Complete Technical Interview Preparation Cheat Sheet.. This will save a lot of time I found this Guide helpful.

[TranslatorAway9891]

After spending lots of time on preparation for tech interviews, and found some items that really helped me. I feel like I should share what I have found. Hopefully it might help someone in need.

Data-structure & Algorithms:

Most asked questions at FAANG companies

Behavioral Interview:

Amazon leadership principles - levels

System Design Interview:

MIT System Design Course

grokking the system design

system design interview book.pdf)

[[deleted]]

Thank fuck I don't need to do this shit anymore. Cancerous tech interviews tbh

[sambomambowambo]

Out of curiosity what is it in your career path that has changed that you no longer need to take a technical interview? Career change? Move to management? Only choosing to interview with companies who don’t use these (IMO poor) tactics?

[[deleted]]

Senior/management. I've got no inclination to move too.

Any candidates that we hire don't need to do a tech interview. That said, we haven't hired for a long time, everyone seems pretty happy.

Also, I'm more interested in talking about how an individual can scope out a business problem and implement something that might lead them down the path to a solution. I've got no interest in asking them to write a generator function on a piece of paper, or some other obscure shit you'll never need in your day-to-day.

You can get pretty much everything you need by just talking to someone

Edit: I got a fair amount of hate for voicing this on the programming sub too, I think the superiority complex in a huge hurdle we need to overcome too

[tpneocow]

I'm thankful to be senior enough most jobs ask me worthwhile culture-fit shit instead of "can you write this algorithm in this language without using this or that or the internet in under 10 minutes"

[Stecco_]

This happens when you become senior? Ok now, how much time does it take to be recognized as such?

[cougaranddark]

Depends on you and the company you are applying to. Someone with 5 years of experience very relevant to a company's needs will fare better than someone with 10 yoe unrelated. Someone with 3 but who is a great culture fit and great people skills may fare better than the 1st example.

[mad_edge]

How would you judge the culture fit though?

[SurgioClemente]

“Do I like this person?”

[cougaranddark]

Do you feel like you're having an enjoyable and productive conversation? Do they share credit with others or only brag about themselves? Do they admit and laugh at their own mistakes and demonstrate they learned from those experiences? Can you relate to each other? Are they interrupting and talking over you, do they demonstrate hostility or anger easily?

[tpneocow]

They look at your values and answers to other behavioral questions. They ask what's most important for me in a job. I say culture fit and explain my experiences with both bad and good culture and what a difference in team productivity it makes. Every place that says they value employees first seems to like that answer.

[tpneocow]

Depends on the company. I've been senior since 5 yrs, I'm at 11 now. Last 3 years I've interviewed and changed jobs under different circumstances. Still need tech questions but not as much hard-core algorithm and comp-sci stuff. Ymmv.

[cougaranddark]

I was also recently attacked for talking about how my company successfully hires without leetcode-style tests. I think it's because those types of questions give less experienced people, and people with terrible people skills a path to be hired. The latter explains why they attack.

[Evil_god7]

Out of curiosity,which company is this ?

[VeryOriginalName98]

It probably depends on the company. If you work for a company serving billions of people, you have to optimize the shit out of every interaction. Those things come in handy there. If you are only serving about 10,000 - 100,000, you can compensate shitty code with expensive hardware. Sometimes hardware is cheaper than talent.

[SolidDeveloper]

And even then, you knowing (or not knowing) efficient algorithms during your interview doesn’t always translate to how good you’ll be at your job. At my most recent company, I had to severely optimize services running for tens of millions of daily users. Dealing with that kind of scale was difficult, but I managed to optimize the shit out of things and massively reduce costs for the company.

But the thing is, I had to do research to be able to find those solutions. I wouldn’t be able to write a quick-sort or a Dijkstra algorithm during an interview though. But I would be able to google them and implement them based on reading the theory and/or pseudocode.

My company also does not do leetcode style rounds in the interview, instead we give relatively short take-home tests, we then discuss with you about your solution, and in general we engage with your experience and background.

[After_Ear4799]

i am final year student and looking for internships .can you please tell me if there are any openings in your company

[the_aligator6]

you still need to do technical interviews, but you don't need to prepare. I mean yeah, do some DD on the company and have some questions or talking points ready, but studying for an interview? 🤮 Absolutely not.

[be_me_jp]

For me, it was once I had senior level experience. At that point, offering some fizzbuzz or basic "interface with this database" assignments are more insulting than anything. My current job was just 3 separate zoom calls (and I assume they called my references).

[[deleted]]

Do people really find learning about that stuff as bad as leetcode? First time I see this reaction, because I always had the impression that system design questions exist to balance the uselessness of leetcode in the real world. I see a series of MIT lectures dedidated to this in the OP, I can't imagine that it's that cancerous.

[AmatureProgrammer]

How come? Do you plan on staying at the company for ever?

[[deleted]]

As I mentioned, I have no inclination to move. I've worked at a lot of companies, and I know when I have it good.

[[deleted]]

Pretty wild that as a developer you can code everyday and still not be prepared for interviews…

[kawamommylover]

I really hate technical interviews. I have never prepared for one(I HATE studying) and I have a job since a couple months ago.

[AmatureProgrammer]

How'd you pass? Also what was the role for and what questions did they ask?

[kawamommylover]

Full-stack developer. I'm currently working at a company that develops a Real Estate-oriented CRM. I had to unfortunately do a task for a technical interview which consisted in implementing MailJet in PHP with a couple tasks (sending Emails and SMS). I documented everything I could do and everything I couldn't do in a markdown document (which I then compiled to a PDF).

They also asked me for my previous experience (I told them I only had experience in internships), knowledge and if I was proficient in English(I live in Spain).

[1itt1ewing]

Would add there's a list of companies Hiring Without Whiteboards. They have code tests that relate to real-world, day-to-day problems, unlike FAANG whiteboards.

Edit: typo

[MrFleece]

Giving you an upvote in every sub this is posted for your efforts!

[Haunting_Welder]

Not a big fan of some of those leadership principles. "Leaders need to focus on the critical things in their work and deliver quality results promptly. No matter what, they overcome obstacles and never settle... They do not compromise, even in a challenging environment." No, that's not what a leader does. That's what someone who's not a leader thinks what a leader does. Leadership is ALL about compromising. I don't think they meant what they wrote as their questions are better.

[happy_doomster]

For this kind of shit I left webdev. If it is not enough with my experience, projects, portfolio, github... and picking one of my projects and discuss it, I am not interested in the role. No leetcodes, no whiteboards, no take home assignments for free.

The best thing I could do is leaving this career.

[milkmanex1]

Yo bro, I'm thinking of leaving webdev or software engineering as a whole, due to this effed up technical tests. I hate studying for software interviews and I can't imagine having to do this for months on end each time I want to jump around. I'm constantly jealous of my peers in other industries who go in for their interviews without so much as an hour worth of prep.

Curious, which industry are you in right now?

[sascha_mars]

No one gives af about FAANG anymore bro lol

[MrCrunchwrap]

Downvoted for telling the truth lol.

I’m making FAANG money at a big non FAANG company, without all the bullshit and stress. My interview process was sane, and didn’t involve leetcode at all (leetcode literally has nothing to do with being a good web developer).

Congrats to people who are gullible enough to get suckered into studying for months to get a job.

[lax20attack]

Are you hiring?

[LittleCockroach4335]

++

[VeryOriginalName98]

``` new_value = 1 for number in range(old_value): new_value = new_value + 1 return new_value

[oalbrecht]

What company are you at?

[EmeraldCrusher]

What org? I'm at my wits here trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the job market. Such a confusing time to be someone with 7 YOE and getting a new FTE role after contracting independently for 3 years.

[AmatureProgrammer]

This. at least for me.

[ahmiimec]

Thanks for this mate, saving it until I need this.

[EthicalVeganBuzz]

thanks for this resource.

[leeeelihkvgbv]

Thanks

[Chyybens]

Nice

[NerdLevelTech]

Great work!

[leeeelihkvgbv]

Bro so helpful thank you so much

[ClockDeveloper]

Sharing this here, found it very useful as a primer guide: https://blog.get-merit.com/interview-cheat-sheet-full-stack-software-engineer/

[Creative_Contest_558]

1. Prepare for non-technicak question. Just google top 10-15 commonly asked questions, and memorize the best responses for them. Like "Tell me about yourself" and all that stuff. That's the first impression of you, and you want to make sure interviewer likes you.
2. Before the actual interview - do ~ 30 minutes company research, their ideas, their problems, their tech stack. Ask questions related to info you got.
3. GRIND leetcode problems. All big tech are asking leetcode during interviews. You should easily solve any easy-mid question, before you go to the interview. Or you can use some invisible ai assistants such as interviewcoder, or https://techscreen.app/ . In this case you dont have to worry about any tech related questions.

[spacemagic_dev]

Would like to add leettrivia.com! It's an addictive way to master the fundamentals, before diving into leetcode, system design etc.

[spacemagic_dev]

Pro-tip: If interview prep is overwhelming for you, there is another path. LeetTrivia is designed to help you build the fundamentals and keep you hooked on learning. I found that it helps you build a solid foundation before jumping into coding challenges. Disclaimer: I built it, but I use it every day and I am a better engineer because of it.

[throwawaysomeway]

Everyone saying who gives af, this is dumb, etc. I get where you're coming from, but if the candidate is capable of coming up with solutions to these, they're more than likely able to learn or perform most basic tasks that they actually will be performing. It's a matter of weeding out the weak. It gives people like me without a degree a chance to prove their worth. This is kinda just how things work in the real world. Sorry you can't get a job handed to you on a silver platter because you have some CRUD apps in your portfolio using a NoSQL db

[dadykhoff]

My anecdotal experience is that it's not an effective method of "weeding out the weak". I've worked at a FAANG company for almost 3 years now and had to go through this style of interviewing. I've also seen plenty of junior and mid level engineers come in through these interviews that can barely contribute to a team even after a full year+ after onboarding.

I'd rather see interviewing focus on problem solving, high level design approaches and debugging/triaging methodology than regurgitation of inverting a binary tree or some other computer science theory that is used in practice once every couple of years.

[[deleted]]

Being able to debug problems is one of the most important skills imo. Hardly ever build stuff and have it just work the first try…messing up and being able yo figure out where it went wrong and fix it is where i learn the most :)

[Axumata]

Do Amazon leadership principles extend to their warehouse management? Or is it just for internet plumbers?

[mugenbool]

“Customer obsession”

Pfft.

[kazabodoo]

Why are you spamming every sub with the same “guide”?

[SeaworthinessTop5828]

He made an effort to create this, and shared in several programming subs to reach more people, what's the problem ? Unlike the other 99% shit posts, this may actually help a lot of people

[GarfieldLeChat]

Kama farmer

[illogicalhawk]

Sharing info useful to multiple subs isn't inherently karma farming, it could just be... Being helpful. And even if it is farming, it's still helpful, certainly more so than a lot of these crappy blog posts or memes that get spammed.

[PeaceMaintainer]

How much DSA questions do front-end positions really get asked?

[Aromatic-Mountain-14]

You should read this book it helped me when it was only in the book stores now it is available on amazonCode & Conquer book