[dnackoul]

>1. No, you don't need to know everything... It takes maybe a week for a smart developer without a CS degree to learn what they need to know for interviews.

I just went through a job search and I didn't find this true. I think the bar on algorithms has raised significantly with all of the prep material (your book included) out there. I also found a few companies sent over "things to study" lists that were quite comprehensive and included topics that you might not even see in undergrad.

>I'm not sure what you expect here. Do you want companies to hire based on how smoothly you're able to bullshit about what you can claim to have done in the past?

I think this is a false dichotomy. I had two friends that just interviewed at Stripe and loved their process: https://stripe.com/jobs/engineering-onsite.pdf

[cloakandswagger]

I would estimate a reasonable amount of prep time prior to interviewing is around 100 hours. This is about how long it will take to brush up on and practice data structures, algorithms, DP, design questions, etc.

This is about 2 months of practicing an average of 2 hours a day, meaning you're still working a day job. I figure this could be reduced to 1 month of prep if you quit your job and have all day to yourself.

[gaylemcd]

Lots of people get offers with little to no prep.

[dnackoul]

Usually these are people who are coming from companies with similar interview styles and are passively prepped by being an interviewer (for algos/coding) and designing web-scale systems (for system design).

[jarsin]

See when I read that strip interview doc I don't worry at all. Thats what I do everyday as a software developer. I would love to demonstrate my ability in interviews like this.

These Cracking the Code interview type interviews are not even close to what we do all day everyday.