapped up all my interviews and am in the final stages.
I've got not much to do over the long weekend and thought I'd give back to the community by offering some interview prep to anyone who is also having the time of their life doing virtual onsites
I firmly believe that interviewing is a game that can be solved. Feel free to post questions here regarding general interview prep and approaches, or anything tangentially related. Dm me if you would like an interview session. I'm open to leetcode, sys des, or behavioral. However I'm mostly FE/full stack so I will be of little use if you're looking for distributed sys design. Idk how many I can do but I'll get to whoever I can over the coming week
Cheers
Offers I have received over past couple months: goog, fb, twit, uber, lyft, pins, ddash and a buncha other late stage startups. all sr or staff
current tc: 430k/7yoe
new tc: have not yet decided but 400k-600k range
#interview
comments
What are your thoughts in google tagged leetcode questions bring tough and how to get prepared for it ?
For Facebook, I guess its about speed and solution. Where as google even if it has bug there is a slight chance for consideration.
I think if LC doesn't come naturally to you, lc hards are often not worth it. It's a huge time investment, very mentally challenging, and Google is really not the holy grail of companies.
That said, if you do want to crack it, I used to do 1 lc hard every day for a month or so and now I can do any lc hard with ~90% confidence rate. Take any one lc hard, and focus on it for 1.5-2hrs. Think about all the various possibilities, tackle it from every single angle possible, try random transformations, approaches, etc. Also I usually find that I forget an LC hard approach after 3 months or so, so by then it's up for me to give it a shot again. Just training your brain to think clever
And yes, FB usually asks 2 lc meds per round so it's more about speed
Also given your yoe and tc, I would normally imagine companies will focus more on behavior and designs instead of LC, do you feel the same? What do you think the level of difficulty for algorithm questions from Google and FB?
Thanks!
LC is still important. You have a little bit more leeway but it's not much. Though if you absolutely destroy system design + behavioral for l6 I'm sure you get even more leeway. But I wouldn't neglect it and assume that you have a free pass due to your seniority
G is 1 lc hard per round fb is 2 lc meds per round, with some variance depending on luck
How many LC?
Any special advice
If you can do a random LC med presented to you with a 90% confidence interval you are ready for most interviews, except the harder ones like pins/g/f/etc. If you can do a random LC hard presented to you with a 50% confidence interval you can think fast enough for all of them
The only other piece most people miss is communication. I have failed to optimally solve LC problems yet have never failed a LC round. If you can speak your thought process well and communicate clearly that will go much further than pulling out some code-golf optimized solution in 10 min