> <i>Technical interviews are much harder today than they used to be. Engineers study for months and routinely get down-leveled despite that. Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, in addition to covering a bunch of new questions and topics, teaches you how to think instead of memorizing. Grinding and memorization isn’t the way in this market (though in fairness, it’s never really the way). With us, you’ll still have to do the work, of course, but we’ll teach you to work smarter.</i><p>It's like they're doubling-down on the steaming load of BS that is the techbro interview.<p>Please permit me to share my 'review' of the original book, which I made when I gave away my copy on an MIT-internal free-stuff email list.<p>> <i>Date: Friday, October 20, 2023 7:53:39 AM</i><p>> <i>Subject: [Reuse] "cracking the coding interview" book of satan</i><p>> <i>"Cracking the Coding Interview" 6th Edition</i><p>> <i>I literally just opened this book to a random page, about 1/3 of the way through, and the first thing I read on the page was, "You should first ask your interviewer if the string is an ASCII or a Unicode string. Asking this question will show an eye for detail and a solid foundation in computer science." With no hint that the writer was aware of the irony.</i><p>> <i>However, since some successful tech companies were founded during the dotcom boom by students with no professional experience, they adopted hiring filters based around a cocky student's idea of what is important in software engineering. Then, subsequent startups, without the benefit of dotcom gold rush handing gobs of money to anyone who could spell "HTML", looked at those companies that had a lot of money, and thought "I, too, want a lot of money, so I should mimic whatever that big company with tens of thousands of worker drone employees does." Now we have a whole lot of startups who are filtering their hiring with a mix of fratbro hazing rituals, and attacking anyone who climbs the ladder in the middle of the room to reach the bananas.</i><p>> <i>This book will tell you not to climb the ladder to reach the bananas. Simultaneously, it will rot your brain, crush your soul, and make you a terrible person when you're later on the other side of the interviewing table and you inflict it upon someone else.</i><p>> <i>Unfortunately, I have old-school conditioning against destroying books,no matter how offensive and harmful.</i><p>> <i>TO CLAIM: Please email me and say *which day* you promise you will no-contact pick up, in Mid-Cambridge.</i><p>> <i>TO NOT CLAIM: Kudos, and maybe you join me in telling companies who recommend this book as interview prep material, "No, thank you".</i><p>(Epilogue: That copy of the book went to someone who responded, "As a linguist (and ex CS person) who is now considering selling her soul to big tech because academia is not a lot more better, I'd be interested in this cursed book!")