I hate this industry so much. I know what a trie is, but having it dangled over my head by some smarmy git like this: Just the thought of it fills me with so much sadness. These "Junior year computer science problems" just make me so angry even reading about them. I'll start interviewing in a year or so, it just fills me with despair knowing this is what I'll face when I do.
I like this post. It's very honest. What you say is true. Sadly, I recommend to grind LeetCode for at least one month before your interviews start. Make sure you can solve most medium difficulty and a few hard difficulty. It will give you a head start over many of your peers.
As I age, one thing that I realise about interviewing: It is scary as hell. It is basically performance art. And, most nerds are terrible about public performance & speaking. Some days you are really on it; other days: way off. Every single job that I ever got in my life feels like a lucky day. Also, the tech universe is infinitely wide at this point, so somebody somewhere can ask a question that you will fail.
Since this industry is so dominated by men, it also feels like a lot of machismo. So many interviews are just a jerk dude on the other side of the table (probably working for an amazing company) that wants to make himself feel better by making me look foolish. There are too many stories to tell. I have also kept my mouth shut when interviewers were insistent about a technical point that was 100% verifiably incorrect with a simple Google search. It helps to stroke their ego during an interview. When they give you a hint, or explain a better solution, try: "Oh, that's really impressive! How did you discover that algorithm?" You are more likely to make it to the next round. The goal of interviewing is to get the offer. You can always turn it down. If you had one jerk in the interview stream, but they work on a different team, it should be OK to accept the offer.
Another thing that I say to all interviewees now: I know that interviewing is scary. We are interested in what you do know, not what you do not know. Together, we will dive as deep as possible on a few topics to find the outer limit of what you know. If we come to a topic that you don't know about (or not deeply), tell us; we will move to a new topic.
> Every single job that I ever got in my life feels like a lucky day.
I think I read on here about the concept of successful people really just doing more things to increase their luck surface area.
In other words, you set yourself up to interview as best as you can, then make a bunch of connections and schedule a bunch of interviews, and (hopefully) at least one of those will be on a good day.
It's such a weird and, frankly, shitty way to make hiring decisions though. But at the same time, we don't have much better.
I think I read on here about the concept of successful people really just doing more things to increase their luck surface area.
Mike Bloomberg famously wrote in his (a bit shoddy) auto-biography: "Work hard and you might get lucky." (paraphrased) I complete agree. In _some_ form, it is a bit like "Fake it until you make it" -- but the better side of the same coin!
Been at it for the past 3 months. It is soul crushing and demoralizing. I'm starting to accept that I would rather work in a toxic company than have to go back job searching.
I recommend you keep at it, I also hated interviewing and it would give me anxiety which made me draw blanks and under perform embarrassingly a couple interviews.
The trick for me was diligently applying to as many places as possible (that were at least somewhat of a fit), and eventually coming across one where the main technical part of it was "take home". Coding and discussing thought processes on the spot for an audience isn't something I'm good at it turns out, but solving a practical problem on my own time was fine.
It's ultimately a numbers game, the more places you apply to, the more likely you'll find an interview process that fits. That is the most important thing to keep in mind--shotgun blast those applications. It's hard not to take rejection personally, but don't give up and settle for a toxic job, that's even worse.
If you can, take some time off and do something for yourself. I got way too caught up in the grind, was spending every spare moment on leetcode and algorithms, and all I felt was a gnawing desperation to succeed and get an offer. I took time off and refocused on what was important to me. I started hiking and biking and doing things that interested me. I stopped leetcoding at all. When I next interviewed a couple of months later, I didn’t even study and I didn’t need to, I came across as confident, and I got 2 offers right away. Fortunately I had a job at the time so I was able to go back to business as usual without it affecting my finances, but being in that situation without a job terrifies me.
Is it really that bad? I've taken the time to go back to some great books I never got a chance to fully study, like Udi Manber's Introduction to Algorithms and Jeff Erickson's Algorithms and even found some new gems like Guide to Competitive Programming and Competitive Programming 4 Book 1.
I don't know if this is sarcasm or not, but in case you're serious. The fact that you feel the need to approach this like you're a gladiator preparing for mortal combat in the arena of the mind, is really not OK. Our industry's interviews shouldn't be like this
I majored in computer engineering and skipped algorithms so it was pretty intense studying for a couple of months before I felt comfortable. Overall I really enjoyed learning it but I made it through so many successful years of software engineering without learning it that I don’t think it’s relevant to most people. Even now I write an O(n) algorithm to merge sorted lists and people comment on my PR just tell me to throw everything in an array and use the sort function.
The mindfuck when you realize cache locality can make an O(log n) algo faster than an O(1) algo, and the big-O analysis only really matters for extremely large data sets. :D
I hear you. Here is a quick tip. For the next year try contributing to open source projects that you like and that have companies behind them.
After a while, either they will make you offers to work for them on the spot, or they will at least "fast-track" you through the interview process.
It doesn't work in all software areas (it is pretty difficult to do it if you are an embedded systems developer) but it works especially well in others (e.g. cloud)
this reminds me of the whole zeitgeist that was around a long time ago around the smug interviewer that really just wanted to have some shine to the fact that he knew what a bloom filter was and that anything other than that wouldn't be someone worth hiring. iirc they got the deserved drubbing at the time for it because knowledge of some esoteric at the time concept wasn't really a great signal.
You studied field X to work in field X, and in a job interview the "smarmy git" considering to employ and pay you has the temerity to ask you things about field X to see whether you've understood the basics of field X, can apply them, explain your reasoning, and think on your feet?
And that engenders (and I quote) hate, sadness, anger and despair?
Perhaps spend some time on a real-world toy problem, the kind where you spend a lot of time dealing with small practical things like error handling?
I have interviewed a lot of people for coding jobs, and I usually try to test ability at doing things like this, and when I find someone junior who already knows how to approach problems like this, I am always very in favor of hiring them. Based on the discussion here I'm definitely not the only one.
