What I Like About Cracking The Coding Interview
Gayle shares many tips on how to write better code on a white board in job interview. These tips help to organize code and make writing code on a white board faster and at the same time it helps to avoid careless bugs.
She also talks about the common mistake most candidates did and how to avoid them. Some mistakes might not seem big but it affects your performance later on and it could a red flag in the interviewers eye.
The most important thing is definitely the practice question and solution. I learn a lot more algorithm and optimal way of using data structure by researching into every term mentioned in the solution. You will notice every category of questions has a certain way to approach them. After reading the book and practicing the questions, you will be able to solve most interview questions quick enough that you can use the extra time to optimize your initial solution. If you come up with a more efficient method to solve the problem, then you will be one step closer to landing your dream job.
Common Behavioral Interview Questions
Google has compiled their own list of behavioral interview questions that their hiring managers use in interviews. Lets take a look.
So Is Cracking The Coding Interview Worth It
If youre ready to start interviewing with FAANG companies, Cracking the Coding Interview is worth your time and investment.
It covers everything from the interview process to special situations, pre-interview preparation to behavior questions, Big O to technical questions, to 189 real-world programming questions.
This book was written with the intention of helping programmers realize their dream of being part of a FAANG company. And its by someone who used to work for many of them.
Whether youre ready to level up or know someone who wants to take the next step in their coding career, Cracking the Coding Interview is highly recommended.
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What To Expect From A Google Behavioral Interview
Behavioral interviews at Google test how you act in employment-related situations or conflicts, both positive and negative. Behavioral interviews help an employer decide if youre someone they want to work with. These interviews will ask you to reflect on your past performance and behaviors to gain a sense of how you act under pressure and how you understand professionalism. You can expect three types of questions:
- Past experiences
- Values-based
Review On Cracking The Coding Interview By Gayle Lm
An outstanding book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell.
Gayle has a strong background in software development. She has worked as a software engineer at Google, Microsoft, Apple. She is an author of three books and is now the founder of CareerCup
Working for one of the FAANG set of companiesis a fantasy. A Dream. But could it become a reality? Your reality!
Cracking the coding interview features nearly 200 programming questions and solutions asked by Amazon, Google, and Facebook to name a few, and their solutions.It has many of the best question and concepts that are helpful for both beginners and advance programmers. One looking to start preparing from scratch with one who hankers after to brush-up and prepare.
Cracking the Coding Interview is two books in one broken down into two sections:
The first 90 or so pages go over what to expect during the interview, and how to prepare for it. Then, there are hundreds upon hundreds of pages of coding problems, hints, and solutions.
1. The Interview Process
This section covers most aspects of what to expect during the first interview.
- Why interviews are structured how they are conducted?
- How questions are selected?
- Frequently asked questions
It gives a detailed rundown of what to expect for each companys recruiting process, how to prepare for these companies and what is unique about their interview.
One of the best plans to have and work on.
2. CODING PROBLEMS
The coding questions are categorizes based on:
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN
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Who Is Gayle Mcdowell
Gayle is the founder of CareerCup which is a website/forum that oriented around landing tech job. Gayle had worked as software engineer and intern for companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft. She had also conducted many interviews in these companies to recruit software engineers.
Therefore, Gayle has many years of experience in software engineer interview. She knows what is the interviewer looking for and common mistakes that candidates usually do. She helped many engineers to land their dream jobs in silicon valley and she also published books to help others achieving this goal.
V Tc Gi Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell
Trên trang cá nhân ca mình, Gayle c gii thiu là founder và CEO ca CareerCup, mt công ty thc hin nhiu business xoay quanh các cuc phng vn v Technical.
Cô tt nghip c nhân và thc s ngành khoa hc máy tính, ng thi có nhiu nm kinh nghim làm vic vi v trí software engineer ti Google, Microsoft và Apple. Ti Google, cô có kinh nghim phng vn hàng trm ng viên, và tham gia vào vic ánh giá hàng nghìn ng viên khác nhau.
Vi nhng kinh nghim ca mình trong lnh vc phát trin phn mm, cng nh tuyn dng, hin cô cùng công ty ang thc hin nhiu nhng công vic liên quan n t vn cho vn tuyn dng các v trí liên quan n Software Engineer, vi nhng vai trò nh coaching cho i ng HR, hng dn xây dng và hoàn thin interview progress, xây dng interviewer training programs… Bên cnh ó, cô ã vit và xut bn 4 cun sách ni ting là Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, Cracking the Tech Career, và Cracking the PM Career. Các cun sách ca cô thng xuyên xut hin v trí #1 Best Seller trên Amazon nhiu categories khác nhau.
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Preparing For A Remote Interview
For phone screens and remote interviews, have a paper and pen or pencil to jot down any notes or diagrams. If you are given a question about trees and graphs, it usually helps if you draw examples of the data structure.
Use earphones. Make sure you are in a quiet environment. You do not want to be holding a phone in one hand and typing with the other. Try to avoid using speakers. If the feedback is bad, communication is made harder. Having to repeat yourself will just result in the loss of valuable time.
Essential Coding Interview Questions + Coding Exercises On Udemy
In this two-hour video course with plenty of interactive exercises, youll learn three handy problem-solving techniques to figure them out. You should be familiar with basic data structures, Big O notation, and ideally Python and/or Java, which youll be using to solve problems.
- 11 of the most essential coding interview questions
- Arrays, strings, linked lists, etc.
His way of explaining the problem is excellent! It really speaks to me and how I think. It must have been so time consuming for him to go through such detail per problem. But its so helpful and appreciated!! Thank you for sharing your gift of technical understanding. So few can do this so well. J
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Practice With Mock Interviews
The steps mentioned above can be rehearsed over and over again until you have fully internalized them and they become second nature to you. A good way to practice is by partnering with a friend and taking turns to interview each other.
A great resource for preparing for coding interviews is interviewing.io. This platform provides free and anonymous practice interviews with Google and Facebook engineers, which can lead to real jobs and internships.
Doing well in mock interviews will unlock the jobs page for candidates, and allow them to book interviews with top companies like Uber, Lyft, Quora, Asana, and more. For those who are new to coding interviews, a demo interview can be viewed on this site. Note that this site requires users to sign in.
I have used interviewing.io, both as an interviewer and an interviewee. The experience was great. Aline Lerner, the CEO and co-founder of interviewing.io, and her team are passionate about revolutionizing the process for coding interviews and helping candidates improve their interview skills.
She has also published a number of coding interview-related articles on the interviewing.io blog. I recommend signing up as early as possible with interviewing.io, even though it’s in beta, to increase the likelihood of receiving an invite.
Coding Platform To Prepare For The Coding Interview
If you want to practice for the coding interview, you need a coding platform online. Why? First, to find different problems. And second, you can also solve them on the platform and check the accuracy of your solutions. You can refer to Best Coding Platform To Become A Coding Expert for information about different coding platforms. The article lists the different features of the coding platforms available. And it also lists the pros and cons of each platform. You can select the best platform as per your preferences.
After you have selected the coding platform as per your needs, you need to prepare the coding questions for the interview.
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Picking A Programming Language
Before anything else, you need to pick a programming language for your algorithmic coding interview.
Most companies will allow you to code in the language of your choice. The only exception I know is Google. They allow their candidates to pick from only Java, C++, Python, Go or JavaScript.
For the most part, I recommend using a language that you are extremely familiar with, rather than one that is new to you but that the company uses widely.
There are some languages that are more suitable than others for coding interviews. Then there are some that you absolutely want to avoid.
From my experience as an interviewer, most candidates pick Python or Java. Other languages commonly selected include JavaScript, Ruby, and C++. I would absolutely avoid lower-level languages like C or Go, simply because they lack standard library functions and data structures.
Personally, Python is my de facto choice for coding algorithms during interviews. It is succinct and has a huge library of functions and data structures.
One of the top reasons I recommend Python is that it uses consistent APIs that operate on different data structures, such as len, for … in … and slicing notation on sequences . Getting the last element in a sequence is arr , and reversing it is simply arr. You can achieve a lot with minimal syntax in Python.
Not Frequently Updated Enough
Unfortunately there isnt much that can be done about this when it comes to media like CTCI. Its a book that needs new editions every so often.
Unfortunately a lot of the content in CTCI needs to be updated frequently to change with the landscape. I mentioned that the book is a good primer, however Ive noticed a significant uptick in the last few years in the difficulty of problems amongst large tech companies. Frequently companies are now asking hard style dynamic programming questions even in technical screens as the bar has been raised. That means that easy questions are borderline useless .
Furthermore, because many of the problems are categorized you have the initial hint of what the problem subject area is, which can give a false sense of confidence. One of the most important areas of practice is actually categorizing the type of problem.
I have seen a bit of a deviation in some companies in terms of the style of interviews they give. While many of the largest companies still adhere to the straightforward white-boarding style interview, I have seen a significant uptick in pair programming / debugging in a codebase style of interview.
It would be great to at the very least touch on these other interview formats.
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Whats Inside The Book
Aside from the obvious 189 questions and answers, there is a lot more content that can further help you. Practicality will tell you that you it would be hard to have actually memorized all the 189 question and answers to ace that interview. However, you do not need to do all that.
The book provides a walkthrough teaching you how to think about an answer for each question. This should teach you to provide your own answer which does not necessarily have to be exactly the same as the book. Hints are even provided when browsing through the Q& A. To mention the rest of its contents, the book gives 5 strategies when tackling algorithm questions, an insider look on how big companies like Google hire their developers, and techniques to prepare for before finally going to the interview.
Practical Tips For Coding Questions
This section dives deep into practical tips for specific topics of algorithms and data structures, which appear frequently in coding questions. Many algorithm questions involve techniques that can be applied to questions of a similar nature.
The more techniques you have in your arsenal, the greater your chances of passing the interview. For each topic, there is also a list of recommended questions, which is valuable for mastering the core concepts. Some of the questions are only available with a paid subscription to LeetCode, which in my opinion is absolutely worth the money if it lands you a job.
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How To Prepare For And Crack The Coding Interview
How to prepare for the coding interview? And How to crack the coding interview? A lot of people have these questions in the software industry nowadays. And if you are here, you are also probably trying to figure out the answers to these questions. This article will guide you through the process of preparing for the coding interview. And also to crack the coding interview. So its a bit easier for you during the interview.
Start With The Basics
The very first thing that you should do to crack the coding interviews is to focus on the basics. Why? Because theres no point in jumping to problem solving directly if your basics of coding are not up to the mark. And what are the basics of programming? Data Structures and Algorithm. So, lets first focus on data structures and algorithms.
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Practice For The Coding Interview
The first step involved to crack the coding interview is preparing for the interview. Because if you want to crack the coding interview, you need to practice. How many coding problems do you need to practice? Well, the short answer is as much as you can. The long answer is it depends on where you are in the preparation stage. If you have been practicing from time to time, you might need to practice approximately 100 problems. Whereas if you are starting from scratch, you might need to practice anywhere between 200 to 300 questions in total. Again, these are just estimates. Actual numbers may vary from person to person.
We have also mentioned some of the important questions for each topic. The names of the companies the respective question was asked in are included in brackets.
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How To Prepare For Behavioral Interviews
Google has outlined eight steps for preparing for behavioral interview questions. Study these and use them to shape your preparation and answers.
- Predict the future. You can anticipate most of the questions you will be asked. You have the resources to prepare your answers. See below for ten common questions.
- Plan. Write your answers down. Practice strategically. Dont wing the behavioral questions.
- Have a backup plan. Google recommends having three answers per question. This helps you prepare diverse, interesting answers.
- Explain. Google asks you to explain your thought process and decision making. Explicitly stating your assumptions and processes helps you stand out.
- Be data-driven. Google wants answers that relate directly to tangible growth, change, or demonstration of skill.
- Clarify. You can use open-ended questions to offer insight into your value as a candidate.
- Improve. Google encourages you to always focus on improvement. You can start with a brute force answer, but then work through how you could improve your process.
- Practice. Google encourages you to practice aloud to construct clearer answers.
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