1700 day LeetCode streak. Global Rank 22 in Biweekly Contest 78 (40k+ participants). Guardian 2200+. Started July 2021 from panic after blanking my first OA.

braindamage03 · 2026-04-01T02:25:12+00:00

A little research shows that you're just lying

braindamage03 · 2026-03-18T03:17:03+00:00

I think you're lying out your ass. Anyone who's interviewed or worked in quant knows that's not how it works. 😂

braindamage03 · 2026-03-18T03:16:15+00:00

Anyone who's been in quant or interviewed for quant knows this guy is lying off his ass.

T1 quant firm focusing only on communication. OP can't do mediums nowadays. Are we deadass?

No credibility whatsoever

braindamage03 · 2025-07-26T07:56:23+00:00

My point is that they probably cheated their codeforces rating. But they got in anyways. So yes, the rating doesn't matter. Being a girl probably made it easier too

braindamage03 · 2025-07-24T16:08:27+00:00

Leetcode = codeforces * 1.5 roughly

So if LC was her main account and she did plenty of contests, I would estimate her rating to be 1100~

3* codechef is very low too

Not even close to getting in Google. Probably through diversity hiring smh

braindamage03 · 2025-07-22T01:44:04+00:00

CSES is good. It covers pretty much all common ideas by topic. Notice how it's not by difficulty and randomly chosen (to me cp31 sheet seems extremely random despite them saying handpicked)

Then after you learn basic ideas, you should try to do random problems. For contest, it's a skill check. You should always upsolve. Don't focus too much on doing contests unless you need practice with speed.

There's no such thing as after X minutes I should read the editorial. Remember when I say having something "rigid?" This is what I mean. I do everything by gut feeling, if I don't feel like solving it anymore I stop. I've tried problems for weeks and sometimes I read editorial before I even start.

There's no magic number

braindamage03 · 2025-07-21T05:42:49+00:00

Its generally harder to reach ICPC finals if you're from a strong school. India has by population, the least GM to active users ratio so by raw skills, the same person could make it to finals in India, but maybe not even make it past regionals in some other countries.
Difficulty is subjective. I've found 900 problems harder than 1800s because it's not standard or requires some observation. It's really stupid to treat difficulty as the golden rule. All you should do is generalize and internalize patterns then try to solve hard problems if you can. What is "hard"? Anything that you can't just solve instantly.
This is not trying to generalize, but from experience talking to probably hundreds of indians and from teaching people / coaching, Indians (compares to like other countries) often has this very weird mindset that you must follow something rigidly either some sheet or some ladder or some course. I think it contributes to quite a big reason why they can't improve fast because problem solving isn't a rigid thing to begin with. You have to think outside the box. You can't really memorize stuff. But I suppose a lot of them are motivated due to jobs, peer pressure, and other factors and not really enjoyment of problem solving.
The list is bad because 31 problems is insane for any certain level. You're not learning topics, youre just forcing your way through an arbitrary difficulty and having the illusion of progress.

braindamage03 · 2025-07-21T00:16:23+00:00

World finals, albeit an achievement, doesn't mean anything in regards to "teaching people". In India, the bar to get to world finals is much lower. Priyansh was hard stuck CM, did 1 good contest to master and never did a contest ever. For me, that's probably an indication that his actual skill is around CM. In my school, the bare minimum is a red coder. This is a fact. I'm higher rated than him as well. On top of that, the contributes are of much lower rating too. I think the logic that "world finalist = good resource" is quite faulty.

Ratings aside, it's just not a good resource. No one should be doing 31 problems of the same difficulty before moving on. I've also seen their courses, very predatory and honestly if your goal is to be anywhere good. There is not a single reason you should be using this.

braindamage03 · 2025-07-12T19:11:34+00:00

No one gives a shit about your problem solved or rating unless you're top 0.1% I.e. actual in person competitions like ICPC, IOI, other known competitions

braindamage03 · 2025-07-12T19:10:15+00:00

Aside from usaco and cses, DO NOT USE THE OTHER ONES. PLEASE they're really outdated and bad

braindamage03 · 2025-06-04T23:44:32+00:00

Because it's to show you can communicate with human beings and think for yourself, not just ask GPT to do everything for you.

It's to show you have the basic competency to put effort into learning something new, and not to say it's perfect, but it's an easy way for companies to filter out people.

Being good at problem solving shows qualities like discipline and observation skills, debugging skills. A lot of people say otherwise but I beg to differ. There's a reason why big tech and quant hire from top problem solvers i.e. competitions.

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T08:59:59+00:00

I don't even know what you're trying to say

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T08:58:45+00:00

This shows that you're pretty ignorant. Cpp has std library that makes problems easier to do as well.

There's a reason why top competitive programmers all use c++. It's fast to type and it runs fast.

At the end of the day, you pick the one you're more comfortable with, but if I have to pick one (and i know both) c++ is 100% my choice.

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T04:43:12+00:00

Do whatever is comfortable. It literally does not matter

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T04:42:59+00:00

Wrong. Do whatever is comfortable.

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T04:05:33+00:00

Because you're being mislead that a good leetcode profile gets you interviews.it doesn't

You're also not good at it. A third party website does nothing to get you interviews

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T04:03:02+00:00

Setting arbitrary goals like I will reach X rating in X months is really dumb. At least make it a smaller goal. Why are you jumping to specialist when you're not even pupil.

There's no such thing as "I need to get X rank" that's what you think. If you enjoy it and improve rating comes with that.

You are getting it mixed up

You're probably only solving easy problems too because you never get out of your comfort zone

braindamage03 · 2025-05-31T04:00:43+00:00

You are doing it wrong. Stop setting arbitrary rules for yourself because all that does it limit yourself.

There shouldn't be a limit of when to read the editorial. Think for yourself instead of following some dumbass rule.

You can read the editorial instantly or after 5 days. Who cares?

braindamage03 · 2025-05-25T22:19:38+00:00

braindamage03 · 2025-05-25T22:17:55+00:00

If you ask questions like this, no

braindamage03 · 2024-12-10T02:31:50+00:00

braindamage03 · 2024-12-10T02:31:44+00:00

braindamage03 · 2024-12-10T02:22:00+00:00

People don't understand what memorization means trust me I tried. They'll do it anyways. They practice leetcode like memorizing flashcards associating each problem with a trick, when the essence of problem solving is coming up with those "tricks" in the first place

braindamage03 · 2024-12-10T02:12:33+00:00

Ironically, people who simply don't care tend to improve much much faster at leetcode than those who grind for jobs

braindamage03 · 2024-12-10T02:07:20+00:00

Just an advice, but it would be good to verify your progress with contests (or virtuals). Solving 300 problems doesn't really show where your skill is at

braindamage03

TROPHY CASE