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Data Structures for Coding Interviews

interviewcake.com

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Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#3

Post by throwawaybbq1 »

gameguy43 wrote: post #2

Original Author here. Happy to answer questions about this piece or coding interviews in general! And eager to receive any feedback. Thanks for the post!

You've got a cool site and I appreciate all the hard work creating high quality content (I've looked at the free questions and considered subscribing a few times in the past). I think your business model/pricing could use work. Unless I'm mistaken and things are going well .. in that case, I'll withdraw to my cave :-p

My suggestion would be to have a slightly cheaper tier (probably no more than a hundred bucks). This mirrors the cost of two-to-three interview books. You could add a custom grading or personalized tutoring option for the full 500, or heck, even more (this is sort of like the GRE/GMAT prep option). Come to think of it .. I wonder why the GRE/GMAT prep crowd hasn't tackled programming interviews?

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#4

Post by sanderjd »

gameguy43 wrote: post #2

Original Author here. Happy to answer questions about this piece or coding interviews in general! And eager to receive any feedback. Thanks for the post!

Nice graphics! I really like from-the-bits-up explanations of things like this.

I found the newsletter upsell in the sidebar very distracting. I know you're considered a fool if you fail to bash people over the head with newsletter sign-up requests these days, but maybe just keep the ones interspersed in the text and get rid of the one I have to see all the time? Or I guess AB test it or whatever the cool kids are doing for this stuff. I dunno, but it really detracted from what I otherwise thought was great content.

Best of luck to you!

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#5

Post by gameguy43 »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #3
gameguy43 wrote: post #2

Original Author here. Happy to answer questions about this piece or coding interviews in general! And eager to receive any feedback. Thanks for the post!

You've got a cool site and I appreciate all the hard work creating high quality content (I've looked at the free questions and considered subscribing a few times in the past). I think your business model/pricing could use work. Unless I'm mistaken and things are going well .. in that case, I'll withdraw to my cave :-p My suggestion would be to have a slightly cheaper tier (probably no more than a hundred bucks). This…

Thanks for the note. Definitely a great point. Not sure yet how we tier out our product, but tiered pricing is definitely the state of the art.

We've been working on some /tech/ to enable tiered pricing in the meantime. The Site's all custom, and so far there's no notion of a "product" yet...just "paid" and "unpaid."

Share your question re: where's Kaplan on this stuff!

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#6

Post by gameguy43 »

sanderjd wrote: post #4
gameguy43 wrote: post #2

Original Author here. Happy to answer questions about this piece or coding interviews in general! And eager to receive any feedback. Thanks for the post!

Nice graphics! I really like from-the-bits-up explanations of things like this. I found the newsletter upsell in the sidebar very distracting. I know you're considered a fool if you fail to bash people over the head with newsletter sign-up requests these days, but maybe just keep the ones interspersed in the text and get rid of the one I have to see all the time? Or I guess AB test it or whatever the cool kids are do…

Really helpful to hear. We were worried about it but thought "once you get into reading the piece you'll probably just forget it's there, right?"

We're really focused on trying to "twist the knobs" only up to the point right /before/ it starts getting annoying.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#7

Post by nichochar »

> Don't worry—we'll skip the convoluted academic jargon and proofs.

Aaaaand this is why I hate using this as a method for interviewing. I actually care a great deal about people that care about that stuff. I would rather you know all the principles and can reason your way back up, however slowly, than repeat something you've practiced enough for an interview.

I understand the author really only wants to help people, but let me tell you as someone who works for one of the "cool unicorns" that the quality of software engineers is really bad, most likely because of this efficient "gaming of the system".

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#8

Post by __sr__ »

nichochar wrote: post #7

> Don't worry—we'll skip the convoluted academic jargon and proofs. Aaaaand this is why I hate using this as a method for interviewing. I actually care a great deal about people that care about that stuff. I would rather you know all the principles and can reason your way back up, however slowly, than repeat something you've practiced enough for an interview. I understand the author really only wants to help people,…

People don't have a choice but to game the system. If you can't solve the problem quickly enough on a whiteboard, you are rejected. You are typically not given enough time arrive the solution from a scratch. You either know the solution or you don't.

I agree with you, this method for interviewing sucks.

Re: Data Structures for Coding Interviews

#9

Post by Mutinix »

nichochar wrote: post #7

> Don't worry—we'll skip the convoluted academic jargon and proofs. Aaaaand this is why I hate using this as a method for interviewing. I actually care a great deal about people that care about that stuff. I would rather you know all the principles and can reason your way back up, however slowly, than repeat something you've practiced enough for an interview. I understand the author really only wants to help people,…

It's unfortunate, but all the companies are doing this.

Here's what a Google lead said in a tweet:

> Hello, my name is Tim. I'm a lead at Google with over 30 years coding experience and I need to look up how to get length of a python string.

DHH:

> Hello, my name is David. I would fail to write bubble sort on a whiteboard. I look code up on the internet all the time. I don't do riddles.

Max Howell:

> Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off.

And yet, everyone is asking these questions about print a string in zigzag fashion or something silly like that.

Engineers are gaming the system because the system is garbage. None of us are looking forward to waking up and solving HackerRank, LeetCode and CtCI problems till the joy of programming leaves our bodies.

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