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Ask HN: How can I prepare for a coding interview in a week?
170 points by mattdue on Aug 14, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 100 comments
I am from ECE background, been working in machine learning, and data analysis fields for couple of years, and have decent coding experience in Python and C/C++.

I am about to be interviewed by one of the big five (they reached out to me, I wasn't actively preparing for interviews).

Not being from a CS or software engineering background, I never took an algorithm and data structure course, and from what I know the coding test mainly involves those.

I know there are a ton of resources online for coding interview preparation, but I wanted to seek suggestions on an efficient/quick resource given that I have strong coding skills but not familiar with data structure/CS algorithm.



Truthfully, you don't have enough time. There are so many candidates who basically eat and breathe Data Structure and Algorithm for at least few months so that they can get into big five that your last one week preparation might not match up to them, especially without any prior experience like a course. I don't want to demoralize you, but how about you tell them that you aren't prepared right now, and would like to interview after 4-5 months. I think these companies are always looking for good talent, and don't mind interviewing someone later if they find the profile interesting.


This sounds like great advice, but it's very funny from a distance. "I think I'm a great candidate for the work you need done, but your interview process has nothing to do with that. As such, I'll need to reschedule so I can spend a few months gaming that process."

I'm excited to be interviewing programmers in the near future as our company grows. I have to think through a lot of things, but I'd like to focus on: Have you successfully deployed an application before? How have you overcome the technical challenges of programming on a team. How have you improved your abilities over time. Explain something you're proud of creating in the format you're most comfortable with. How do you power through losing passion about a project? How comfortable will you be learning new frameworks and paradigms? Prove to me that you're an able programmer in whatever format you'd prefer. Etc.

All questions available ahead of time. Try to keep things comfortable for the candidate. Enough depth and variance to figure out if they have the technical skills you need. You get to see how they like to work.


An honest question for HN: has anyone really been in a project whose primary reason for failure was the lack of engineering talent? I have worked in micro/small businesses and large enterprise environments, and this has never been the case. The projects I have seen fail usually do so due to poor management, poor performers are typically fired unless they can pull one over management to make themselves seem more competent than they really are (not that difficult with bad management)


I have. It's a long and interesting story, full of intrigue, backstabbing, hacking, and corporate espionage. But in summary:

Owners started tech business using trust-fund money. They were extremely non-technical, scared of computers to be honest. They hired people that were like them (also non-technical), and didn't have the ability to properly vet candidates. Tech staff was hired basically off of Craig's List with very little interviewing. Tech was built and company got large enough to get a couple contracts (heavily influenced by owners' existing personal connections).

As you'd expect, tech stack started creaking under the load. At first tech staff thought they had everything under control (strong Dunning-Kruger effect, bolstered by early successes). Eventually tech staff realized how badly things were going and started lying to management to cover for their own incompetence.

Decent tech management was hired (I think by accident) and the tech staff saw the writing on the wall. The entire tech staff just didn't show up to work one day. Left without any notice or warning (the more intriguing stuff tangents off here). New, more capable tech staff was hired (including me). At this point the system was hemorrhaging data and users. We triaged, stemmed the bleeding, and built out a decent infrastructure with a decent tech stack.

Unfortunately for them that was too late. The contracts had fairly stiff penalties for non-compliance, and the company was in non-compliance for a looooooong time. The owners had made some false statements about the assets of the company, and settlements offered were based on those statement, far too high for the company to pay. Other companies were pissed about that and took it to court. Owners ended up getting taken to the cleaners and lost pretty much everything, including a bunch of assets that they had owned before but transferred to the company (including real estate) in some fairly shady tax dodge scheme.

Ultimately the world is a better place now that this company doesn't exist. It operated in an extremely sketchy manner, and I left when I found out the gist of what was going on. I learned the earlier and later parts of the story from personal connections.

Does that count? I mean, ultimately I think if you have poor engineering talent then it's management's fault. But you can make that argument for any corporate issue: it's management's fault for not recognizing the problem and addressing it soon enough.


I don't think this is exactly the issue the interviews are trying to prevent... As mentioned by a commentator below, once somebody is hired it would be extremely hard to get them out, especially for big corps. "Project failure" is an extreme case but the loss can still be huge. Therefore the employer just wants to be rather safe than sorry with a set of standardized tests it seems.

Also, to be able to thoroughly study for and prepare for something on one's own, this on itself probably illustrates a lot about this person's qualities already. Of course it would be theoretically nice to spend all this time and energy on something that is unique to every person, but that is not totally realistic and would be hard to evaluate. One can still do that with their side projects though.


In the short term, no. Companies hire in order to support the growth they are projecting. Over the course of a year though a stressed team will achieve less, introduce more bugs, and make poor long term architectural decisions.


My experience matches yours.


It's kind of sad, this state that interviewing has become where people spend months to prepare to pass a rather arbitrarily selected coding question that is supposed to tell the company whether they are good enough to go onto an even more intense, rather arbitrary in-person interview. And now you have companies popping up to offer you practice in said problems. It's worse than the SATs. Facebook even now has started having online webinars with an actual Facebook engineer that tells you how to prepare. Whatever happened to just fizzbuzz?


I think in a sense such standardization is always the price you have to pay for the popularization/mass adoption of anything. People have to find some sort of "established standards", some common grounds, as a compromise, as it becomes practically impossible/very hard to adopt a unique, custom-made solution to each applicant while still giving all of them the same fair chance and ensuring the quality of the results. The risks simply become great.

It's similar to what happened to higher education: 400 years ago higher-ed diplomas were extremely rare and it were mostly people who really held on to something to study, something to look into, that did those stuffs, and the institution could adapt to their needs individually. However, now that a huge percentage of the population get higher-ed diplomas, there has to be a standardized procedure to stuffs like university admission, issuance of doctoral degrees, etc.

What would you do if you were on the employer's side? Eventually people have to find a compromise and this is the solution that they came up with. Guess if I were on their side it would be hard for me to come up with something better and "safer". Also, it does suck to have to sit for exams which aren't necessarily directly related to the actual skills, but on the other hand I would say that that what I learned via SAT did indeed help my future studies, both in the university and by myself. I guess coding interviews can be perceived as something similar. There's no use complaining about the situation. One just has to face up to it and ace it, especially given how everybody else just has to go through the same. It's not something entirely ludicrous/Kafkasque after all.

Also, to be able to thoroughly study for and prepare for something on one's own, this on itself probably illustrates a lot about this person's qualities already. Of course it would be theoretically nice to spend all this time and energy on something that is unique to every person, but that is not totally realistic and would be hard to evaluate. One can still do that with their side projects though.


I second that. I had no problem rescheduling interviews by several months with Big Five-style companies (including Big Five) in the past.


OT question: what do you do in the meantime? Usually, those months prepping for interviews are: - if a graduating student, while you are graduating? - grabbing a "worse" job waiting for the interview?


Ideally you are in college or in a job already. I guess if you’re in between then it makes sense to get another job. After all there is really no guarantee you will land the job at big 5 even after all the prep.


"It makes sense to get another job". The problem there though is that almost every company now, at least in the Bay Area, seems to be doing these coding screens as that is now the standard set by the big 5. I guess you could consider it live practice.


I'm in a similar situation RN, and this is my battle plan:

𝗗𝗮𝘆 01

* Backtracking - know how to solve 1 problem (Knight's tour)

* Tree - implement BST

* Tree traversal - implement DFS, BFS & DFS iterative

𝗗𝗮𝘆 02

* Quicksort - know how to implement

* Mergesort - know how to implement

* Binary search - know how to implement

* Min/Max Heap (priority queue) - know how to implement

𝗗𝗮𝘆 03

* Graph - implement adjacency list

* Graph traversal - implement DFS, BFS & DFS iterative

* Graph algo - implement "Prim Minimum Spanning Tree"

* Graph algo - Implement "Detect Cycles algo"

𝗗𝗮𝘆 04

* Graph algo - Implement "Detect Connected Components" algo

* Graph algo - Implement "Lowest Common Ancestor" algo

* Graph algo - Implement Djikstra single shortest path algo

𝗗𝗮𝘆 05

* Sets - Determine all subsets of a set

* Sets - Determine Maximum consecutive subarray sum

* Sets - Determine 2 sets intersection

𝗗𝗮𝘆 06

* String - Implement Levensthein Edit distance

* String - Implement Polynomial Hash

* String - Determine all substrings

* String - Find anagrams

𝗗𝗮𝘆 07

* String - Implement KNP algorithm for pattern matching

* Basic DS - Implement Queue, Stack, Dynamic array, Linked list absolutely cold

----

I chose javascript as the language for all this brushing up (no need to manage memory, and I can focus on the algo)

It's a big list, but it's a traversal of the CS engineering domain that makes sense to me, and it's only a fraction of the expected knowledge for that kind of interview.

----

Edit: I pushed some of the code of this list on GH here: https://github.com/netgusto/brushup

I struggle to implement each concept in the smallest, simplest way possible. I'll keep adding code as I write it.


You are unlikely to get asked any of these things during the interview, and if you are it will be obvious that you just crammed for them (much like if just brush your teeth the day before your dental appointment and then arrive at the dentist with bleeding gums).

If JavaScript is your language then you are likely looking at front end development, in which case it will be much more useful to know about frameworks and testing strategies than CS theory.


Yes, you are unlikely to get asked any of these _specific_ questions-- however, the point of study isn't to memorize any answers. Rather, it's to familiarize yourself with the patterns of CS solutions so that you're able to replicate it in a brand new problem.

Also, JS isn't just for front-end development. Aside from Node.js, which is increasingly a larger player server-side, it's also used in a bunch of desktop apps.


Again, you aren't going to get familiar with the patterns in computer science in one week. That requires years of practice. Most likely you will just hit a Dunning-Kruger peak and try to shoehorn in a pattern where it doesn't belong.

And yes, js is used in other contexts as well, but it is primarily used in front end developer. Which is why I used the word 'likely'.


I think it's worth including a bit on disjoint sets. I've managed to pull that solution on interviewers a couple times and they end up fairly impressed when you beat their best solution which is O(n) storage O(log n) time, with one that's O(n) storage O(1) time after amortization.


can you elaborate?


Some material here: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/union-find/

    A disjoint-set data structure is a data structure
    that keeps track of a set of elements partitioned
    into a number of disjoint (non-overlapping) subsets.
    A union-find algorithm is an algorithm that
    performs two useful operations on such a
    data structure:
    
    Find: Determine which subset a particular
    element is in. This can be used for determining
    if two elements are in the same subset.
    
    Union: Join two subsets into a single subset.


Sorry, I should have com back, but yeah, this is a good summary. When done properly both Find and Union can be done in amortized inverse-Ackerman time, which is for all intents and purposes constant. It can pop up as a solution for a surprising number of questions.

An old, common, (banned) interview question goes something like this:

> Imagine you have a grid of squares, represented however you want, describing an ocean. I'm going to give you coordinates one by one that indicate land being created. You need to tell me in total how many islands exist after each coordinate, where an island is defined as a contiguous block of land connected horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally (or include diagonals if you want; it makes some parts of the answer messier).

The disjoint-set answer to this question is that you look at the coordinate's neighbors. If there are none, this is a new island. Create the node as part of a new set where the node is the "representative" of that set. If there is one neighbor, create node but make its representative the same as the neighbor's representative. If there are more than one neighbors then you have to do a union; create your node and make its representative one of the neighbors' representatives. Then go to all of the other neighbors and find their representatives (make take a couple hops). Then make their final representatives use the first neighbor as their representative.

At this point you have kind of a directed acyclic graph where each node has exactly one edge (maybe pointing to itself). The last improvement is to update each node's representative as you travel to be the final one. This amortizes out to a single hop for each node, after enough find or union operations.

Then you can start adding more data to the representative and dealing with merging that to solve some pretty complex problems in a shockingly low runtime.


This begs the question >> if you can teach yourself any of these things in a day then why would you need to know it before working there?


Why would you want to work for a company which asks these question in the interview?


I can't speak to other companies, but I do know my [unofficial] experience interviewing (on both sides) at Google.

As an interviewee, you know that you're going to have a handful of different interviewers. What you don't know is how much of an effect each of those interviewers is going to have on the hire/no hire decision. Is one bad interviewer enough to torpedo you? Two? And you have no idea what kind of questions each interviewer will ask. So, let's say only 10% of interviewers ask these kinds of questions (I'm guessing that's low). That's a ~41% chance that you're going to have to answer this, and if one bad interviewer is all you need, then you'd be foolish not to prepare just in case.

As an interviewer, we're given surprisingly few guidelines on how to interview. You take a one day class, then shadow half a dozen interviews, and that's it. We aren't given specific questions to ask, and specific questions get banned all the time (any time they're "leaked" as a Google interview question).

Once someone is hired it's really hard to force them out, so approving someone who talks a smooth game but can't back it up is extremely costly. I've seen teams get stuck with multiple people for well over a year because it takes a long time to get them out, they won't leave willingly. Meanwhile they're taking up headcount and letting them actually touch code is dangerous. In fact, I've seen teams spend an additional engineer training them to the point where they are productive, just because that's cheaper.

So you want people to actually prove themselves with some kind of an algorithm question, but you get no real guidance on how to provide these and you constantly have to come up with new ones, but they have to be the kind of question that take less than 45 minutes to explain and solve. I have no doubt that some people fall back on these kinds of questions.

Yeah, I get that these questions suck, and I try not to be that interviewer. But as an interviewee I would consider it extremely foolish to not brush up on it, just in case.


You said it yourself "they're taking up headcount and letting them actually touch code is dangerous". My question is, how did they managed to get into Google if they apparently don't know how to write code? The only way to get into google is to go through a huge set of 45-min whiteborad crap. Not once, not twice, we're talking about 7-8 times! Going over the same stupid 45-min "technical screen" where only the original question varies. You need to know all the CS basic stuff + ability to scale (if possible). Like they all say in Silicon Valley - the only way for us to know if you're a rockstar is if you manage to crack a few meaningless problems on a whiteboard. Oh... and make sure to pick your favorite language. Your Resume tells us you have a MS in CS but we don't believe it. So we're gonna put you back into a college-like exam to make sure your degree isn't fake.

To me, that's step zero. I still can't believe companies like Google, etc get stuck at step 0. They don't seem to care about step 1, 2, 3, 4. It doesn't matter if you have 1 year or 10 years of experience, we all go through step zero (again, even though we got an MS in CS a few years back).

So, if Google ends up in a situation where "teams get stuck with multiple people for well over a year because it takes a long time to get them out", it's because the hiring process at Google sucks. If it is that costly and painful to hire the wrong people, then why Google hasn't put more resources to actually innovate and think beyond college-like evaluations. It is OK for people with zero experience, it is not OK for people with at least one work experience (which I call step 1). Of course, if you have 10 years of experience they need to use a different language in order to interact with you. So, unless someone just graduated from college looking for a job, you can't hire someone exclusively based on step 0 because it simply doesn't tell you if a candidate knows how to write code, build features, work in a collaborative environment, deal with requirements from product team, reuse exiting code, handle code reviews and feedback from peers, create frameworks or adopt new frameworks. All it tells you is if your CS degree is fake or not...


> The only way to get into google is to go through a huge set of 45-min whiteborad crap.

This is not the only way to get into Google.

> Not once, not twice, we're talking about 7-8 times!

When I interviewed I had one 15 minute phone screen, and one round of in-person interviews. The in-person set was 5 people. Of those I think I cratered on one of them, did adequate on two, and stellar on the last two.

> Like they all say in Silicon Valley - the only way for us to know if you're a rockstar is if you manage to crack a few meaningless problems on a whiteboard.

Very few people get hired as a "rockstar", and the ones that do tend to be hired for non-coding roles.

> Oh... and make sure to pick your favorite language.

Yeah, the point is for you to answer the question and not get hung up on language semantics that you aren't comfortable with. I interviewed in C# despite ~0.1% of code at Google being C#. I had a very in depth conversation about contract differences between C# and Java that I think impressed the interviewer, despite me not knowing a single line of Java and him not knowing a single line of C#. If you pick the language and still struggle with the semantics of it, that's a huge red flag.

> Your Resume tells us you have a MS in CS but we don't believe it. So we're gonna put you back into a college-like exam to make sure your degree isn't fake.

An MS in CS doesn't, by itself, qualify you for a role at Google. I have plenty of friends who have the degree who I like very much, but I wouldn't want them on my team.

> I still can't believe companies like Google, etc get stuck at step 0. They don't seem to care about step 1, 2, 3, 4. It doesn't matter if you have 1 year or 10 years of experience

Yeah, I came in with 15 years of experience across 7 different firms. And I went through the same thing. I've also worked with people who have been in the industry for all kinds of timeframes, up to 35 years, and I've seen little to no correlation between "experience" and ability.

A higher-touch process with more "describe what you did at company X" would be nice. But it also feels easier to game. I read design docs for projects at all levels at prior roles, including rationale, alternatives, etc. If I wanted to pass one of those project off as my own through an interview I don't think it'd be very hard. I also don't see any other companies that hire at the rate that Google does (well over 100 software engineers per week) that manages to do that.

> So, if Google ends up in a situation where "teams get stuck with multiple people for well over a year because it takes a long time to get them out", it's because the hiring process at Google sucks.

So now you're arguing for a more stringent review process, but one that doesn't require actually demonstrating any abilities? Also, this is less of an issue with hiring, and more of an issue with staff management.

> you can't hire someone exclusively based on step 0

I'm not sure why you think that Google is "stuck" at step 0, or that we stop there. There is generally no feedback to a candidate about why an offer isn't extended. You're assuming that it's because of a whiteboard coding issue when it might be that your experience doesn't really mesh with what's needed.

There are a wide variety of factors that candidates are scored on, and there are plenty of them that have nothing to do with the code that's written on the board. I've had plenty of candidates that have gotten a "hire" recommendation despite not having an optimal, or even a correct answer on the board. I was confident in their abilities because they demonstrated that they recognized there was a problem, usually due to running through test cases, and that given enough time they would solve it. I've had candidates that have gotten a "no hire" because, despite have a correct and nearly optimal answer, they refused to listen when told that "result &= true;" is a no-op in Java.

Is the interview process perfect? Of course not. Perfection isn't achievable. And I'm happy to listen to suggestions on how to improve the process. But your suggestions seem to be: 1.) Don't ask whiteboard questions at all (which I have yet to be convinced of), 2.) Don't stop at asking whiteboard questions (which we don't).


Just wondering, do you mean the range of questions covered is too narrow? If "10% of interviewers" ask these kinds of questions, what would the other 90% of interviewers do. Other types of common data structures/algorithms, DS/A questions thought up by themselves, or something in entirely different directions?


> Why would you want to work for a company which asks these question in the interview?

Presumably because it is one of the big five (I didn't know there was such a thing). I suspect it looks good on your CV. You'll always be a big five alumni :-)


Seems plausible. Big five stopped to look attractive to me few years ago (Microsoft and Amazon never were, tbh) but I get that people have different opinions. What I do not get is why do big five think this kinds of interview are effective. Or are they?


I'm doing a lot of interviewing at a big five company, but speaking personally and unofficially - when it comes to code, I'm looking for fluency more than anything else. At the phone screen level (which I assume is where you're at), the questions I ask are in the same complexity ballpark as fizzbuzz (ie the task will be fully specified in 5 sentences and assumes no prior knowledge), and I expect a candidate to be able to implement that without having to google for "how do I access an array element in <language that the candidate has freely chosen and claims to have mastered>?". The bar for on-site interviews is somewhat higher, but for the first round of interviews, just "do they struggle with basic syntax" is enough to filter out a remarkably large number of people...

Also (again personal opinion) - python is the most practical language for doing interview questions, because interviews are heavily time-constrained and python allows the developer to go from idea to implementation in the shortest amount of time. I'm not going to penalize anyone for their language choice, but somebody who completes the task in 5 minutes and then spends 25 minutes getting bonus points for things like "what if the input data is larger than RAM?" is going to come across stronger than someone who spends 30 minutes on parsing the input and runs out of time before they get to the algorithm.


> python is the most practical language for doing interview questions, because interviews are heavily time-constrained and python allows the developer to go from idea to implementation in the shortest amount of time.

i'm not sure if python is the best, but it's a very strong choice. python also has a lot of built in data structures that are relatively non-broken and highly useful for the archetypical algorithm-prototyping interview questions

e.g. if you are using a language that only lets you use strings or ints as keys for dicts/hashmaps - instead of say letting you use immutable compound values as keys, or a language that doesnt give you set data-structures which support basic set operations (contains, equal, subset, superset, intersect, union, etc), or a language that requires you to write a paragraph of OOP-boilerplate to encode e.g. a list of pairs of values, you're making life harder for yourself than necessary.

also, i claim without evidence that prolonged and continuous exposure to working with languages that dont offer sensible data structures, or only offer broken data structures, may over time hamper your ability to think and problem solve clearly.


I was in this exact position a month ago and I landed a great job because of doing very well in two technical interviews. I also am a strong Python programmer who was rusty on the classic CS stuff. Go to Codility's programming lessons page:

https://app.codility.com/programmers/lessons/1-iterations/

and try to do at least two exercises from each lesson up to lesson 15 if you can. The open reading material at the top of each section is excellent and discusses all the CS theory you will need.

Good luck!


Read chapters 2-5 of Skiena’s book, then do leetcode eight hours a day until your interview. Start with high-pass-rate mediums, then work your way up, and try to solve some hards. Spend about half an hour on each problem, and if you can’t think of an answer, look at the solution, reimplement it, and think hard about the underlying concepts.

This will not guarantee you a pass — honestly, some people spend months preparing for the big 5 interviews — but it may give you a fighting chance, and either way it will give you a good foundation for future interviews.


Leetcode is a good idea.

https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/

And frankly, given your lack of background in this area, it would do you a world of good to get more time to prepare. Try to push the interview back a bit. Even one extra week would be an improvement.


I'm surprised nobody mentioned LeetCode. You can start solving 100 most popular interview questions (sort them by difficulty first):

https://leetcode.com/problemset/top-100-liked-questions/

If you've never took any algorithm course and have only a week for preparation, it would be very difficult to prepare for coding interview. But I think you can at least finish all easy problems from this list. In this case, you may at least pass screening coding interview.

Right now, I'm very actively interviewing with pretty selective high-frequency trading companies. I can say that LeetCode has pretty relevant set of interview problems.

One more thing. Even if you solved a problem, always look at description of solution, if there is no description of solution, you should look at discussion.

From there, you can find references to common algorithms/themes like binary search etc.


You aren't going to gain the skills gained by a four year education in a week. And if you try it will likely be obvious. Interviewers (at least the good ones) aren't looking for someone who knows a particular algorithm by memory, they are looking for someone who is familiar with the concepts. And familiarity is easy to distinguish from rote memorization.

The good news though is that unless you lied on your resume, they already know that and are still interested in you. So you likely have other characteristics they are interested in.

I would concentrate instead on learning about the company you are interested in. That's something you can do in the course of a week.


>the skills gained by a four year education

Algorithms and data structures are 1-3 classes out of ~45.


>You aren't going to gain the skills gained by a four year education in a week.

I know someone who was able to pull it off in 2 weeks, though they were unemployed at the time. They got into Google with 7 years of prior experience at the time. He admits a lot of it was luck. But it's possible.


I'm guessing it's the 7 years of experience that impressed Google, not the two weeks of cramming.


Your background only matters for getting the interview. Whether or not you are hired depends on your actual performance during the onsite.


Yes, but his performance was more aided by his 7 years of experience than his two weeks of cramming.


Ask your recruiter what the test contains and how it relates to the position they are interested in hiring you for, and then just strait up tell them, that you are not strong in algorithms and data structures, but you are strong in ECE and machine learning, and they should hire you for those things.


You could try reading/skimming over the book "Cracking the code interview" to get some insight in how the company handles interviews. The big five are in there so you'd get more information that way. Besides that, a week should be okay if you study hard and got good resources.


Man, I've never studied for an interview...

I turn up on the day, but then these interviews asking difficult algorithm question seem to be a rarity in the UK, thankfully.

Our interview process seems to be much more reasonable.


Because it's insane. You will not use of those algorithms in your job, and even if you do, they are ready to use in modules already.

It's just a way to see who can learn those algorithms because the big five need to filter out most people somehow. This is their method of doing it.


More likely they aren't testing your knowledge of the algorithm but testing your ability to write code.


> seem to be a rarity in the UK

Also what I've noticed. Since the 90s, I've never been asked one of these algorithm question.

Most of it's just a chat about my CV and what they do. A good interviewer or developer would smell bullshit.

I sometimes get a few basic quizzes or fizzbuzz level exercises, which I don't have a problem with. Usually when I ask about it, it's just an extra filter due to someone in the past slipping through the cracks. Having worked with people who'd fail such tests, it's a good signal knowing my potential team members are at a reasonable standard.


> I turn up on the day, but then these interviews asking difficult algorithm question seem to be a rarity in the UK, thankfully.

Perhaps...I've seen a few share of those in interview situations or in pre-interview screening tests. I like the fact the fact that is a standard test that every candidate faces. I'm not sure that the nature of the tests has any relation to the type of work one will be required to in some of these places...


Coderust has been an invaluable resource to me. Yes, it won't give you what a CS degree gives you, but it's enough to make you feel confident in a week or less.

https://www.educative.io/collection/5642554087309312/5679846...


Based on what you've described (not familiar with data structure/CS algorithm) the answer is very simple - you can't prepare in a week. Don't do it.

Tell the recruiter you need a month to prepare or they will have to skip the CS basic screen for you in order to fast forward the process. If you're one of these niche developers (python/C++), you might have a little power when it comes to asking you the right questions. Same goes when a company originally contacted you, you're in a position of power.


Sorry, are you saying knowing python/C++ makes OP a niche developer? I was under the impression these were very common languages at the big-N? Or is it something else about their background?

Not trying to correct you, I'm really just curious since I have a similar background and an in a similar situation to the OP.


https://www.interviewbit.com is a good platform to practice algorithm and data structure questions as if in an interview environment.


+1 for interviewbit. But it cannot be completed in a week if OP tries to solve all the problems. Instead focus should be on solving few questions from each category.


Glassdoor is a decent website to guage the type of questions you'll get during an interview for a specific position.

Ive had interviews that re use the exact same questions (fortune 100 companies)


Not that this answers the question, but if they're big 5 they should be willing to give you more time. Ask them for a month and see what they say.


I would postpone the interview. Give yourself at least 2 months to study this stuff. If you can't postpone it, then I would go ahead and do the interview anyway. There are some good suggestions below, try to spend at least a few hours each day. Hopefully a few hours in the morning, then a break, and then a few more hours. Get plenty of sleep.

When you do the interview, do your best and try not to care about the outcome. If you don't care about the outcome, you won't be nervous and you'll likely do better.


If the company is Google, be aware that they contact pretty much everybody. You shouldn't feel special because they contacted you.

Why not stick to data science, which is very hot right now?


You think for data science position they won't test you with the usual algo questions?


You can’t gain the knowledge of a CS degree in a week, but you can calm your nerves.

Have some friends conduct a few mock interviews every day, giving you some questions you don’t know the answer to. Then have them give feedback on your poise, especially with difficult questions.

You will be calmer and more confident in the rough patches of the interview.


Can anyone with experience with "big 5" interviews tell me what to expect out of web development job application process?

As someone who is coming from another web dev job, not coming right out of college.

Will I still be quizzed on data structures and algorithms? Or will it be more on-topic subjects like frameworks, patterns, architectures, etc?


https://www.educative.io/d/InterviewPrep has courses to brush up on DS/Algorithms and problems to practice coding interviews.


I would recommend 'the imposter syndrome".

https://shop.bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook


https://codesignal.com has a good intro-level course, make sure to focus on the "medium" difficulty and above problems


https://www.interviewcake.com/

Perfect if you want to crack something in a week


You can opt for some mock interview practice app such as MockRabbit which I generally use


Probably good to know git


yup. "git push -f" - allow it or ban it? Should git hooks run all tests locally?


- Ban it for everyone; if you need it, temporarily grant power to the admin to fix something.

- Only if they take a completely trivial amount of time


may the force push with you. always.


Currently downvoted by zealots. However this is a real requirement. I have friends who focus mostly on Git knowledge, in their interviews because it informs a lot about general knowledge of the developer. Trunking, merging and so on.


Prepair on theoretical level as well, O notations, and such.


I know this is going to come across as a stupid question, but I would like to ask what the point is of studying for an interview? I am self-taught (under guidance from a mentor) with no formal training, and don't understand why one would prepare for an interview by studying. Isn't that dishonest in a way? Shouldn't an interview determine if you are comfortable providing a service and (ultimately) generating profit for the company hiring you?


There are no stupid questions, only people who failed to prepare for the questions.

Interviews are a sales process. The test can never really be an accurate assessment of how well you work - we don't even have that for full-time employees over a year, so how well it works over a couple of hours is never going to be that great.

Also, preparation is part of the test. Some interviewers like to ask questions about what you know about the company to see if you've prepared by reading their website etc. I've seen people be marked down with "obviously he didn't prepare for this interview, so he wasn't that motivated".


I'm not a programming professional, but as I understand it: you study for interviews because the biggest tech companies used to ask difficult data structure & algorithms-based questions, plus some difficult/tricky questions which require a particular style of thinking. Now nearly everyone does it, and YouTube and textbooks offer lots of help... Which has started an 'arms race' in knowledge about DS&A and answers to tricky problems between interviewers and interviewees.

At some point I think it was intended to be like a 'coding-oriented IQ test', after you'd passed a set of HR checkboxes. Obviously an IQ test you study carefully for is not a broadly applicable measure of relative performance. As far as I understand, many of the top companies are shifting away from this interview paradigm, but it'll take the rest of the industry which adopted it a long time to catch up (I imagine).


You're mostly right. Also, big companies want to

* Minimize the time spent by their engineers interviewing candidates,

* Standardize the process as much as possible, so that anyone can run the interview.

I'm convinced there are many reasons for smaller shops not to blindly follow Google's practices. But as a candidate, what can you do... it's their loss, I guess.


The entire idea is a bit wacky. But then it really demonstrates why "coding interviews" that consist entirely of algorithm questions and puzzle questions are pointless. If your interview can be studied for then you're not hiring the best engineers, you're hiring the people willing to devote the most time to studying such things. At that point why not just ask the person to turn over a grade transcript?


My current theory is that it's a form of signalling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory


> what the point is of studying for an interview? I am self-taught (under guidance from a mentor) with no formal training, and don't understand why one would prepare for an interview by studying. Isn't that dishonest in a way?

You are competing against other people. If you are not particularly interested in winning then by all means don't do any training. Same deal for athletics.


Athletes train and are selected for teams in a way that is directly relevant to their job. Programming interviews are unrepresentative of the actual work of programming. No other industry to my knowledge does this.


On the contrary, I think most other industries do this (i.e. hire people based on mostly insane criteria).

I think programmers are more reflective and analytical than people from other industries, so programming as an industry gets a lot of flak from the inside, but I really believe it's no better anywhere else.

"Half of programmers can't program! What's wrong with this industry?" Half of everyone is completely and utterly incompetent at whatever they're paid to do, why do you think we're special? Programmers just happen to notice these things.

"The interview process is broken!" Yeah, so it is everywhere else, programming is just the only industry where someone would possibly even care about whether something is insane or not.

'Tis my two cents.


Weight lifting doesn’t have any direct use for any sport ( excpet weight lifting), and yet they do it pretty much in every preparation. Brain is a muscle, so showing that your brain is able to manipulate some moderately complex algorithms is always a good thing.


Do tryouts for the 100m team involve benchpressing? Nope.


Interestingly, the American Football NFL Scouting Combine, which can be thought of as roughly a tryout for the NFL draft, involves a test in which athletes must benchpress a set amount of weight (225lbs == ~102kg) as many times as possible [0]. Whether or not this is a good test for athleticism and performance in the NFL is very much debatable, but it is one area in which they're evaluated.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Scouting_Combine#Bench_pre...


Probably a reasonable test in a sport that requires a lot of pushing. Same reason the military like press-ups.


Sprinters do Deadlifts to increase their strength. Makes them run faster.


Then don't do the training. And volunteer your thoughts on the game to the interviewers. Very honest!


Sure. An interview is a two way process. Do I want to work for a company with a broken hiring process like that? A company that doesn’t respect a candidates time prior to the interview certainly won’t after they are hired. It’s implicitly an ageism filter too - looking for recent graduates or people with few out of work commitments. Similarly extensive homework assignments. All red flags.


Um, yeah, not everything is completely rational.

But look at it this way: if you want to hire a musician to a band, and you do large scale hiring, you probably want to put some minimum requirments like being able to play, and maybe handling rudimentary musical theory and being able to read sheet music. CS 101 stuff is exactly this - you understand the fundamental concepts and are capable of conversing in them.

Musicians who have formal degrees are understood to handle the basic theory and everything that matters is how well they can play.

There is no degree in CS that would guarantee you understand the fundamentals or you know how to combine the basic concepts into practice. I presume this is one of the rationales for whiteboarding.

Of course, there are all sorts of weird and wacky bands that have other hiring policies but the big five are not weird nor wacky.

Apparently how well the hiring went does not predict anything abouy on-job performance, but probably some whiteboarding will not let those people in who would be totally incapable of operating with basic CS theory. Sure, this leaves lot of potential talent out, but often hiring a bad apple is lot more expensive than discarding an ok candidate.


Actually bands hire the musician who has the look, sound and personality that fits whatever they're going for. Most of them don't know any theory beyond blues and folk chords. They might test them by jamming with them, but the decision has nothing to do with musical skills. So it's actually very similar to hiring in tech.


There is a different world out there where people study months and months all kinds of academic problems to get a grunt position at the major ad companies.


You're insinuating FAANG = ad companies?


We run ads, Sir to quote a certain guy during a recent hearing.


> We run ads, Sir to quote a certain guy during a recent hearing.

Gold


FAANG = Facebook, Apple, Amazon, N, Google.

Who's 'N'? If it were an 'M', I would imagine Microsoft, but nothing comes to mind except 'Netflix', which I don't consider to be on par with the rest of the group by any means.


It actually is Netflix.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp


As the other commentter pointed out, it's a term from Wall Street.


This acronym makes zero sense and covers companies with wildly different interviewing practices.


It's not always about what you know, it's if you are able to read up on something and teach yourself. There's a high chance that you'll experience a lot of things at your job that you didn't know before and you'll have to read up on the topic and figure out how it works. Not much different from studying for a code interview.


It's what the culture has turned into. You are expected to do a white board test. It is more of a test to filter out those who are passionate enough to study for weeks before an interview than anything else. But it's part of the game.


The profit you can generate for the company depends on your likeliness to solve problems in an efficient way, and to learn how to solve problems in new efficient ways.

Company knows how the interview prep is, and the candidate that understand more how to solve non-trivial problems can be the right service provider for that company.

I'm not talking by experience but what I was taught, I'm currently finishing my university but the Data Structure and Algorithm course is one of the most difficult to pass and that's only basic structure. A candidate able to think fastly about dynamic programming or structure a possible solution for a NP-complete problem can provide a service that others candidate can't.




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