
Ask HN: Is anyone studying for technical interviews? - arjun_tina
Just moved to the Bay Area and have just started studying for technical interviews.<p>1. Does anyone want to do mock interviews &#x2F; study with me &#x2F; team up in some other way? Email me: arjun@nyclabs.co and I&#x27;ll create a group.
2. Any unconventional advice&#x2F;tips for studying or the interview itself?
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 skik@karat.io

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sitkack
My highest recommendation is [https://www.pramp.com](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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_judge)

~~~
arjun_tina
Great - thanks for sharing

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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 :)

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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/](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!

