[jonex]

My impression of the big 4 interview process I went trough for my current position wasn't at all that it was all about having done a lot of preparation in the form of hackerrank problems etc. On the one question that most closely looked like something from my preparations, I did worse than the others. This was because I didn't actually think the solution trough properly and mostly repeated what I "knew" was the answer.

My conclusion was that it's mostly about being able to solve novel (which means preparation matters less) problems in code and explain the reasoning behind the solution. It is of course possible that I was just lucky in having good interviewers, in which case I guess that would answer the question, more of that and less of syntax checks or finding the one true answer-type of questions.