Giving back - how I cleared L6 coding - Part 2 - Google

This is Part 2 of a series. Here is Part 1: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Giving-back---how-I-cleared-L6-coding---Part-1---Google-ikvVrRXa So how do you handle the actual interview? How do you set yourself up for top performance? How do you divide the time during the actual 45 minutes? How do you behave? What do you do between interviews? I'll try to help out answering these questions. I think my hints are valid for most companies that ask such coding questions. Let's suppose your interview starts at 11.00 and lasts 45 mins. Do NOT go in cold. Keep the hour before open. At 10.00 start a mock assessment in LC (see Part 1) and do it in a relaxed way. Work on it until 10.30. Everyone that has done a day of sport knows this - never go in with cold muscles. Same goes for the brain. At 10.30 start double checking your setup. Do not underestimate this part. It is *your* responsibility to have a smooth setup from your side. I had a phone ready as a backup internet connection if my cable connection crapped on me. Stick to cable if possible and not Wifi. Check the camera and the angle and make sure it's pretty neutral with the background etc. Don't wear fancy stuff. You're not getting married. Anything simple works, as long as it's not distracting. By 10.45 you should be done with this stuff. Between 10.45 and 11.00 do all the natural stuff, eat, drink (don't plan to do any drinking during interview - no distractions), pee, poo. At 10:59 be ready near your desk. Take out your phone and start a timer that you'll be able to see throughout. Start it at 46 minutes and keep it running and visible. Don't get over-eager and join the call at 10:55. No one will give you points for being early. Join the call as soon as it clocks 11.00. Now before I go into this, I have a hint. At this stage your mind gets some extra excitement and the body responds too. Do not let your mind race. Keep your mind in the exact middle. Don't pull it too tight and don't let it too loose. The body can react with some tension, it's ok. But keep the mind in the exact center. It will naturally start working faster when you get into the exercise but keep calm as you join. The best way to get over this phase is the assessment sessions I mentioned in Part 1. Those will, as much as possible, take away the initial stress. Once the interviewer joins stay neutral. Don't get over-friendly, over-eager, over-this or over-that. You're not here to make friends. So strike it in the middle - not an instant-bro-like behavior and also not a hard-nosed asshole. In the middle. You'll need every minute you can get so, if you can, keep the chit chat as short as possible, without being rude. Then you'll hear the question. Here's my rule on this: never start writing code before you've thought it through. This part, the thinking-through part, you must do it interactively. Basically narrate your thoughts to the interviewer. In my Google interview the question was pretty vague in terms of how the input will be given. After some initial probes to clarify it the interviewer gave me a signal that it's up to me. That was enough for me to shape the problem definition to the solutions I had in mind. Later I heard that this reluctance to jump to coding straight away and shaping the problem before solving it was a key strong signal for my rating (SH). In short, strongly resist your urge to start coding right away. I only got one LC Hard-equivalent in a session at Google. After the initial 5 minutes of chit chat, I spent roughly 15 minutes talking about it, writing down stuff on the pad but not writing a single line of code. I started writing code at the ~20 minute mark. It wasn't smooth bang-out-solution. I felt that I didn't have the whole thing and I refused to code before I knew exactly what I was doing. Interviewer helped in this phase and held my hand a bit. It's *much* better to be helped in this phase than in the coding phase. Once I had it clear in my head I *proposed* the interviewer to actually code it. He agreed. I coded it, tested it and proofread it. Remember to take care about your syntax. Also test drive the code with some sample input. If you can't find something tell the interviewer that you think it's good to go and *ask* the interviewer if they see something off. Make this as close to a typical pair programming session as possible, keeping in mind that you're the one supposed to solve it. It's not easy to make a minutes-guidance as it depends on the difficulty of the problem. In general however make a clean cut between the 'think it through' part and the coding part. Never start coding something you don't understand yet how it will end up. It's better to tell the interviewer genuinely how you feel. Tell them"I think I might do it but I still don't see the code through to the end. I could either code the brute-force version or make an attempt to code the most optimal version, although I don't see it through as of right now. What do you think?" Again, don't start coding before you see the end of it. Your time is better spent thinking than coding if that's the case. If you feel unable to see it and you feel it's time to make a decision ask your interviewer whether he prefers you go all-in and risk it or fall back to coding a less-efficient solution which you can see. If you don't see _any_ solution at all, just keep thinking about the problem and fall back to *any* solution that you might be able to code that could solve the problem. Watch your morale during this time. If you're stuck don't think about the fact that you're stuck. Don't spend your mind-CPU cycles on anything else other than the problem at hand. Focus on the problem and only on the problem. You'll have plenty of time to reflect after. Right now just focus on the problem. Freaking out and breaking under pressure means bye-bye. Use the assessments in Part 1 to practice that. Focus and keep trying until the end. Never ever give up. If interviewer interrupts, then you give up. But you can be sure you tried your best. If you have multiple interviews one after the other keep this focus for the whole session. Never think about interview N-1 during interview N. Keep your head straight and your sight focussed on the problem at hand and nothing else. In Part 3 I'll talk about the preparation time-plan, how much hours per day, how many days and for how long.

Giving back - how I cleared L6 coding - Part 1 - Google

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