Grinding Leetcode - Not Progressing
I’ve been grinding leetcode full time, every day, at least 5 hours per day. I was laid off 8 months ago. Small - medium sized companies are rejecting my applications, and I’m only getting interviews with FAANG and large tech companies with LC interviews. I’m a front end engineer, and have a non traditional background so I’ve had to teach myself CS fundamentals over the past few years. I have a decent resume, working for recognizable companies. I have been operating at a senior level for a few years now which really means that my LC interviews are challenging AF. I am finally getting through easy level questions pretty easily, and some mediums. I’m recognizing when I’m going in the wrong direction with my algos, and picking up patterns, but I’m just not cutting it. WTF do I do? I have a Meta phone screen on Monday. My current consulting gig has dried up, I’m running out of money. I’m a single dad. I have bills that reflect a salary of someone that has been making over $200k per year. I’m feeling so absolutely hopeless. Edit: I have been consulting for the past 7 months. I’ve only been grinding LC for a couple of months.
The market will improve. Big companies ask these algo questions cause they don’t know how else to standardize. Keep trying both small and medium size companies too.
How did you get into Hashicrop?
Non leetcode full stack interview
Stress plus weird standards. I was bombing back to back. Now that I have a new job and am interviewing, I’m nailing interviews. Be kind to yourself, you’re in a weird place and forced to do something stressful.
Are you a SWE ? Not liking it at Reddit ?
Damn sorry to hear about your situation. After plenty of rejects myself, I can just recommend to thoroughly study specific companies’ interview processes. Especially Meta. They a very specific format with specific expectations. It’s mostly about fitting in their cookie mold rather than being a good engineer.
I applaud you for dedicating that much time to leetcode its tough for beginners and definitely not for everyone.
Bruh it’s not that hard. You gotta memorize like 10 patterns and you’re covered for 90% of coding interviews. Those outlier 10% if they want to ask a DP or some insane mathematics question? Fuck em Also many companies are transitioning to less leetcode focused interviews for stripe and slack for example you just do some API calls and unit tests
Yeah Pinterest gave me a more difficult version of a leetcode hard for my phone screen for a FE position.
Don’t memorize. Don’t listen to what Workday says. If you actually understand the patterns, they go a long way and will come back next time you interview. I think you are trying too many at once. Understand each concept/pattern first by doing whole bunch and then move on
It might help to actually take an algorithms course and do the paper problems by hand. It really helps to spend time reading about X algorithm and then sitting and answering questions about it. For example you might be asked to think about how you would used a linked list or some other linked list questions that may not appear on LC, but were designed by an educator/professor whose job in writing the text and problems is to help you learn. Some don’t need this, others do. I like theory before just randomly spamming problems as I’m more of a bottom up learner.
Small companies need portfolio. Make sure you are working on side projects.
OP, you are front end engineer so why trying to solve complicated algorithms? As long as you are proficient in your skills you should have no issues finding new job.
How many problems have you done? I don’t understand how you can spend that much time and not progress unless most of it is being spent staring at the screen and stuck
Bro …
I’ve been consulting for the past 7 months. I just started preparing for interviews in Jan.