Interview prep
12 Apr 2020As software engineers our environment is ever changing. Things are moving fast. “Once in a lifetime” events seem to happen every couple of years now. That’s why I think one needs to stay sharp and interview at regular intervals.
Hiring platforms:
- Otta - my personal favourite. Great companies, great UI/UX, well curated content.
- Hired - if you’re looking for startups and FANG companies you’ve already heard of them. The model here is companies reach out to you.
- StackOverflow Jobs - I haven’t extensively used it but I think any self-respecting engineering org should post their jobs on here as well.
- TripleByte - only available in the US. But you can still take the quiz! Somehow I was in the 83 percentile when I did it. I must be good at guessing.
Coding prep:
- LeetCode - loads of problem sets and active community. Read about it on Quora.
- HackerRank - I think it has more practice questions than LeetCode but it’s not the community favourite.
- AlgoExpert - if you’ve been on YouTube for any period of time you must have seen the adverts.
- Codeforces - if you’re hardcore and serious about the coding challenges you do.
- CodeChef - haven’t personaly used it but it’s questions can get repetative.
- Geektastic - It’s not as slick as everything else but some companies use it so you might as well familiarise yourself. If you use this link you will get 50% your first 3 months.
Coferences:
This will sort of depend on your specialisation. Also they can get quite pricey so if you’d like to attend just volunteer! Here are the ones I like:
- PyCon - I’ve attended the UK one, but the one in the US is much bigger.
- goto; - volunteered for this one a couple of years ago, it was great!
- QCon - another massive conference, which I volunteered for.
Books and blogs:
- Cracking The Coding Interview - this comes highly recommended!
- Introduction to Algorithms - very famous book but also very dense.
- The Algorithm Design Manual - popular yet still quite lengthy.
-
Grokking Algorithms: An illustrated guide for programmers and other curious people - very light weight way of learning about algorithms
- HighScalability Blog
- Arden Dertat’s Programming interview questions
YouTube:
I love spending my time on Youtube, that’s how I get most of my information these days. But it’s very important that you actually do prep questions rather that watch these videos for hours (speaking from experience).
- Joma Tech - very entertaining and informative
- TechLead - I used to love his content now I’m a bit more wary of it.
- Gaurav Sen - outstanding videos on interview prep and system design. The images in this post are from his video.
- Clément Mihailescu (AlgoExpert) - his content is also quite good but I’ve got brand loyalty to Joma and TechLead, they can be a bit more entertaining.
- CS Dojo - haven’t watched his content in a while but he’s got some solid explanation videos. Most everyone else has put their explanations behind a paywall.