| Earlier in my career, I had pretty good luck in interviews. I think I got offer from pretty much every place I had interviewed at. I stayed for pretty long time at my last company. In mean time, interview processes changed and it was all about LeetCode. I knew a little bit about it but all I thought was that it is similar to FizzBuzz problem. And I enjoy puzzles, so I thought that it would be fun. I applied at Facebook, the recruiter tried to warn me but she also told me that since I have been programming for so long, it should be no problem. I didn't really looked at real problems, instead just tried a few examples that were there to get to you familiar with Facebook interview environment. They were pretty easy, so I was feeling very confident. Needless to say in the actual interview, I could not even decipher problem. The interviewer helped me understand it. I was able to create brute-force solution but could not optimize it. Felt pretty dumb. After that I looked up LeetCode, spent hours practicing it. I forgot about everything else. Eventually, I restarted interview process. The next company I applied for was to warm up. I passed all their 3-4 LeetCode and System Design rounds. I started to feel good about it. But I was so focused on technical aspects that I forgot about behavioral interview part. My brain was so focused on puzzles that I thought all those normal behavior questions were trick questions. I blanked and mumbled mostly. I really liked the interviewer too, I thought he had similar personality as me. Then I went back to basics and wrote down answers to various behavior questions. And tried to revise those questions before my next few interviews. There I got still rejected but got a few offers. However, this experience also taught me that I cannot rely on my previous good luck anymore and should spend time preparing. |