
Ask HN: How to get better at technical interviewing? - ryanmccullagh
I&#x27;ve recently failed technical interviews. I want to know how I can get better at these types of interviews. Failing these interviews lead me to believe that I&#x27;m not a good programmer, and I want to be a good programmer, so how do I get better?
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ThatOtherPerson
How you do in technical interviews often has little to do with how good of a
programmer you are. Modern technical interviews (in Silicon Valley, at least)
tend to focus on a certain category of computer science and mathematical
questions, rather than skills that would actually benefit an employer.

On the bright side, something of an industry has been built up around
preparing people for tech company interviews (similar to the SAT prep
industry). Check out Gayle McDowell's _Cracking the Coding Interview_ [0],
CodeKata[1], or Interview Cake[2].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-
Programming...](https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-
Questions/dp/098478280X)

[1] [http://codekata.com/](http://codekata.com/)

[2] [https://www.interviewcake.com/](https://www.interviewcake.com/)

~~~
ryanmccullagh
I was asked a question along the lines of find the median value in a stream of
integers. It was a live coding thing in a notepad like text editor. This was
for a startup not Google or anything, so I was actually quite surprised that I
was hit with one of these brain teaser type things.

