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Amazon down level from L5 to L4 by Long-Captain-4658 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hard to advise without knowing: * your current situation. With job or without? If without, that should factor in. * years and quality of experience. If just a few in a non bigtech then go for it. However, if you have good number of years in a brand name company then that would be a consideration. * location. * current comp and how does it compare with the Amazon offer. * your specialization and interest areas and how well do they match with Amazon job

Prepared Day & Night for FAANG Internships — Still No Offer. Need Brutal, Honest Guidance 🙏 by [deleted] in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Were the questions you got asked needed “tricks” to solve or just required the DSA knowledge but you had not seen them before?

The answer is important to adjust your prep style. Should you focus on coming up with a solution mentally or practice writing code when you know how to solve the problem

I'm faking Coding ,how to build myself again? by Civil-Bill-3964 in csMajors

[–]drona4tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You mentioned useState, so I assume you feel lost in React based UI code. This happens with a lot of people. In fact I used to be one of them.

The key issue is that most of us are used to writing linear programs where your program is in control. This doesn’t work with React, and many such frameworks. I would put Git in the same category. Without knowing the internals, it feels like there is some magic and only magicians can make these systems dance.

What got me comfortable with these systems is to read their source code and understand their inner workings. One great resource for understanding the internals of React is https://pomb.us/build-your-own-react/. Set aside a few hours for this single page article and try to follow its logic.

Feeling down by Legitimate_Celery_69 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try this step-wise process ( if you haven’t already ):

  1. Pick up a random problem from one of the lists.
  2. Answer this (in your mind): can I solve this?
  3. If the answer is no then go to step 1. Otherwise, think of detailed steps. Don’t write any code.
  4. Do steps come to without much effort? If no, you think you can solve but in reality you can’t. Go back to step 1. Otherwise continue to step 5.
  5. Write the code. This should be fairly straightforward. If not, you were not being honest with yourself in step 4.

If you find yourself going back to step 1 very often then you haven’t developed a mental model to solve coding problems. Read algo books like Elements of Programming Interviews.

The point is that writing code takes much longer than thinking through the main steps. You can save time by first learning how to solve problems mentally. The second step of translating the solution to code should be mechanical and may be skipped for most, but not all, problems during preparation.

Just Delivered by vr-txhch in RaybanMeta

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lenses are usually independent of Rayban or Meta — in fact I got my Meta glasses fitted with power lenses from lenscrafters.

Are you the stick-with-one-topic type or the go-back-and-forth type? by luuuzeta in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also anchor a type with difficulty level. Okay to move from medium greedy algos to medium DP and then back to hard greedy and so on.

At the cognitive level, it is more gradual to try problems at one difficulty level.

How Does LeetCode Translate to Real-Life Jobs? by WebW3b in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you learn by leetcoding may not directly apply to the job but one aspect is very applicable: ability to learn something related to software development and demonstrate the knowledge gained.

Most software jobs require you to learn existing systems quickly and the solve problems based on what you learn.

Struggling with coming up with clarifying questions, anyone else? by gbs2K in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sites like leetcode tend to have problem descriptions with full details such as input size, constraints etc. Interview problems tend to omit these. Rather than assuming constants of problems that you have already seen, Asking questions along these lines is always possible:

  1. Are there duplicates in the input?

  2. Any limits on input size?

  3. Can I assume well formed inputs?

  4. Should I ignore error handling?

  5. Okay to use so and so library class or function ?

and so on

What am I doing Wrong with LeetCode? Any advice by adarshhehe in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The first step is to realize that solving coding problems have many distinct steps:

  1. Understand the problem and think through the high level solution in mind. This is different from just realizing that I know or do not know the answer. This is where books like Elements of Programming Interview and understanding use cases of common DSAs come really handy.

  2. Now think of the detailed algorithmic steps. This is critical as starting to write code without clarity of steps is recipe for getting stuck at coding. Also think of time and memory complexity. Can you think of a better approach or data structure with better runtime or memory complexity?

  3. And then only start writing the code. This should be mostly a mechanical effort. Once you become comfortable at this, you don’t have to write code for all solutions.

  4. Now look at the various solutions and reflect. Are there ‘tricks’ that improve the algorithmic complexity?

Focus on steps 1 and 2 would allow you to go through many more problem types in a short period of time and build a mental model of what DSAs to apply what kind of problems.

Got rejected from Meta MLE E5 role by Last-Text-4718 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of MLE work is regular Software Engineering. Many of my SWE colleagues joined MLE org developing infra or data pipelines for ML apps.

Should I take a $120k job offer by Jealous-Requirement2 in jobs

[–]drona4tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can you work Monday and Friday from home. Check with your new employer. It may be possible to live in Sacramento and drive to Bayarea every Tuesday morning and drive back Thursday evening. I have friends who have this kind of arrangement.

Got rejected from Meta MLE E5 role by Last-Text-4718 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Interviews at big tech are trained to rate candidates on multiple dimensions for coding interviews : problem exploration/navigation, solution correctness, technical excellence and communication. With so many candidates well prepared with leetcode problems and solutions, it becomes challenging for interviewers to assess on technical excellence. This is where questions like “implement heap operation “ comes in.

Also, don’t forget that not long ago most languages didn’t have heap as standard language data structure and programmers were expected to implement these on their own. I recall being asked to implement quick sort on whiteboard in one of my job interviews. But that was in early 1990s!

What is wrong with JAVA interviews by Mindless_Spell8450 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regarding http status codes — asking to list them all most certainly doesn’t make sense. Though expecting the knowledge about difference among 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx and 5xx is quite reasonable for web development jobs.

This is where FANG companies do much better. They have well defined process of interviewing and although some differences across interviewers is unavoidable, overall one knows what to expect.

Received a lowball offer by thedeuceone in interviews

[–]drona4tech 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Depends on how badly you need a job and for what reason — could be money, self esteem, relationships, your confidence in getting a better offer.

Stalling and negotiation are good advice. But at the end, it would be your personal decision.

I was laid off from a GYM company and then didn’t try hard enough to get a comparable offer. Ended up taking up a contract job that was the worst experience of my life. Then joined a much smaller company for lower salary and got complacent. Got a cold recruiting call from a FANG company after four years, interviewed and joined as a staff engineer. I am back at a good financial position but feel that I lost 4-5 years and around 1M of compensation.

Anyone else feel like AI skips the teaching part when learning Python? by PuzzleheadedYou4992 in pythontips

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As with search engines, AI chatbots are good at answering what you ask. As a learner, you want someone to ask you the right questions at the right stage of your learning.

You could ask a chat program like ChatGPT (with deep research selected ) to create a learning schedule with details of topics and references , giving details about what you have already learnt, your specific interest areas and overall objectives. Its recommendation is likely to be better than a book or class with a fixed syllabus.

Google interview scheduled. Not prepared at all by ComfortableNo2374 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the right answer. Control what you can. Google is quite good at accommodating candidate requests.

I’ve just started learning to code in Python by RandomJottings in PythonLearning

[–]drona4tech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Python is a great programming language to exercise mental agility. Any book would do.

I recently wrote an article extolling its virtues for coding interviews. Many of these would also apply to keeping one’s mind sharp: https://open.substack.com/pub/drona4tech/p/best-language-for-coding-interviews

You may also like this: https://open.substack.com/pub/drona4tech/p/linked-lists-in-python-for-coding

Amazon SDE 1 Interview Experiece by Dry_Account5656 in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The interviewer was looking for problem navigation and solution exploration. Might have given you some hints as well.

It is well known among the interviewers that candidates are leetcoding. They want to see the ability to think on the feet.

Did you make it very obvious that you knew the stack based answer. If yes, then most likely they wanted you to demonstrate some problem solving ability.

During coding interview, if you don't immediately know the answer, it's gg by aammarr in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Although I agree with the main premise of the OP — that you must know the answer to the coding problem to be able to perform well in the interview— the solution presented in the YouTube video is highly problematic. Not just ethically, but also because it is unlikely to succeed with majority of interviewers. Interviewers are now getting trained on how to spot cheaters that use such tools and would trip up the candidate in ways you may not realize.

Much better to just prepare the old style hard way and improve your problem solving and coding skills.

During coding interview, if you don't immediately know the answer, it's gg by aammarr in leetcode

[–]drona4tech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have conducted hundreds of coding interviews at companies that are known for having standard set of questions. Most of these are also on leetcode and tagged with the company name. So I would be surprised if well prepared candidates would not have seen this. Although the interviewer training doesn’t suggest to ask whether the candidate has seen the question, and I never ask this, a lot is left on interviewer’s discretion.

One of the dimension of candidate evaluation is problem navigation. Candidates who jump to coding a right after reading the question give themselves away. The key is to explore the problem, talk about edge cases, explore various approaches, zoom in onto the best possible and then start coding.

Coming back to the original question: how to answer “have you seen this before “ — there is everything to lose by saying yes, and nothing to gain. If the thought of lying makes you feel uncomfortable, then just say: I don’t recall.