[linguae]

“Leetcode grind” means solving Leetcode problems. Interviewing for many software engineering positions in Silicon Valley these days require doing well on Leetcode-style coding exercises where one has a limited amount of time to solve a problem.

What makes software engineering interviews a grind these days is that many employers don’t care about your thinking process; they want an optimal solution to the problem within the time limit without errors, since chances are high that an applicant will come up with the optimal solution. In addition, the high compensation for many Silicon Valley employers has made these positions very desirable and thus ultra-competitive. The same type of applicants who grinded for high SAT and AP scores in high school and who grinded in college for 3.7+ GPAs don’t feel discouraged grinding some more for a six-figure job with life-changing amounts of RSUs once vested and other perks. You can grind hard, but chances are high that somebody else spent even more time studying than you. These types of interviews are similar in spirit to the employment exams that some companies have in Japan during job-hunting season for upper-level college students.

So, aiming for a FAANG position, as well as software engineering positions at many other companies in Silicon Valley, essentially require studying not unlike preparing for a GRE subject test for graduate school admissions.

[jacobsimon]

Hey I just want to add, in addition to your advice here, there are other important aspects to interviewing beyond performance on Leetcode questions. In other words, it's sometimes necessary, but not sufficient. Most senior jobs require system design interviews, conversations about leadership, and more.

I think "grinding" on Leetcode also entails learning and practicing a lot of irrelevant topics for many jobs, but there are newer resources out there that help you focus on what you need to know for specific roles. I don't like to plug my own company, but Exponent[1] is designed to help with this more 'well-rounded' interview prep for different types of engineering paths, and we also have a mock interview feature that helps you iron out your communication skills with other candidates.

1. https://www.tryexponent.com

[greymalik]

I would like to try exponent, but the only free "lessons" I see are the intros to each section. I want to see a real, representative sample of the content I'd get before I'm willing to open my wallet.

[jacobsimon]

Feedback received! We do have free lessons deeper in the course and lots on our YouTube channel, but will pass this on to the team.

[sovnwnt]

> for many software engineering positions in Silicon Valley these days

Do US most companies outside of Silicon Valley not use leetcode style interviews? Every single software interview I've done in Canada had at least one round of leetcode programming exams.

[madamelic]

I've hardly dipped my toe in SV and have almost entirely worked in the Eastern half of the United States.

Leetcode questions do happen but typically they are guidelines for a further discussion rather than the entire signal. By that I mean, they are used to investigate problem solving, communication, and personality.

It tends to be the bigger places have more rote tests. One company posed the "If you were re-making Instagram, design me the ability to handle millions of page views over the span of an hour" or something like that. Apparently CDNs, caching, and load balancers wasn't the answer...

Never bothered to look it up because I spent what felt like an hour trying to figure out why this guy thought a CDN wasn't good enough and whether he was _trying_ to get a rise out of me.

What only made it funnier is this place had nothing to do with images.

[daemonologist]

I think outside of silicon valley (and companies emulating that culture), US companies still give coding problems but they're usually not leetcode style, more of just an implementation problem, if that makes sense. Instead of checking that you have some obscure algorithm memorized they simply want to see you code a bit.