What Are Some Good Questions To Ask The Interviewer
Companies are always looking for talented individuals who will stay with the company for a long time and provide as much value as possible. Some good questions to show your potential in this area would be:
1. Where do you see the company in five years?2. What opportunities are there for training and progression within the company?3. What would my daily responsibilities look like?
Since youre hereNo one wakes up knowing how to code they learn how to code. Tens of thousands of students have successfully learned with our courses, like our Software Engineering Bootcamp. If youre a total newbie, our Software Engineering Career Track Prep Course will be a perfect fit. Lets do this!
About Monica J. White
Monica is a journalist with a lifelong interest in technology, from PC hardware to software and programming. She first started writing over ten years ago and has made a career out of it. Now, her focus is centered around technology and explaining complex concepts to a broader audience.
Why Should We Hire You
This is also an important question, as it will give the applicant the opportunity to explain more about themselves, what their skills are, what they bring to the table, and how they will help your company reach its goals.
That last part is important, as it will give you an opportunity to see whether teamwork is important to them or not.
You dont want them to just go on about their education and skills, but you also want them to show you how they can help you and be an important asset to your team.
Faqs On Coding Interview Questions
Q1. What topics should you prepare to solve coding interview questions in a technical interview?
To solve data structures interview questions, you must be thorough with the following concepts – arrays, strings, linked lists, recursion, hash tables, graphs, trees, and dynamic programming.
Q2. How many coding interview rounds are there in FAANG interviews?
Interviews at FAANG companies typically have 2-3 coding interview rounds. The first two rounds are usually technical screening rounds.
Q3. How long should you ideally prepare for FAANG coding interviews?
As a rule of thumb, it is crucial that you start preparing for your coding interview at least 6 weeks before your interview.
Q4. Are coding interview questions asked at domain-specific tech interviews?
Yes, most domain-specific tech interviews, such as ML interviews, testing interviews, cloud interviews, and web developer interviews, have mandatory coding rounds where your knowledge of programming concepts, core data structures, and algorithms is evaluated.
Q5. How long do coding interview rounds last at FAANG companies?
Coding interview rounds typically last 30-40 minutes. Recruiters mostly aim to evaluate your approach to problem-solving and your ability to write error-free code.
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List Of Common System Design Interview Questions
- Design a global chat service like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp
- Design a social network and message board service like Quora or Reddit
- Design a global file storage and sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive
- Design a global video streaming service like YouTube or Netflix
- Design an API rate limiter for sites like Firebase or GitHub
- Design a proximity server like Yelp or Nearby Places/Friends
- Design a search engine related service like Type-Ahead
- Design Ticketmaster
- Design a Web Crawler
To learn how to solve these System Design Interview problems along with all of the System Design fundamentals, I recommend Scalability & System Design for Developers.
What Is A Linked List
- Like an array, a linked list refers to a linear data structure in which the elements are not necessarily stored in a contiguous manner.
- It is basically a sequence of nodes, each node points towards the next node forming a chain-like structure.
Fig: Linked List
- LIFO is an abbreviation for Last In First Out
- It is a way of accessing, storing and retrieving data.
- It extracts the data that was stored last first.
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Explain The Concept Of Modularization
Modularization is breaking down a program’s functionality into separate, independent modules, each of which includes just the information needed to carry out one part of the intended capability. In simple terms, it is the practice of dividing the program into smaller modules so that we can deal with them separately. We can simply add independent and smaller modules to a program using modularization without being hampered by the complexity of the program’s other functionalities. Modularization is based on the notion of designing applications that are easier to develop and maintain, self-contained components. In monolithic design, on the other hand, there’s always the risk of a simple change knocking the entire application down. The final step would be to combine these independent modules.
In the above diagram, both the applications have been divided into smaller modules. These modules can then be dealt with separately.
Top Interview Questions To Ask Software Engineers
Posted March 30th, 2022
Hiring a software engineer is a process that should be approached carefully and with deliberation. A good software engineer will help your company grow, but one that does not have the right skills or a good work ethic can slow down and hinder your growth.
Therefore, you should know the best questions to ask during the hiring process to successfully recruit software engineers.
These 17 interview questions for software engineers are some of the top questions you should ask potential software engineering candidates that youre interviewing.
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When Is A Time You Encountered A Difficult Software Development Problem How Did You Solve The Problem
Interviewers often ask behavioral and situational interview questions to understand how you respond to setbacks. Use this time to show how you’ve learned and grown from past challenges and your approach to solving problems. Consider using the STAR method to keep your answers clear and concise.
Example:”I was interning at a small tech company in college and my manager asked me to build an ETL process. After several tests, optimization and clean-up, I still couldn’t get the run time down to an acceptable point. I discovered I could solve the problem using multithreading to run multiple batches of data through the ETL in parallel rather than recursively. In the end, I achieved the run time I desired.”
Read More:**
Which Design Patterns Do You Use Most Often
Your hiring manager may ask this question to gauge your knowledge of abstract and theoretical concepts and to get a better understanding of your work process. Before your interview, it is often helpful to review common software engineering terminology to prepare yourself for specific or technical questions. This may help you remember the technical names for patterns and processes to best articulate what you use each day.
Example:”For gaming projects, I implement my level state and player characters as singletons, and, for enemy creation, I use a factory to produce different enemies based on inputs. However, if a game is more complex, I may switch to using a compositional model, such as an Entity-Component-System. The system functions would leverage dependency injection to better separate concerns and increase the testability of the game logic.”
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Which Programming Languages Do You Have Experience With
Your interviewer might ask you about the coding languages you use to learn more about who you are as a programmer and developer. If you’ve taught yourself a language, it may reveal enthusiasm for programming that can appeal to employers. An interviewer may ask this question to understand more about your commitment as a software developer and how motivated you are to continue your education. Improve your answer by describing your specific experience or the reasons behind your preferences for certain languages.
Example:”In college, I used C++ for most of my classes, but I like to use JavaScript and Python for my personal projects. I’ve found both languages apply in many contexts and I still enjoy making math-based games like I used to before I started earning my degree.”
Tell Me About A Project You Were Involved With And Explain How You Chose Its Architecture
This question helps your interviewer learn how you use technology to meet organizational challenges. Feel free to talk about:
- The high-level objective the project addressed.
- Details about the architecture you chose, including design choices such as MEAN as opposed to MERN or other coding-language decisions.
- Architectural decisions about hardware, such as servers and network structure.
- Any unexpected adjustments you had to make to either the design itself or the technology you used.
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Relevant Skills Interview Questions
Some questions will focus on other, non-technical skills required of software engineers. These skills range from problem-solving to logic to analytical thinking.
Also, since most software projects happen on tight schedules, interviewers will be eager to find out how you perform under deadlines, manage your time, and communicate about setbacks and delays to project managers and team members.
Facebook Coding Interview Questions
Facebookâs technical interview comprises 2-3 coding interview rounds, where hiring managers specifically aim to evaluate your approach to problem-solving and how youâre able to articulate problem solutions effectively. Practicing as many coding problems as possible is key to cracking Facebookâs technical interview.
Letâs look at some sample Facebook coding interview questions:
Check out the page to access several more coding questions asked at Facebookâs interview.
Practicing these above coding interview questions can help you tackle challenging problems at FAANG+ technical interviews.
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If Needed How Would You Go About Designing Scalable Applications Walk Us Through Your Process
This question is designed to test a candidates knowledge and thought processes when it comes to design and solving common project specific problems. What to look for:
- Test applicants knowledge
- Understand their approach to design
Example:
You design scalable projects by writing as little code as possible. You also want to reuse as much code as you can while not over or under doing your design. Then break things down into modular sections that can run on multiple or separate systems.
Best Resources For Coding Interviews
The selection of good resources is very important for success in your coding interviews. If you chose the wrong resource then more than money, you will lose the valuable time you need for preparation, hence spending some time researching for a good resource.
If you need recommendations, the following are some of my the tried and tested resources to learn Data Structure and Algorithms in-depth for coding interviews:
- Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java for Java developers. Learn about Arrays, Linked Lists, Trees, Hashtables, Stacks, Queues, Heaps, Sort algorithms, and Search algorithms
And, if you prefer books, there is no better than the Cracking The Coding Interview, by Gayle Laakmann McDowellwhich presents 189+ Programming questions and solutions. A good book to prepare for programming job interviews in a short time. Btw, I will also earn some money if you buy any of these resources mentioned here.
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How Is Your Team Structured And How Does My Role Fit Within That Structure
Gaining a high-level view of the organization’s structure will help you envision the impact of what you create and the processes and people involved along the way. It also shows the interviewer that you’re not merely concerned with what’s on your computer screen you respect and value the infrastructure of the organization’s process.
How Did You Solve A Problem You Faced
This question will allow the candidate to explain how they approach problems and their methodology for solving them. It will show whether they have the skills to hold up to pressure and use their problem-solving skills to arrive at a solution.
This does not have to be a software engineering problem, though it may be. It can also be a problem with teamwork. For example, they can explain how they had a disagreement with a colleague on how to properly approach a specific problem and how they came to an agreement with that colleague.
This will show that they have the teamwork skills to work with someone else, even when there is a conflict.
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Programming Questions On Searching And Sorting
23) Write a program to sort numbers in place using quick sort? 24) Write a program to implement a binary search algorithm in Java or C++? 25) How do you sort Java objects using a Comparator? 26) Write code to implement Insertion Sort in Java?27) Write code to implement Bubble Sort in Java?Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena
What Is Your Approach For Testing And Searching For Bugs
First, emphasize that you consider software testing to be one of the most important pillars of software development, one you believe should be carried out at every stage of the software development life cycle. Good Software Engineers are defined by their commitment to testing. Different Software Engineers approach testing differently, ranging from manual application tests to unit testing to writing test suites for individual code modules. You should be able to articulate your approach and explain why you think it works.
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Algorithmic Complexity / Big
- Nothing to implement here, you’re just watching videos and taking notes! Yay!
- There are a lot of videos here. Just watch enough until you understand it. You can always come back and review.
- Don’t worry if you don’t understand all the math behind it.
- You just need to understand how to express the complexity of an algorithm in terms of Big-O.
Section : System Availability
Software engineers aim to build systems that are reliable. A reliable system is one that consistently satisfies a users needs, whenever that user seeks to have that need satisfied. A key component of that reliability is Availability.
Its helpful to think of availability as the resiliency of a system. If a system is robust enough to handle failures in the network, database, servers etc, then it can generally be considered to be a fault-tolerant system which makes it an available system.
Of course, a system is a sum of its parts in many senses, and each part needs to be highly available if availability is relevant to the end user experience of the site or app.
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Behavioral Programming Interview Questions How Do You Fit Their Culture
By asking so-called behavioral questions during your programming interview, they’re trying to figure out if your personality will fit their company’s culture.
If you’re arrogant, you get argumentative and defensive quickly when someone criticizes you, or you start blaming others, they’ll take that as a reason to reject you for the job.
Soft skills software developer questions study them!
Though most of your programming interview will be about your coding skills & analytical ability it’s well worth your time to prepare for these softer questions. Recruiters will probably ask you about some of the points in your resume as well. So it makes sense to be ready for that, too.
Quick Tip: In our article on soft skills for programmers, we go much deeper into the behavioral attributes you need to succeed in programming interviews and generally, your career.
The Top 7 Behavioral & Soft Skills Programming Interview Questions
98. What are your weaknesses?
Answer
When they’re asking about your weaknesses, give them an actual weakness of yours! Don’t give another strength of yours, disguised as a weakness.
This would make them think you’re arrogant or egotistical.
Rather, be honest about a weakness you have but then show them how you’re working to overcome that weakness.
99. What’s a recent technical challenge you’ve faced and how did you solve it?
Answer
They’re judging your process here.
Prepare a situation you had, in which you solved a problem through a process.
Answer
Describe A Difficult Bug You Were Tasked With Fixing In A Large Application How Did You Debug The Issue
Bugs usually appear in new applications and software programs, and it’s a software engineer’s responsibility to locate and resolve these issues. Difficult bugs are often the result of an unusual alignment of conditions. Hearing your experience of resolving bugs explores several aspects of your skills including critical thinking and how well you handle stress and pressure.
Example:”I received a bug report from our DevOps team about one of our databases being stressed from an expensive query being called excessively from the UI. I first checked the logs to find out when the trouble started. This gave me the rough commit range in which the bug was introduced. I was able to reproduce the bug on the latest piece of code, but only in production. I ran a git bisect to isolate the specific commit that introduced the bug and pulled the branch. However, I was not able to reproduce the issue. I went to the UI to debug using the browser devtools. Sourcemaps are not available in our production environment, so I had to map the minified JavaScript code to the source CoffeeScript code.
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