Ask HN: Is anyone studying for technical interviews?

[arjun_tina]

Just moved to the Bay Area and have just started studying for technical interviews.

1. Does anyone want to do mock interviews / study with me / team up in some other way? Email me: [e-mail] and I'll create a group. 2. Any unconventional advice/tips for studying or the interview itself?

[collyw]

No.

If you want me for a skillset that I have then interview me on that.

If you think that dumb white board questions are relevant, then there is a 50% chance that I will get it right. Your loss if I get it wrong. You know that job isn't going to be related to some algorithmic crap. (At least it doesn't waste too much of my time - compared to some pretty hefty take home tests I have done).

After 15 years, there is too much stuff to study for its likely a waste of time. I know the stuff that I know well. I won't bullshit any claims about stuff that i don't know.

[csixty4]

Same. Shoot, I've been pulled into the boss's office before and told not to use terms like "big O" on the job because they confuse the junior devs. And I've never needed to balance a tree or reverse a linked list or any of those things since college. It hasn't stopped me from getting projects done.

[ralston]

I once studied for about 48 hours (off and on) for interview at a security-related startup. After 5 rounds of interviews, not a single person asked me a single technical question. Needless to say I got caught up in the modern "study for the interview" hype - a trick I hope to not fall for again.

[theptrk]

I’m super interested in creating an intensely detailed mind map of what you need to answer these tech interviews.

I always hear that the interview process is broken and we need a new system etc but I would imagine we’d want our new coworkers to know how to create an array, and maybe create pointers to it and maybe adjust pointers based on a condition and given an arbitrary algo be able to apply the above skills to a particular set of conditions. And I’ve always wondered how much better it would be if there was some type of consistent grading to these interviews. Anyway if that’s something you’re interested in exploring I’d be happy to chat.

[byebyetech]

iMindMap is a pretty good software. I am using it to build mindmap for iOS interviews. I am also thinking of creating algo related one in future. There seems to be around 50-60ish main patterns in coding problems that are being repeated in almost all of the problems i've seen so far. If you can learn those you can use them as lego bricks to build your solutions. Interview problems have obvious constraints of time, whiteboard space and difficulty. If you master problems that fall within those constraints you can pass any interview.

[nso95]

I can’t really help much, but would be interested in such a map.

[arjun_tina]

yes! email me -- [e-mail]

[addcn]

One unconventional tip for code challenges comes to mind. A candidate used it on me and it was worth a ton of points in my book.

Instead of just doing the challenge ask the interviewer what they want you to optimize for? Performance? Shortness? Readability? Maintainbility? Make it clear there are tradeoffs to each and that the tradeoffs you choose often matter more than the code itself.

As a plus you also get insights into what the company values.

[vl623]

Aside from reading "Cracking the Coding Interview", I recommend trying out challenges at Hacker Rank, or LeetCode (or anything similar). Do it with the online editor, or even use their questions as practice for whiteboard questions. Whatever you do for a whiteboard, try transcribing that as submission to see how close to real code you wrote. Some companies you interview care about that.

[skinc]

Hey, I work at Karat and we offer free mock interviews for anyone working on their technical interviewing skills: karat.io/practice

We're also always hiring interviewers. If you love interviewing and/or are looking for well-paying, remote work, shoot me an email at [e-mail]

[sitkack]

My highest recommendation is https://www.pramp.com

Also, being able to intelligently explain

    * top 10 algorithms of all time
    * top 20 "popular" technologies

Sign up a for an online judge [1] and do a couple easy to medium questions each morning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_judge

[arjun_tina]

Great - thanks for sharing

[Goosey]

Highly encourage practicing with interviewing.io

I'm not affiliated with them, just really like what they are doing.

[awaythrow101]

Echoed. I got into their system and was able to get some real interviews through the platform as well.

When you get in, they give you three "guaranteed" interviews that you can schedule essentially any hour of the day with at least 24 hours notice. I suspect that they pay their interviewers for these interviews (hence the guaranteed nature of them), but don't quote me on that. After those three interviews, your available interview slots drop off dramatically; currently there is a two week wait period. If you do well enough (appears to be top 10%), they will start acting as a recruiter; you can have real tech screens through their platform anonymously, and "unmask" and go onsite if the screen goes well.

I'm not sure what the filter is for letting people in but I suspect it's fairly manual right now, especially if they're paying interviewers for the three guaranteed slots people get. Keep in mind that Gainlo charges $100+ per interview for the same service. I actually got better feedback from interviewers on interviewing.io than the one interview I did from Gainlo (YMMV of course).

Google remote onsite on Friday!

[arjun_tina]

Good luck for the onsite :)

[umbs]

This is a very good resource, but it has limitations from practicing point of view. You cannot use it for (unlimited) practice, like other sites mentioned in this post.

I continuously got "We are in private beta" on their site. I "came across" this site few times and wanted to give it a try. Their CEO (Aliene Lerner) was on few podcasts.

The way I got an account is when I clicked a Google Ad of theirs. Once account is created, I gave a practice interview. Interviewer said I was not ready for real jobs yet. If you do well, they refer you to Google, MSFT and such companies.

The best part (IMO) is your interview is recorded. You can listen and watch your performance anytime later.

[awaythrow101]

FWIW I don't think they have Big N clients yet, though they do have e.g. Twitter and Lyft on there. Google is still remarkably old school with interviews: Google Doc for screens, whiteboard for onsites. (Although I've heard that's recently changing and they're allowing laptops for onsites, and are doing more onsite loops remotely through Hangouts.)

And technically speaking you can use it for unlimited practice once you get in, but you have to schedule way further in advance once you're past their guaranteed interviews, and there are fewer available time slots.

[pixelperfect]

I signed up for an account there months ago, got a message about it being in "closed beta" and have heard nothing since.

[mattm]

Try signing up again now that you're in the bay area. I think anyone outside of their target market gets the closed beta page.

[yashevde]

no, I'm in the Bay Area -- same thing. They seem to be using some other filter to let candidates in

[arjun_tina]

Great website -- thanks for the recommendation.

[sharadov]

What position will you be interviewing for?

[arjun_tina]

Software Engineer (general) and iOS Engineer

[wingerlang]

I made a service that sends you 1 iOS interview question per day. It includes both technical and experiences questions. It is still in "early alpha" and not exactly polished, but I take feedback and try to improve it.

http://interviewq.io/

The purpose is to get a question per day and it is up to you to see if you can answer it or not. If you cant answer it, then you've identified something to study / think about.

[arjun_tina]

Signed up. Cool idea!