Just moved to the Bay Area and have just started studying for technical interviews.<p>1. Does anyone want to do mock interviews / study with me / team up in some other way? Email me: arjun@nyclabs.co and I'll create a group.
2. Any unconventional advice/tips for studying or the interview itself?
No.<p>If you want me for a skillset that I have then interview me on that.<p>If you think that dumb white board questions are relevant, then there is a 50% chance that I will get it right. Your loss if I get it wrong. You know that job isn't going to be related to some algorithmic crap. (At least it doesn't waste too much of my time - compared to some pretty hefty take home tests I have done).<p>After 15 years, there is too much stuff to study for its likely a waste of time. I know the stuff that I know well. I won't bullshit any claims about stuff that i don't know.
I’m super interested in creating an intensely detailed mind map of what you need to answer these tech interviews.<p>I always hear that the interview process is broken and we need a new system etc but I would imagine we’d want our new coworkers to know how to create an array, and maybe create pointers to it and maybe adjust pointers based on a condition and given an arbitrary algo be able to apply the above skills to a particular set of conditions. And I’ve always wondered how much better it would be if there was some type of consistent grading to these interviews. Anyway if that’s something you’re interested in exploring I’d be happy to chat.
One unconventional tip for code challenges comes to mind. A candidate used it on me and it was worth a ton of points in my book.<p>Instead of just doing the challenge ask the interviewer what they want you to optimize for? Performance? Shortness? Readability? Maintainbility? Make it clear there are tradeoffs to each and that the tradeoffs you choose often matter more than the code itself.<p>As a plus you also get insights into what the company values.
Aside from reading "Cracking the Coding Interview", I recommend trying out challenges at Hacker Rank, or LeetCode (or anything similar). Do it with the online editor, or even use their questions as practice for whiteboard questions. Whatever you do for a whiteboard, try transcribing that as submission to see how close to real code you wrote. Some companies you interview care about that.
Hey,
I work at Karat and we offer free mock interviews for anyone working on their technical interviewing skills: karat.io/practice<p>We're also always hiring interviewers. If you love interviewing and/or are looking for well-paying, remote work, shoot me an email at skik@karat.io
My highest recommendation is <a href="https://www.pramp.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.pramp.com</a><p>Also, being able to intelligently explain<p><pre><code> * top 10 algorithms of all time
* top 20 "popular" technologies
</code></pre>
Sign up a for an online judge [1] and do a couple easy to medium questions each morning.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_judge" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_judge</a>